Blader door transcripties » Stadsarchief Amsterdam

archieftoegang 499, inventarisnummer 227, pagina 125

M
« J.C.i .
te:,f tfrr Seaaatniaqe .
tie tZan/enJut .
. irierduA .
tm.io .
rfxrre.ofto.r&xf^p .
PRÖFFIEI . VAN DE " WTESTVBIESLANPTSCHE zee joyk ,
> r,i 7 .* s « i ,
n
m
crtt-'t
Photo Gem . Arch .
VOOJR 7>JB irOOJUlXR COGGE3Ï . "
Structure of the dikes with the wooden piles
out seaweed attached to the earth dike with wooden palings , or piles . These
palings were arranged to form first a row of uprights , then angled supports to
these , with at areas of especial risk from currents a right-angled extra row of
additional props as well . The whole system called , on the part of the manager ,
for engineering skills of a high order only to be acquired after lengthy terms of
apprenticeship : and the need for careful and regular inspection is obvious . By the
time the Spanish Succession War was over , and peace reigned once again , we are
accustomed to the idea that local administration ( and care of the sea-defences of
the Republic was very much a matter for local administration ) was not as efficient
as it had been in the past . And we also become increasingly aware of the lack of
cohesion between outlying districts and more central administrative bodies .
Above all we see financial stringency , after the Eighty Years ' War of 1568-1648 ,
and the Forty Years ' War of 1672 to around 1712 had imposed , especially upon the
States of Holland , serious war debts to fund which much money had to be raised
in taxes , mainly indirect ones . Some of the local inspectors and in general officers
in charge of defences against the sea ( and the sea , unlike Spain or France , or any
other human power , has always been the Republic's most dangerous foe ) were
very good , conscientious , knowledgeable and proud to discharge their important
local offices . Others were not . These offices were often handed down from fathers
to sons or from uncles to nephews 1
, and subject even to the system of contracten
van correspondentie . This meant that the right of nomination to office circulated
among members of rival family groups . Such a system did not always produce a
reliable or informed officer who could efficiently discharge this service , so vital
to the local population living under the protection of the defence against the sea .
After the storm-surge of the winter of 1731 the special inspectors sent by the
States of Holland to examine the omringdyk did their duty reasonably thoroughly .
Their report , already mentioned , to the States of Holland explained the extent
of the damage and stressed that pile worm infestation was only too likely to
continue . Some piles , made from deal , were replaced by others fashioned of oak .
But the ' worm ', as it was still called ( and has been very generally since in spite
of Sellius ' discovery of its being a mollusc ) infested these also , inspite of the
additional hardness of oak compared to deal and other so-called ' green ' woods .
It became clear that there were only two alternatives"kTcarrying out essential
repairs to the dikes . One was to find material to bind the sea-weed mats to the
outer edges of the earth dikes which would not , like wooden piles , be subject to
infestation . The other was to redike , at least in places of greatest danger , in stone .
All this would be labour-intensive , even more expensive and disruptive of local
life by absorbing local provision for farming needs , such as horses , forges , wagons ,
and needing local accommodation such as barns and stables . Moreover , the worst
hit districts began to clamour , as was their right in the face of a disaster , for
registration as ' calamiteuze ', which would bring remission from the tax known
as ' verponding ' assessed on property and payable to the provincial treasury . Many
were successful , which cut down receipts . Holland's treasury went bankrupt for
a few years in the 1750s , which has usually been attributed to the short war of
1747-8 with France . Was not the war with the sea perhaps also responsible ?
Whilst the possibly more emotional and certainly less constructive of the clergy
were busy stressing , in sermons , prayers and demands for overt acts of penitence
such as public days of prayer and fasting , the allegedly punitive aspects of the
' plague of worms ', engineers and officials in positions of authority , as well as the
government itself , were engaged in trying to repair the damage . To replace the
worm-eaten piles , it was at first supposed that harder timber than the ' green ' wood
usually employed should be subsituted . Oak rather than deal or pine was to be
See H . Schootl , Zeshonderd Jaar Water en land ( Groningen 1973 ) especially pp . 233 S , for a lively
description , based on an impressive amount of archive work , of the labour of the officials responsible
for keeping the waterways clear to the north of the omringdijk , of how these officials came to hold
their posts , and of how the constant changes in the direction of currents and under-water scouring
complicated the maintenance of the dikes . I should like to thank Dr . Schoorl for advice and help
in the course of my studies in this field , which he has made so impressively his own .
244
245