Map of the Mot Creek with the post Brandwacht

Titel Leupe: Plan van de Motkreek, van de uitwatering in Zee tot den Overtoom, met het Piquet, Fortress enz.

This map shows the post Brandwacht (‘Fire Watch’, a term generally used in the Dutch colonies at that time to indicate a first-alert post) on Mot Creek, which was built in 1685 on the orders of Governor Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck as a permanent observation and alarm post on the sailing route along the east coast to the mouth of the Surinam River. In the later eighteenth century, the post Brandwacht consisted of a redoubt on the eastern bank of the creek, about three-quarters of a kilometre from the mouth, with a separate picket station on the sea coast. This anonymous map, dating from around 1776, reproduces the entire creek from the portage on the then northern border of the plantation area near the estates Clemensburg and Zeewijk (see the indication of the ‘Dames’

dams

on these plantations), with a ground plan of the small fort itself on the inset map. In view of the clumsy language used in the legends, the maker was certainly not a Dutchman. See for comparison the 1785 map by the surveyor Adrianus Hendricus Helledaij on VEL1958, on which the estates to be assigned later farther to the north along Mot Creek are shown in projection.

North is lower left.

Scale-bars of [inset map] 90 feet = [approximately 1 : 385] / [profile] 20 feet = [approximately 1 : 75].