Adventures abroad

The ‘M.[Marais or marsh)’ de Hollande (colored green) at the mouth of the Gironde, where Leeghwater was working in 1627. Detail from the ‘Carte du Bourdelois (…)’ by G. Deslisle, 1714. David Rumsey Map Collection.

Leeghwater did not shy away from working abroad. In 1626, he was called in to help drain two small lakes near Friedrichstadt in Schleswig-Holstein. A year later, he mapped and surveyed marshes in the neighbourhood Lesparre-Medoc, a town at the mouth of the Gironde northwest of Bordeaux. A few years later, we encounter him in three fortified towns surrounded by marshes east of Nancy. He stayed there for five weeks. In 1633, he traveled to Schleswig-Holstein again, accompanied by his son Adriaen. This time, the task was to build a dike around an inlet of the North Sea, the Dagebüllerbocht. Unfortunately, the closure dike was washed away in October 1634 during a severe storm surge. Leeghwater and his son narrowly escaped drowning during this storm.