To show her commitment to the proposed construction, the Queen Regent
appointed Sgt. Maj. Don Manuel de Cendoya, a veteran of 22 years
service, as successor to Governor Guerra.
In México City Cendoya followed Queen Mariana’s orders and delivered his
message to the Viceroy, the Marquis de Mancera. Florida’s defenses were
to be strengthened at once with a main castillo at St. Augustine, a
second fort to protect the harbor entrance, and a third to prevent troop
landings. Initial estimates were that the project would cost 30,000
pesos. At this point came the news of the English settlement at
Charleston, and Cendoya at once suggested a fourth fort at Santa
Catalina.
The viceroy’s finance council finally decided to allot 12,000 pesos to
begin work on one fort. If suitable progress were made, they would
consider sending 10,000 yearly until completion. The question of
additional forts would be referred to the crown. Cendoya had to be
satisfied with this arrangement and a levy of 17 soldiers. He left for
Florida, making a stop at Havana where he sought skilled workers. There
he also found an engineer, Ignacio Daza.
On August 8, 1671, a month after Cendoya’s arrival in St. Augustine, the
first worker began to draw pay. By the time the mosquitoes were sluggish
in the cooler fall weather, the quarrymen had opened coquina pits on
Anastasia Island, and the lime burners were building two big kilns just
north of the old fort. The carpenters put up a palm-thatched shelter at
the quarry, built a dozen rafts for ferrying stone, firewood, and oyster
shells for the limekilns across the water. They built boxes,
handbarrows, and carretas—the long, narrow, hauling wagons—as well. The
blacksmith hammered out axes, picks, stonecutters’ hatchets, crowbars,
shovels, spades, hoes, wedges, and nails for the carpenters. The
grindstone screeched as the cutting edge went on the tools.
Indians at the quarry chopped out the dense thickets of scrub oak and
palmetto, driving out the rattlesnakes and clearing the ground for the
shovelmen to uncover the top layer of coquina. Day after day Diego Díaz
Mejía, the overseer, kept the picks and axes going, cutting deep groves
into the soft yellow stone, while with wedge and bar the workers broke
loose and pried up the blocks—small pieces that a single man could
shoulder, and tremendously heavy cubes two feet thick and twice as long
that six strong men could hardly lift.
[Illustration: Stone masons were the most skilled and highly paid
laborers who worked on the Castillo.]
Díaz watched his workers heave the finest stone on the wagons. He sent
the oxen plodding to the wharf at the head of a marshy creek, where the
load of rough stone was carefully balanced on the rafts for ferrying to
the building site. And on the opposite shore of the bay, next to the old
fort, the cache of unhewn stone grew larger daily, and the stonecutters
shaped the soft coquina for the masons.
In the limekilns, oyster shells glowed white-hot and changed into fine
quality, quicksetting lime. By spring of 1672, there were 4,000
_fanegas_ (about 7,000 bushels) of lime in the two storehouses and great
quantities of hewn and rough stone.
Although the real construction had not even started, great obstacles had
already been overcome. Maintaining an adequate work force and skilled
workers was a continual problem. When there should have been 150 men to
keep the 15 artisans working at top speed—50 in the quarries and hauling
stone, 50 for gathering oyster shells and helping at the kilns, and
another 50 for digging foundation trenches, toting the excavation
baskets, and mixing mortar—it was hard to get as many as 100 laborers on
the job.
Indians from three nations, the Guale (coastal Georgia), Timucua
(Florida east of the Aucilla River), and Apalache (between the Aucilla
and the Apalachicola), were employed. True, they were paid labor, but
some had to travel more than 200 miles to reach the presidio, and many
served unwillingly. In theory each complement of Indian labor served
only a certain length of time; in practice it was not uncommon for the
men to be held long past their assigned time, either through necessity
or carelessness.
Indians were used as unskilled laborers and paid the lowest wages—one
_real_ (about 20 cents) per day plus corn rations. Most labored at the
monotonous, back-straining work in the quarries. A few were trained as
carpenters and received correspondingly greater wages but never the
equal of what the Europeans earned. One Indian was trained as a
stonecutter and worked on the Castillo for 16 years.
[Illustration: Great numbers of local Indians carried out the many
heavy-duty tasks that kept this labor-intensive project continually
moving forward.]
Besides Indian labor, there were a few Spanish workers paid 4 _reales_
per day, and a number of convicts, either local or from Caribbean ports.
Beginning in 1679 there were seven blacks and mulattoes among the
convicts. Eighteen black slaves belonging to the crown joined the labor
gang in 1687. Convicts and slaves received rations but no wage. A
typical convict might have been a Spaniard caught smuggling English
goods into the colony, who was condemned to six years’ labor on the
fortifications. If he tried to escape, the term was doubled and he faced
the grim prospect of being sent to a fever-infested African presidio to
work.
The military engineer, Ignacio Daza, was paid the top wage of 3 pesos
(about $4.75) per day. Daza died seven months after coming to Florida,
so the crown paid only the surprisingly small sum of 546 pesos (about
$862) for engineering services in starting the greatest of Spanish
Florida fortifications.
Of the artisans, there were Lorenzo Lajones, master of construction, and
two master masons, each of whom received the master workman’s wage of 20
_reales_ (about $4). Seven masons and eight stonecutters at 12 _reales_,
and 12 carpenters whose pay ranged from 6 to 12 _reales_, completed the
ranks of the skilled workers. Later, some of these wages were reduced:
Lajones’ successor as master of construction was paid only 17 _reales_,
the master mason 13, and the stonecutters from 3 to 11 _reales_, with
half of them at the 3- and 4-_real_ level.
These were few men for the job at hand, and to speed the work along
Governor Cendoya used any prisoner including neighboring Carolinians who
fell into Spanish hands. In 1670, a vessel bound for Charleston,
mistakenly put in at Santa Catalina Mission, the Spanish post near the
Savannah River, and William Carr and John Rivers were taken. A rescue
sloop sent from Charleston protested the Spaniards’ actions, with Joseph
Bailey and John Collins carrying the message from the English. For their
trouble, they were dispatched with Rivers and Carr to St. Augustine to
labor on the fort.
Three of the prisoners were masons, and their Spanish names—Bernardo
Patricio (for Bernard Fitzpatrick), and Juan Calens (for John Collins),
and Guillermo Car (for William Carr)—were duly written on the payrolls.
Some of these British subjects became permanent residents. Carr, for
instance, embraced first the Catholic faith and then Juana de Contreras,
by whom he fathered eight children. His father-in-law was a corporal, a
circumstance that may have helped Carr enlist as a gunner while also
working as a highly paid stonecutter.
[Illustration: Spanish silver coins were used throughout the
Caribbean and the British colonies. Often they were cut in two, or
quartered, or even cut into eight pieces, giving rise to our
expression, “two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar,” bit meaning
the number of pieces of one coin needed to make a dollar. The coins
shown here are a 2-_real_, a 1-_real_, and another 2-_real_ piece.
On the one 2-_real_ coin, note the Chinese characters indicating
that the coin had been used in trade in the Orient. The profile is
that of Charles III, who had died in 1788, though the inscription
says that it is of Charles IV. The diemaker simply changed the date
and added another “I” rather than using the more conventional “IV”
roman numeral designation for 4.]
The Spaniards were understandably cautious in relying on the loyalty of
foreigners, but actually the new subjects served well. John Collins
especially pleased the officials. He could burn more lime in a week than
others could in twice the time. And as a prisoner he had to be paid only
8 _reales_ instead of the 20 due a master workman. Like Carr, Collins
seemed to like St. Augustine. He rose steadily in the crown’s employ
from master of the kilns to quarrymaster, with dugouts, provisions, and
convicts all in his charge. When pirates landed on Anastasia in 1683 and
marched on the city, Carr made sure that all crown property in the
quarry was moved to safety. Royal recognition honored his loyalty and
years of service.
A few years later 11 Englishmen were captured several miles north of St.
Augustine. All were committed to the labor gang—except Andrew Ransom. He
was to be garroted. On the appointed day Ransom ascended the scaffold.
The executioner put the rope collar about his neck. The screw was turned
6 times—and the rope broke! Ransom breathed again.
While the onlookers marveled, the friars took the incident as an act of
God and led Ransom to sanctuary in the parish church. Word reached the
governor that this man was an ingenious fellow, an artillerist, a
carpenter, and what was most remarkable, a maker of “artificial
fires”—fire bombs. Ransom was offered his life if he would put his
talents to use at the Castillo. He agreed and, like Collins, was
exceedingly helpful. Twelve years later, church authorities finally
agreed that the sanctuary granted by the parish pastor was valid. At
last Ransom was free of the garrote.
All told, between 100 and 150 workers on the construction crew labored
in those first days of feverish preparations. They, along with some 500
others—including about 100 soldiers in the garrison, a few Franciscan
friars, a dozen mariners, and the townspeople—had to be fed. When
supplies from México did not come, getting food was even harder than
finding workers, especially since the coastal soil at St. Augustine
yielded poorly to 17th-century agricultural methods.
Of the crops grown at St. Augustine, Indian corn was the staple. Most of
the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of extensive fields near the
town was done by Indians. At times as many as 300 Indians, including
those working on the fortification, served the crown at the presidio. To
make the food, whether grown locally or shipped in from México, go as
far as possible, it was rationed: 3 pounds daily until 1679, then 2½
pounds until 1684, then 2 pounds until 1687, and finally 2½ again.
Convicts also got corn if flour was not on hand, and they also received
a meat ration. Fresh meat was rather scarce, but the waters teemed with
fish and shellfish. A paid fisherman kept the men supplied.
Garden vegetables were few. Squash grew well in the sandy soil, as did
beans and sweet potatoes, citron, pomegranates, figs, and oranges. And
of course there were onions and garlic. But St. Augustine was never
self-supporting. After a century of existence, it still depended for its
very life upon supplies from México.
As the long, hot days of the second summer shortened into fall, Governor
Cendoya saw that after a year of gathering men and materials, he was
ready to start building.
Daza and the governor decided to construct the Castillo on the west
shore of the bay just north of the old fort. It was a site that would
take advantage of every natural feature for the best possible defensive
position. The new fort, they decided, would be similar, though somewhat
larger. In line with the more recent ideas, Daza recommended a slight
lengthening of the bastions. All around the castillo they planned a
broad, deep moat and beyond the moat, a high palisade on the three land
sides.
It was a simple and unpretentious plan, but a good one. Daza, schooled
in the Italian-Spanish principles of fortification that grew out of the
16th-century designs of Franceso de Marchi, was clearly a practical man.
His plan called for a “regular” fort—that is, a symmetrical structure.
Basically it was a square with a bastion at each corner. Equally strong
on all sides, this design was ideal for Florida’s low, flat terrain.
[Illustration: This document is the official report to government
officials in Madrid that ground had been broken for the Castillo.
“Today, Sunday, about four in the afternoon, the second of October
1672 ... Don Manuel de Cendoya, Governor and Captain General of
these provinces for Her Majesty ... with spade in hand ... began the
foundation trenches for construction of the Castillo,” the document
states.]
About four o’clock Sunday afternoon, October 2, 1672, Governor Cendoya
walked to a likely looking spot between the strings marking out the
lines of the new fortification and thrust a spade into the earth, as
Juan Moreno y Segovia, reported the ground breaking ceremonies for Queen
Mariana.
Little more than a month later on Wednesday, November 9, Cendoya laid
the first stone of the foundation. The people of St. Augustine must have
wept for joy. All were glad and proud, the aged soldiers who had given a
lifetime of service to the crown, the four orphans whose father had died
in the pirate raid a few years earlier, the widows and their children,
the craftsmen, the workers, and the royal officials. But none could have
been more pleased or proud than Don Manuel de Cendoya. He of all the
Florida governors had the honor to begin the first permanent Florida
fortification.
Laying the foundations was not easy, for the soil was sandy and low and
as winter came the Indians were struck by _El Contagio_—a smallpox
epidemic. The laboring force dwindled to nothing. The governor asked the
crown to have Havana send 30 slaves. Meanwhile, Cendoya himself and his
soldiers took to the shovels. As they dug a trench some 17 feet wide and
5 feet deep, the masons came in and laid two courses of heavy stones
directly on the hard-packed sand bottom for the foundation. The work was
slow, for high tide flooded the trenches.
About 1½ feet inside the toe of this broad 2-foot-high foundation, the
masons stretched a line marking the scarp or curtain, a wall that would
gradually taper upward from a 13-foot base to about 9 feet at its top,
20 feet above the foundation. In the 12 months that followed, the north,
south, and east walls rose steadily. By midsummer of 1673 the east side
was 12 feet high, and the presidio was jubilant over the news that the
Viceroy was sending even more money.
This good news was tempered by the viceroy’s assertion that he would
release no more money for the work without a direct order from the
crown. Cendoya had already asked the queen to raise the allowance to
16,000 pesos a year so the construction could be finished in four years.
For, as he put it, the English menace at Charleston brooked no delay.
The English were said to be outfitting ships for an invasion.
Gradually, however, construction slowed. In 1673 Cendoya and Daza died
within a few days of one another. The governor’s mantle fell upon Major
Ponce, in whom the local Spaniards had little confidence.
Trouble beset Ponce on every side. The viceroy was reluctant to part
with money for this project despite evidence that English strength and
influence was increasing daily, especially among the Indians. Shortly
after Ponce took control, a terrific storm hit the city. High tides
undermined houses, flooded fields and gardens, and polluted the wells.
Sickness took its toll. The old wooden fort was totally ruined. Waves
washed out a bastion, causing it to collapse under the weight of its
guns. The other seaward bastion and the palisade were also breached in
several places.
Then in the spring of 1675 when another provision ship was lost, Ponce
had to lead a group of workers on a long march into Timucua to fetch
provisions from the Indians. Only a few masons were left to carry on the
work at the Castillo.
Despite all these problems, Ponce made progress. The north curtain was
completed and the east and south were well underway. But looking west
the soldiers could see only open country.
On May 3, 1675, the long-awaited supply ship from México safely arrived.
Among its few passengers was a new governor for Florida, Sgt. Maj. Don
Pablo de Hita Salazar, a hard-bitten veteran of campaigns in Europe, and
most recently governor of Veracruz. Surely it was because of his
reputation as a soldier that he was assigned to Florida. Besides
continuing the work on the fort he was ordered to “dislocate” the
Charleston settlement. Led to believe the viceroy would help in the
difficult task ahead, Hita, in fact, found that official singularly
reluctant.
At St. Augustine, the work had been dragging, but Hita made some
positive points in writing the crown: “Although I have seen many
castillos of consequence and reputation in the form of its plan, this
one is not surpassed by any of those of greater character.” Furthermore,
he endorsed the statement of the royal officials, who were eager to
point out the brighter side of the picture: “If it had to be built in
another place than St. Augustine it would cost a double amount because
there will not be the advantage of having the laborers, at a _real_ of
wages each day, with such meagre sustenance as three pounds of maize,
nor will the overseers and artisans work in other places with such
little salaries ... nor will the stone, lime, and other materials be
found so close at hand and with the convenience there is in this
presidio.”
So much money—34,298 pesos—had been spent on the fort, and it was not
yet finished, so it was important to tell the authorities the positive
benefits of this project, for at this point the old stockade was a ruin
and the new one was unusable. Reports from English deserters told them
that Charleston, less than 215 miles to the north, was well defended by
a stockade and 20 cannon.
Using characteristic realism, energy, and enthusiasm that would have
done credit to a much younger man, Don Pablo set about making his own
fortification defensible. The bastion of San Carlos—at the northeast
corner of the Castillo—was the nearest to completion. Hita ordered it
finished so that cannon could be mounted on its rampart.
While the masons were busy at that work, he took his soldiers and razed
the old fort. The best of its wood went into a barrier across the open
west side of the Castillo. In 15 days they built a 12-foot-high
earthwork with two half-bastions, faced with a veneer of stone and
fronted by a moat 14 feet wide and 10 feet deep. At last the garrison
had four walls for protection.
Next the powder magazine in the gorge of San Carlos was completed and a
ramp laid over it to give access to the rampart above. The three
curtains rose to their full height of 20 feet. At the southeast corner
the workers dumped hundreds of baskets of sand and rubble into the void
formed by the walls of San Agustin bastion and filled it to the 20-foot
level.
Both carpenters and masons worked on the temporary buildings and
finished a little powder magazine near the north curtain. A
timber-framed coquina structure, partitioned into guardhouse,
lieutenant’s quarters, armory, and provision magazine, took shape along
the west wall. Finally, a few of the guns from the old fort were mounted
in San Carlos and San Agustin bastions and along the west front. After
three years of work, the Castillo was a defense at last.
[Illustration: Practically every phase of construction is shown
here: ferrying the newly-quarried stones across from Anastasia
Island, hauling them to the site, cutting and shaping the stones,
mixing mortar, using oxen to hoist a load of stones to the work
area, and setting the stones in place. Overseeing all this and
reviewing the plans are the engineer and master mason.]
[Illustration: Archeology, in one of its functions, provides us with
glimpses into the life of days gone by. The three bone buttons were
found in and around the Castillo. The light-colored, smooth button
with one hole was found in a sentry box. Perhaps a coat caught on
the entry way and the button tore off, never to be found by the
owner? The brass button is from a 19th-century Spanish uniform.]
And now Governor Hita’s first admiration for its design vanished. The
Castillo, he said, was too massive. Surely no one would ever besiege it
formally. Rather, the danger lay in a blockade of the harbor or
occupation of Anastasia Island, actions that would cut the presidio’s
lifeline. The San Carlos bastion was too high for effective fire on the
inlet or to sweep Anastasia. He argued that the Castillo, including the
parapet, should be held to a total height of only 20 feet and
supplemented by a 6-gun redoubt directly facing the inlet.
Royal officials strenuously opposed the governor’s attempts to change
Daza’s plan. They wrote the crown of Hita’s desire to tear finished
walls down to the level he thought proper.
In Hita’s view the west wall, though temporary, was adequate. Therefore
he would defer the permanent wall and start instead on the permanent
guardroom, quarters, ravelin, and moat. Royal officials insisted,
however, that since the west wall was nothing but a half-rotten fence
and a mound of earth faced with stone, all the walls must be completed
as soon as possible.
In the hope that the crown would agree to lower the walls, Hita let the
work lag on the two seaward bastions while he began the west wall and
bastions. Construction continued despite trouble with the Choctaws,
despite the worrisome impossibility of driving out the Carolina
settlers, despite the pirate raid on the port of Apalache in the west,
and the ever-present fear of invasion. Lorenzo Lajones, the master of
construction, died, but still the work went on. Even after the viceroy’s
10,000 pesos were spent, work continued with money diverted from the
troop payroll. As a last resort, people gave what they could out of
their own poverty. When these gifts were gone, the scrape of the trowel
ceased and the hammer and axe were laid aside. Construction stopped on
the last day of 1677.
At the same time, the supply vessel bringing desperately needed
provisions and clothing from México arrived, only to be lost on a sand
bar right in St. Augustine harbor. It was a heartbreaking loss. Hita
became disconsolate. The help he begged from Havana never came, and for
four years his reports to the viceroy were ignored. Old, discouraged,
and sick, Hita wrote the crown that he was “without human recourse” in
this remote province. Perhaps the final blow to his pride was a terse
order from the crown to stick strictly to Daza’s plan for the Castillo.
Yet the old warrior did not give up. Eventually the viceroy released
5,000 more pesos, and after 20 months of idleness construction resumed
on August 29, 1679. As soon as Hita left his sickbed he was back at the
fort, impatient with the snail’s pace of progress under a new master of
construction, Juan Márquez Molina from Havana, whose sharp-eyed
inspections found stones missing from their courses and some of the
walls too thin.
The royal officials, always on hand to make sure the governor followed
the crown’s directives to the letter, blamed the deficiencies on Hita,
“who has trod this fort down without knowledge of the art of
fortification.” With another 5,000 pesos plus the masons due to arrive
from Havana, said the old man in rebuttal, “I promise to leave the work
in very good condition.” Before he could make good on that promise, Sgt.
Maj. Don Juan Márquez Cabrera arrived at the end of November 1680 to
take over the reins of government.
So, half apologizing for his own little knowledge of “architecture and
geometry,” Hita left the trials and tribulations of this frontier
province to his more youthful successor.
Actually, Hita had done a great deal. Within six weeks after his arrival
he had made the Castillo defensible against any but an overwhelming
force. During the rest of his 5½-year term he brought the walls up to
where they were ready for the parapet builders, despite one obstacle
after another. In fact, the parapet on San Carlos bastion was almost
complete, with embrasures for the artillery and firing steps for the
musketeers. The only low part of the work was the San Pablo bastion,
where the level had been miscalculated. The sally port had its
drawbridge and iron-bound portal, and another heavy door closed the
postern in the north curtain. Permanent rooms that would go along the
curtain walls were still only plans, but in a temporary building
centered in the courtyard were a guardroom and storeroom, and a little
chapel stood near the postern in the shadow of the north curtain.
[Illustration: These bottles, dating from the 19th-century American
presence in St. Augustine, attest to the continuity of life. The
shells on the stoneware flask indicate that it has been in saltwater
for some time. The gold and tan bottle originally held ginger beer,
a popular drink in the mid-1800s. The green bottle is stamped
“Rumford Chemical Works” of Rumford, Rhode Island, on the shoulder.]