Fort

Pentagouet, fort

Fort Pentagouet was a fortification, built in 1625 in Castine, Maine, which served as the capital of the French colony of Acadia. A map of ca. 1670 depicts it as a standard four-pointed fort, located in the Penobscot River estuary, along the coast, near the confluence of the Bagaduce River and the Penobscot River. In 1674, Jurriaen Aernoutsz, captain of the frigate Vliegende Paert van Curacao, attacked the fort. As the garrison consisted of just thirty men, they quickly surrendered. Aernoutsz sailed on to Fort Jemseg, a trading post located on the east bank of the Jemseg River in what now is New Brunswick, and also captured that fort. Returning south, Aernoutsz sold the guns (tout le canon) of Fort Pentagouet in Boston to governor John Leverett of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Before interested parties from New York, such as Cornelis Steenwijck and John Rhoade, could enforce the Dutch claim, the English briefly took possession before the area returned to French rule. Most of the documents related to the Dutch attack on Acadia deal with the aftermath and contain little detail about the capture of Fort Pentagouet and Fort Jemseg or of the material condition of the fortifications. It is clear however that the activities of the Dutch forces during their brief stay were mostly of a destructive nature.

Bronnen en literatuur

Jacobs, J., Dutch Colonial Fortifications in North America 1614-1676 (2015)