Siege guns breach the walls, enabling attacking forces to enter the
fort.]
[Illustration: A Fort’s Defenses]
Attackers
OUTER WORKS
Glacis
Covered Way
Moat
Ravelin
INNER FORT
Moat
Parapet
Scarp
Rampart
Magazine
[Illustration: The Cubo Line originally stretched from the Castillo
to the San Sebastian River. It was strengthened and rebuilt
repeatedly by both the Spaniards and the British. The city gate, a
part of the line, was built in 1808, only a few years before the
United States took control of Florida.]
His concerns were genuine, for work on the vaults had to stop as the war
dried up construction funds. The fort was left in a strangely irregular
shape. The east side, including San Carlos bastion, was at the new
height, but all others were several feet lower. The old rooms still
lined three sides of the courtyard.
On June 13, 1740, seven British warships dropped anchor outside the
inlet. The long-expected siege of St. Augustine had begun. Montiano
hastily sent the news to Havana and with it a plea for help. He had 750
soldiers and the 120 or more sailors who manned the galliots. Rations
would last only until the end of June.
The attackers numbered almost 1,400, including sailors and Indian
allies. While the warships blockaded the harbor on the east, William
Palmer came in from the north with a company of Highlanders and occupied
the deserted outpost called Fort Mose. Oglethorpe landed his men and
guns on each side of the inlet and began building batteries across the
bay from the Castillo.
Montiano saw at once that all the English positions were separated from
each other by water and could not speedily reinforce one another. Fort
Mose, at the village of the black runaways a couple of miles north of
the Castillo, was the weakest. At dawn on June 26 a sortie from St.
Augustine hit Fort Mose, and in the bloodiest action of the siege
scattered the Highlanders and burned the palisaded fortification.
Colonel Palmer, veteran of Florida campaigns, was among the dead.
As if in revenge, the siege guns at the inlet opened fire. Round shot
whistled low over the bay and crashed into fort and town. Bombs from the
mortars soared high—deadly dots against the bright summer sky—and fell
swiftly to burst with terrific concussion. The townspeople fled, 2,000
of them, some to the woods, others to the covered way where Castillo
walls screened them from the shelling.
For 27 nerve-shattering days the British batteries thundered. At the
Castillo, newly laid stones in the east parapet scattered under the
hits, but the weathered old walls held strong. As one Englishman
observed, the native rock “will not splinter but will give way to cannon
ball as though you would stick a knife into cheese.” One of the balls
shot away a gunner’s leg, but only two men in the Castillo were killed
during the bombardment.
The heavy guns of San Marcos and the long 9-pounders of the fast little
galliots in the harbor kept the British back. Despite the bluster of the
cannonades, the siege had stalemated. Astride the inlet, Oglethorpe and
his men battled insects and shifting sand on barren, sun-baked shores,
while Spanish soldiers in San Marcos, down to half rations themselves,
saw their families and friends starving. On July 6 Montiano wrote, “My
greatest anxiety is provisions. If these do not come, there is no doubt
that we shall die in the hands of hunger.”
The very next day came news that supplies had reached a harbor down the
coast south of Matanzas. Shallow-draft Spanish vessels went down the
waterway behind Anastasia Island, fought their way out through Matanzas
Inlet and, hugging the coast, went to fetch the provisions. Coming back
into Matanzas that same night, they found the British blockade gone;
they reached St. Augustine unopposed.
Oglethorpe made ready to assault the Castillo despite the low morale of
his men. His naval commander, however, was nervous over the approach of
the hurricane season and refused to cooperate. Without support from the
warships, Oglethorpe had to withdraw. Daybreak on July 20—38 days since
the British had arrived at St. Augustine—revealed that the redcoats were
gone.
[Illustration: This 1763 engraving shows the finished Castillo after
all the bombproof vaults and a new ravelin had been built.]
[Illustration: Beyond the military aspects, which were so vital to
the decision to establish St. Augustine, the city had become a
vibrant community of soldiers, their families, government officials,
and shopkeepers. Religion and the church played an important part in
the life of the community. This page from a Roman Catholic missal.
printed in 1690, is open to the service for Easter The right-hand
column recounts the story of how the Marys went to the tomb and
found it empty.]