On May 28, 1668, a ship anchored off St. Augustine harbor. It was a
vessel from Veracruz, bringing flour from México. In the town, the drum
sounded the alert for the garrison of 120 men. A launch went out to
identify the newcomer and put the harbor pilot aboard. As it neared the
ship, the crew on the launch hailed the Spaniards lining her gunwale. To
the routine questions came the usual answers: Friends from México—come
aboard! Two shots from the launch told the town the ship had been
identified as friendly, and the seamen warped the launch alongside the
ship. In St. Augustine, the people heard the signal shots and rejoiced.
The soldiers returned their arms to the main guardhouse on the town
plaza. Tomorrow the supplies would come ashore.
Unknown to the townspeople, when the launch pilot stepped aboard the
supply ship, an alien crew of pirates swarmed out of hiding and leveled
their guns at him and the others. He could do nothing but surrender.
Some time after midnight, a corporal was out on the bay fishing when he
heard the sound of many oars pulling across the water. Something was not
right. Desperately he paddled his little craft toward shore. The
pirates, four boatloads of them, were right behind. Twice their shots
found their mark, but he got to the fort where his shouts aroused the
guards.
At the main guardhouse, a quarter mile from the fort, the sentries heard
the shouting and the gunfire, but before they could respond, the pirates
were upon them, a hundred strong. Out-numbered, the guards ran for the
fort. Gov. Francisco de la Guerra rushed out of his house and, with the
pirates pounding at his heels, joined the race for the fort. Somehow the
garrison was able to beat back several assaults. In the confusion of
darkness, however, the pirates seemed to be everywhere. They destroyed
the weapons they found in the guardhouse and went on to the government
house. Shouting and cursing, they scattered through the narrow streets,
seizing or shooting the frightened, bewildered inhabitants.
Sgt. Maj. Nicolás Ponce de Léon, the officer responsible for defending
the town, was at home, a sick man, covered with a greasy mercury salve
and weak from the “sweatings” prescribed for his illness. On hearing the
din, he roused himself and rushed to the guardhouse, only to find the
pirates had been there first. He turned to the urgent task of
shepherding his 70 unarmed soldiers and the others—men, women, and
children—into the woods, leaving the pirates in complete possession of
the town.
By daybreak the little force at the fort had lost five men, but they
believed they had killed 11 pirates and wounded 19 others. Ponce came
from the woods and reinforced the fort with his weaponless men. With
daylight, two other vessels joined the ship from Veracruz. One was St.
Augustine’s own frigate, taken by the raiders near Havana, in which the
pirates had been able to move in Spanish waters without detection. The
other was the pirates’ own craft. All three sailed into the bay, passed
the cannon fire of the fort, anchored just out of range, and landed
their remaining forces. Systematically they began to sack the town; no
structure was neglected.
That afternoon, the governor sent out a sortie from the fort, but the
leaders were wounded and the party retired. After 20 hours ashore,
however, the pirates were ready to leave anyway, taking their booty,
which probably amounted to only a few thousand pesos, and about 70
prisoners whom they had seized during the previous night’s rampage. Just
before leaving they ransomed most of their prisoners for meat, water,
and firewood. The local Indians, however, they kept, claiming that the
governor of Jamaica had told them to keep all Indians, blacks, and
mulattoes as slaves, even if they were Spanish freemen. Finally on June
5 the raiders headed out to sea, amused as once again they passed the
thunder of the useless guns in the old wooden fort as the small
community grieved over its 60 dead and gave thanks for the ransomed
prisoners.
The released prisoners identified the invaders as English and told how
the enemy had carefully sounded the inlet, taken its latitude, and noted
the landmarks. They intended to come back and seize the fort and make it
a base for future operations against Spanish shipping.
To the Spaniards the attack on St. Augustine was far more than a pirate
raid. St. Augustine, though isolated and small, was the keystone in the
defense of Florida, a way station on Spain’s great commercial route.
Each year, galleons bearing the proud Iberian banners sailed past the
coral keys and surf-pounded beaches of Florida, following the Gulf
Stream on the way to Cádiz. Each galleon carried a treasure of gold and
silver from the mines of Perú and México—and all Europe knew it.
A shipload of treasure, dispatched from México by Hernán Cortés in 1522,
never reached the Spanish court. A French corsair attacked the Spanish
ship and the treasure ended up in Paris, not Madrid. Soon, daring
adventurers of all nationalities sailed for the West Indies and Spanish
treasure. Florida’s position on the lifeline connecting Spain with her
colonies gave this sandy peninsula strategic importance. Spain knew that
Florida must be defended to prevent enemies from using the harbors for
preying upon Spanish commerce and to give safe haven to shipwrecked
Spanish mariners.
The French, ironically, brought the situation to a head in 1564 when
they established Fort Caroline, a colony named for their teenage king,
Charles IX, near the mouth of Florida’s St. Johns River. A year later
Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés came to Florida, established
the St. Augustine colony, and forthwith removed the Frenchmen, suspected
of piracy. This small fortified settlement on Florida’s northeast coast
and Havana in Cuba anchored opposite ends of the passage through the
Straits of Florida enabling Spanish ships to pass safely from the Gulf
of Mexico out into the Atlantic.
[Illustration: Sir Francis Drake’s attack on St. Augustine was part
of the growing hostilities between Spain and England that culminated
in the attack of the Spanish Armada on England two years later.
Drake was also the first sea captain to take his own ship all the
way around the world. Ferdinand Magellan’s ship had made the trip 57
years earlier, but Magellan had been killed in the Philippines.]
A typical early fort was San Juan de Pinos, burned by English sailor
Francis Drake in 1586. Drake took the fort’s bronze artillery and a
considerable amount of money. San Juan consisted of a pine stockade
around small buildings for gunpowder storage and quarters. Cannon were
mounted atop a broad platform, or cavalier, so they could fire over the
stockade. Such forts could be built quickly, but they could also be
destroyed easily. If Indian fire arrows, enemy attack, or mutinies
failed, then hurricanes, time, and termites were certain to do the job.
During the first 100 years of Spanish settlement, nine wooden forts one
after another were built at St. Augustine.