Watch of the Last Bank

The only paid public employment in the Nieuwlanden: tower men appointed for life from a few families, who count and record what is heard beyond the bank in a book running back four centuries without a gap. The bank's inspectors are likewise appointed, and the office has never been left vacant.

A line of towers along the last bank of the Nieuwlanden, manned through the dark half of the year, whose men watch the Drowned Lands rather than the sea.

Named with it

• Wall-Reeve Cornelia Brask · keeps the tower book, Nieuw Amsterdam
• Warden Pieter Haan · bank charge of the eastern parishes, 4447

Ties

• paid out of the Sluice Court's levy
• acts with the Nieuwlanden chapter

At the table

Asked, they say they are watching the bank. Their book has counted the sounds from the marsh for four hundred years. Parishes will let a band sit a tower watch, a credential Kentish landings respect. The book records no interpretation; nobody outside the country has read it. What comes across the bank is dealt with there by the watch with the chapter present. Companies may be hired to stand a watch and must not leave the tower.