Blader door transcripties » Stadsarchief Amsterdam

archieftoegang 499, inventarisnummer 227, pagina 124

Oak-wood affected by teredo novalis , etching in Europische Mercurius , June 1732 Photo Gem . Arch .
to London as the centre of the trade of Northern Europe , which we date as a
rule only from the mid-eighteenth century .
The hysteria engendered by the plague of ( so-called ) worms , and its inter-
pretation by some clergy as a manifestation of divine dis-pleasure at the apparent
growth of homosexuality and masturbation , did not pass without expression in
Amsterdam . Even so , the number of convictions for sex offences , which remained
under 20 a year even at the height of the excitement , does not seem excessive .
Earlier convictions for these deviationist activities were under three per annum .
To the modern mind , the most depressing manifestation of punitive zeal was the
solitary confinement , in tiny cells , of some boys and young men from the city's
orphanage .
The nature of the so-called ' worm ' attracted the attention of Godofredus
Sellius , an enviably interdisciplinary law graduate from the University of Leiden ,
who produced in record time his Historia Naturalis Tendinis sett Xylophagi Marini
published in the autumn of 1733 at Utrecht . It is illustrated with elaborate
drawings and figures . Considering that it must have been put together under
pressure as a piece d'occasion ( it sold very well ) it must be described as a con -
siderable achievement . Professor Ruth Turner , today's most distinguished
authority on teredo navalis , hails Sellius as the first scientist to make this important
distinction , between a sea-worm and a marine borer 1
. Sellius 2
goes in considerable
detail into the life cycle of /. navalis , emphasising that it had long been known ,
but that it had only recently became a pest in European waters , and that its appetite ,
which he describes as voracissimus , had increased even further than previously
when it reached western Europe . Its arrival thither is , incidentally , perhaps
something of a mystery still . Its previous incidence in woodwork of the dikes ,
and of sluices and harbour buildings where water was brackish ( it does not live
outside tidal waters ) was known but it did not until 1731 achieve publicity as a
danger to the Republic's defences against the sea . The so-called ship-worm had
however been known as a danger to the hulls of ships sailing to the antipodes
since classical times . In order to provide protection , the Dutch East and West
Indiamen , increasing rapidly in numbers and size during the seventeenth century ,
had been generally fitted with double hulls , the outer of which would be eaten
off gradually by /. navalis , and the inner carry the ship safely home with her
cargo . ( When With de Witte saw his West Indiamen careened on the coast of
Brazil , he noted in his diary that the sight of the so-called worms ' activity gave
the impression of ' honey-combing ' of the outer hull ) 3
. One supposes , therefore ,
that pieces of the outer hull would float around in the sea as bit-by-bit they
became detached . In the eighteenth century writings , many very fanciful , on the
generative processes of the so-called worm , it was supposed that sacs of eggs
would open when they approached timber structures , and that this was how the
timber in the dikes became infested . One confused divine even urged his readers
to admire the wonderful works of the Creator , who could imbue , with the
ability to sense the near presence of a suitable wooden structure , a sac of unborn
worm-eggs .
How did the voracious appetite of /, navalis damage the woodwork of the dikes ?
To understand this , one must consider the part played in the structure of the
dikes , by the wooden so-called ' piles ' or ' paaien '. These were not , as the unin-
formed might suppose , large timbers embedded in mounds of unprotected earth .
The core of the dike was , it is true , an earth mound thrown up , usually by locally
recruited labour , between the drained land and the sea . This would have left a
trough behind the dike , making it even less viable . We all know what happens to
a sandcastle when the sea gets behind into its moat and then retreats again . The
dike was carefully protected with seaward-facing mats of pulverised and dried -
1 Encyclopaedia Britannica edition 1969 , vol . 22 , pp . 861-2 .
2 Sellius was a member of the Royal Society of London and also of the Imperial Academy . In collabora-
tion with a French ' Maitre des Requêtes ' he wrote an Histoire Générale des Provinces Unies in whichhe refers to the Dutch as ' un Peuple devenu si riche dans un Pays si pauvre ' and praises their longbattle with the sea which they have won so spectacularly .
8 Loc . cit . p . 241 , n . 3 .
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