Most of the rooms around the central courtyard were used for storage.
They were stockpiled with gunpowder, ammunition, weapons, lumber, tools,
and food, such as beans, rice, flour, and corn, that could be used in
time of siege.]
[Illustration: Work began on stone vaults in 1738 to solve these
problems. First, carpenters built wooden forms that supported the
stone until all pieces of the arch were in place. As the form was
removed, other workers began dumping sand, rubble, earth—anything to
build up the level—into the spaces above the arches. Over this a
cement-like mixture of sand and coquina was placed and tamped down
and built up in stages until the desired height was reached. The
result was a wide gun platform on top that would support the
heaviest guns and provide bombproof spaces beneath.]
Next they set course for Charleston but again, as had happened in 1670,
a storm blew them away from the hated English colony. Leon’s vessel, the
_Rosario_, was lost, and he along with it. Another ship was driven
aground, and the last of the little armada limped back to St. Augustine.
Actually the real contest for the southeast was in the backcountry where
English traders operated. Governor Márquez sent soldiers and
missionaries from St. Augustine to the Apalachecola nation in western
Georgia. For the Spaniards, however, it was a losing fight—an exciting,
exasperating struggle of diplomacy and intrigue, trade and cupidity, war
and religion, slavery and death.
Captain of cuirassiers Diego de Quiroga y Losada assumed the
governorship on August 21, 1687, after Márquez fled to Cuba in April.
That same day he stopped work on the Castillo because there was no way
to feed the workers. These troubles and the certainty of reprisals from
the Carolinians sent Capt. Juan de Ayala Escobar directly to Spain for
help. He came back with 80 soldiers, the money for maintaining them, and
even a Negro slave to help in the fields. The black man, one of a dozen
Ayala had hoped to deliver, was a much-needed addition to the colony,
and Captain Ayala was welcomed back to St. Augustine with rejoicing “for
his good diligence.”
Soon there was more black labor for both fields and fortifications. From
the Carolina plantations, an occasional slave would slip away and move
southward along the waterways. In 1687 a small boat loaded with nine
runaways made its way to St. Augustine. The men found work to do and the
governor took the two women into his household as servants. It was a
fairly happy arrangement: the slaves worked well and soon asked for
Catholic baptism.
A few months later, William Dunlop came from Charleston in search of
them. Governor Quiroga, reluctant to surrender converted slaves, offered
to buy them for the Spanish crown. Dunlop agreed to the sale, even
though the governor was as usual short of cash and had given him a
promissory note. To seal the bargain, Dunlop gave one of the slaves, a
baby girl, her freedom. Later the crown liberated the others.
This incident resulted in a knotty problem. First, commerce with
Carolina, as an English colony, was illegal. Secondly, the crown could
not buy freedom for every runaway that came to Florida, as more and more
Carolina blacks left their English masters, seeking refuge. The slave
issue made any hope of amicable relations between the Spanish and
English colonists impossible. Eventually the Spaniards decreed freedom
for all Carolina slaves coming to Florida, and the governor established
a fortified village—Gracia Real de Mose—for them hardly more than a
cannon shot from the Castillo.
Construction work on the Castillo resumed in the spring of 1688, after a
shipment of corn came from Apalache. In Havana Governor Quiroga bought
for 137 pesos a stone bearing the royal arms to be set into the wall
over the gate. At this time, too, the little town entered its “stone
age,” for as surplus materials from the crown quarries became available,
masonry buildings gradually took the place of the board-and-thatch
housing that had been traditional here since the founding.
Until the outworks could be finished, the Castillo was vulnerable to
siege guns and scaling ladders. Nevertheless it was impossible to push
the heavy work of quarrying, lumbering, and hauling at this crucial
time. There were too many other pressures. Belatedly trying to
counteract English gains and strengthen their own ties with the Indians,
the Spaniards built a fort in the Apalachecola country. Unfortunately
the soldiers had to be pulled back to St. Augustine when Spain declared
war on France in 1689.
This time Spain and England were allies. Yet Governor Quiroga wondered
at the presence of English vessels off both northern and southern
coasts. As a bit of insurance he wrote a letter telling of a strength
far beyond what he had, in the hope that if an English ship would
capture the letter they would not know of St. Augustine’s weakness. For
again the supply situation was critical, and swarms of French corsairs
infested the waters between Florida and Havana. Two provision vessels
were lost in the Keys and a third fell into French hands. Until food
eventually came in from Havana and Campeche, the soldiers had to live on
handouts from the townspeople.
[Illustration: In the royal arms of Spain, the lions stand for the
province of León and the castles for the province of Castile. The
shield is surrounded by the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece,
a knightly order founded in 1430, of which the Spanish monarch was
grand master. The story of the Golden Fleece recalls the courageous
exploits in the ancient Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts.]