Plan for a house at the post Icoerwa

Title Leupe: Plans, platte gronden, opstanden voor gebouwen voor de nieuwe stad, het gouvernement enz.

The military engineer Jan Carel Willem Herlin, who arrived in Berbice early in 1780 and was d’Arnaud’s successor, drew up a design in that same year for the new main guard in Fort Nassau (in fact still the provisional fortifications of 1764), which only reached the republic in 1785. In response to his new main guard proposal, the directors informed him that both that plan and any subsequent plans for Nieuw-Amsterdam would not be required because they had meanwhile asked Abraham van der Hart to produce a whole new range of plans for the town.

Herlin was instructed to henceforth channel his energy into reinforcing Fort Sint Andries and the other posts on the lower reaches of the Berbice so that the colony would become more resistant to possible attacks from the sea (see VEL1619). At the same time, he had to ensure that Nieuw-Amsterdam remained sufficiently defended to prevent it from having to be evacuated, as in 1763, in the event of another slave rebellion. His modest plan for a military residence on the Icoerwa Post is part of these plans. It contains a floor plan, a technical drawing of the beams, a profile and a facade.

Scale-bar of 48 Rhineland feet = 12 ‘strepen’.

Taken from: Report of Herlin to the Director on 15 September 1785.