1720 De Meerman van ’t Noorder Gewest
DESCRIPTION
This lively Dutch satirical broadside titled “De Meerman van ’t Noorder Gewest” (The Merman of the Northern Province) presents a humorous allegory of maritime trade and harbor administration in the Dutch Republic.
A merman-like “director” presides over the waters amid a fantastical procession of sea nymphs, tritons, and allegorical figures, while merchant ships approach the harbor in the distance and the skyline of Enkhuizen rises along the horizon. The scene combines mythological imagery with contemporary politics, transforming the Zuiderzee into a theatrical stage where maritime commerce and civic authority are playfully mocked.
The engraving specifically references the notorious Pampus sandbar, a shallow obstruction outside Amsterdam that long prevented heavily laden ships from easily entering the harbor. Numerous costly proposals were made to deepen or bypass the channel, and these schemes frequently became objects of speculation and political controversy. The print satirizes the officials, engineers, and investors who promised enormous profits from such ventures, portraying them as mythic sea creatures presiding over a chaotic maritime spectacle.
Beneath the image appears a lengthy poem explaining the allegory and ridiculing the speculative ambitions surrounding these harbor improvements. The language refers to “paper shares” and exaggerated financial expectations, linking the satire to the broader culture of speculation that swept Europe during the early eighteenth century. Prints of this kind circulated widely in the Dutch Republic as political commentary and popular entertainment, reflecting both the prosperity and the anxieties of a society deeply dependent on maritime trade.
Rough Translation of the Poem
Lady Fame is busy crowning the Merman.
She honors him with herring in his office as Director.
Through mermaids and sea nymphs he rules the lands of water,
according to the law of wind and wave, shaped by share-speculators.
It is spoken of by the shields of West Friesland’s sea towns.
Each fish and each sea maiden acknowledges him,
as head over all, known far and wide.
He signs decrees and designs new arms.
The blessing wagon arrives: first he appears in a little boat,
preceded by Triton, while Neptune grows angry,
and sea nymphs, those who he favors
but the maiden Purmerent’s mermaid catches his eye.
Instead of the maiden herself, the world lies at his feet
(the beauty is strange in the face of the great city).
Now she has inclined herself toward him
to guide him safely past Pampus toward the trading city.
“Scratch away, then,” say the swift sea maidens,
“you mud-mixers, sand-shifters, ditch-diggers!”
So speaks the Director, pleased with his own counsel.
“But we will not forget, when the cathedral bells ring,
to let the ship run aground on a sandbank at sea
and stretch it out so no clever pilot may steer it away.
If the place is lost, it shall never return,
or we shall demand something great in payment.
Thus you will have to build the dreadful Pampus town
How it was said of Hoorn and the man from Enkhuizen
that what lay before them must soon be set right.
In confusion you hurry to inspect it,
for you will make money as long as you have the charter,
the cash being in hand, some say half a million each year.
So the fortune’s flood once ran strongly in your shoes,
but now the tide of fortune quickly ebbs away.”
CONDITION
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