The National Park System, of which Castillo de San Marcos National
Monument is a unit, is dedicated to conserving the scenic, scientific,
and historic heritage of the United States for the benefit and enjoyment
of its people.
[Illustration: U. S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, March 3, 1849]
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Stewart L. Udall, _Secretary_
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Conrad L. Wirth, _Director_
[Illustration: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR]
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington 25. D.C. Price 20 cents
THE BUILDING OF
Castillo de
San Marcos
_by
ALBERT C. MANUCY
Historian
Castillo de San Marcos National Monument_
[Illustration: Royal Spanish coat of arms.]
_National Park Service Interpretive Series
History No. 1_
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
_WASHINGTON_
[Illustration: CASTILLO DE SAN MARCOS, OLDEST EXISTING MASONRY FORT IN
THE UNITED STATES, IS A TYPICAL EUROPEAN FORTIFICATION OF THE LATE
1600’S. IT OVERLOOKS THE ENTRANCE TO ST. AUGUSTINE HARBOR, AND FROM ITS
WATCHTOWER THE SENTRIES LOOKED OUT OVER THE MIGHTY ATLANTIC TOWARD THE
TREASURE FLEETS ON THEIR WAY TO SPAIN.]
_Contents_
_Page_
FLORIDA AND THE PIRATES 1
BEGINNING THE CASTILLO 8
THE YEARS OF CONSTRUCTION 15
DEFENDING SAN MARCOS 26
THE END OF AN ERA 31
GLOSSARY 34
_The Building of_
Castillo de San Marcos
FLORIDA AND THE PIRATES
A Pirate Raid forced the Queen of Spain to build Castillo de San Marcos
in Florida. On May 28, 1668, a sailing vessel appeared off the shallow
bar of St. Augustine Harbor. It was a ship from Vera Cruz, bringing a
supply of flour from New Spain to feed the poverty-stricken soldiers and
settlers in Spanish Florida. Out went the harbor launch to put the bar
pilot aboard. The crew of the launch hailed the Spanish seamen lining
the gunwale of the supply ship, and to the routine questions came the
usual answers: Friends from New Spain—come aboard. The launch fired a
prearranged two shots telling the Governor that the vessel was
recognized, then she warped alongside and tied up. Not until then did a
strange crew swarm out from hiding and level their guns at the chests of
the men in the launch. There was nothing for them to do but surrender.
Worst of all, the reassuring signal had already been given. No one in
the fortified town of St. Augustine could suspect the presence of
pirates.
The invaders waited until midnight, when the presidio was asleep.
Quietly they rowed ashore in small boats. Scattering through the
streets, shouting, cursing, firing their guns, the hundred of them made
such an uproar that the bewildered Spaniards dashing out of their homes
thought there were many more. Governor Guerra emerged from his house and
with the pirates pounding at his heels, he joined the guard in the race
for the old wooden fort. Behind those rotten walls with 33 men, he
somehow beat off several assaults. By daybreak his little force was
reduced to 28.
Defense of the town itself was the charge of Sgt. Maj. Nicolás Ponce de
León and some 70 soldiers. In the darkness the pirates fired effectively
at the burning matches of the Spanish harquebusiers (soldiers with
matchlock guns), and Ponce and his men fled to the woods. More than half
a hundred Spaniards were killed as they ran from their homes into the
confusion of the narrow streets. Many others were wounded on their way
to the shelter of the forest. The pirates were left in complete
possession of the settlement.
When daylight came, a previously hidden enemy warship put in an
appearance and anchored with the captured supply boat just beyond range
of the fort guns. Meanwhile, the pirates systematically sacked the town.
No structure was neglected, from humble thatched dwelling to royal
storehouse, hospital, and church, though the things carried off were
worth but a few thousand pesos, for the town was poor. Powerless to do
more, the Governor made the futile gesture of sending a sortie out from
the fort. Those brave soldiers managed to get in a few shots at the
already departing pirate boats.
The pirates left their prisoners at the presidio, and these unfortunates
were able to explain the daring raid. It went back to the argument
Governor Guerra had had with the presidio’s French surgeon some time
before. That disgruntled doctor was captured on his way to Havana by the
pirates, who had already seized the supply ship from Vera Cruz. Seeing a
chance for revenge on Guerra, the Frenchman conferred with his captors,
apparently suggested the raid, and gave them the information they needed
to work out a plan. Nor was this the only news from the prisoners. The
invaders were the English. Furthermore, they had carefully sounded the
bar, taken its latitude, and noted the landmarks with the avowed intent
of returning in force to seize the fort and make it a base for their
raids on commerce in the Bahama Channel. The fact that they did not
leave the town in ashes lent credence to this report.
In Spanish eyes, the 1668 sack of San Agustín (St. Augustine) was far
more than a daring pirate raid on a tiny colonial outpost. St. Augustine
was the keystone in the defenses of Florida. And Florida was highly
important to Spain, not as a land rich in natural resources, but as a
way station on a great commercial route. Each year, galleons bearing the
proud banners of Spain drove slowly past the coral keys and surf-pounded
beaches of Florida, following the Gulf Stream on their way to Cádiz. In
these galleons were millions of ducats worth of gold and silver from the
mines of Peru and Mexico.
It was the year after Magellan’s ships encircled the world that the
Conquistador Cortés dispatched a shipload of treasure from conquered
Mexico. The loot never reached the Spanish court, for a French corsair
took it to Francis I. That incident opened a new age in the profitable
profession of piracy. Daring pirates of all nationalities sailed for the
shelter of the West Indies. Florida’s position at the wayside of the
life line connecting Spain with her colonies meant that this
semitropical peninsula was of great strategic importance. Like the dog
in the manger, Spain had to occupy the territory to prevent her enemies
from using the marshy estuaries and natural harbors as ports from which
to spread their sails against the commerce of her far-flung empire; and
this same inhospitable country had to be made a refuge for the hundreds
of mariners shipwrecked along the Florida reefs and the lee shores of
the narrow channel.
[Illustration: WHY SPAIN BUILT THE FORT]
1. Treasure ships sailed the Gulf Stream. Spain needed Florida to
protect this life line
2. Enemy settlement came closer and closer to Florida
3. A strong fort would stop this English advance
It was a sizeable defense problem and one not seriously considered until
French pressure caused the establishment of St. Augustine in 1565. With
this small fortified settlement on one side and growing Havana on the
other side of the Bahama Channel, ships could normally pass safely from
the ports of New Spain to those of the Old Country. Gradually a system
of missions developed in Florida—fingers of civilization reaching out
into the wilderness of the southeast. Since the missionaries had to be
protected, both from hostile aborigine and European, defense became a
matter of dual operation. The unceasing hunt of the coast guard for
starving castaways, storm-wracked vessels, and pirates was paralleled on
land by the rapid marches of the patrols along the Indian trails or the
sailing of the piraguas through the coastal waterways. The presidio of
St. Augustine was the base of operations, and here the strongest forts
were built.
A typical early fort was San Juan de Pinos, burned by the English
freebooter Francis Drake in 1586, after being robbed of its bronze
artillery and some 2,000 pounds sterling “by the treasurer’s value” in
the most devastating raid St. Augustine ever suffered. Such a fort as
San Juan consisted of a pine timber stockade around small buildings for
gunpowder storage and quarters. Cannons were mounted atop a broad
platform, called a caballero or cavalier, so that they could fire over
the stockade. In the humid climate, these forts were a very temporary
expedient. While they could be built cheaply and quickly, often they
failed to last out the decade, exposed as they were to the fire arrows
of the Indians and the ravages of the seasonal hurricanes. During the
century before Castillo de San Marcos was started, nine wooden forts,
one after another, were built at St. Augustine.
Nor did Spain yet see the need for an impregnable fort in the Florida
province. After the English record at Roanoke, the weakling settlement
of Jamestown did not impress the powerful Council of the Indies at far
away Madrid. Moreover, the activities of the Franciscans in extending
the mission frontier into the western and northern Indian lands not only
gave Spain actual possession of more territory than she ever again was
to occupy in Florida, but apparently was a sure means of keeping out
rival Europeans. The fallacy in this thinking lay both in disparaging
the colonizing ability of the Anglo-Saxon and in believing that an
Indian friendly to Spain would not, if given the opportunity, become
friendly to England. The red man was restive under the strict teachings
of the friar, and it turned out that the English fur trader equipped
with glittering presents and shrewd promises found little difficulty in
persuading his naïve customer to desert the mission and ally himself
with the English cause. Not until the missions began to fall before the
bloody onslaughts of the Carolinian and his native ally did the grim
walls of Castillo de San Marcos arise.
Spain was on the decline as a great power. The storm-scattering of her
powerful armada in the English Channel was symbolic. On the other hand,
the exploits of the English seamen in that fateful year of 1588 were but
a prelude to Britannia’s career as mistress of the seas. For England,
the seventeenth century opened an era of commercial and colonial
expansions, when the great trading companies were active on the coasts
of four continents and powerful English nobles strove for possessions
beyond the seas. To this era belong the origins of the Carolinas, the
Jerseys, Penn’s Colony, and the famous Hudson’s Bay Company. A vast,
rich territory stretched from the James River region to the Spanish
Florida settlements, and in 1665 the British Crown granted a patent for
its occupation. By the terms of this patent, the boundaries of the new
colony of Carolina brazenly included some hundred miles or more of
Spanish occupied land—even St. Augustine itself!
The trend was becoming clear. The fight for Florida was inevitable.
In the middle 1600’s St. Augustine was practically defenseless. Where
the masonry fort now stands, there was a wooden fort of almost the same
size, but rotten—rotted into uselessness and so weakened by repairs that
much of the original design was lost. Nor were there means for fixing
it. A smallpox epidemic made Indian labor out of the question, so there
were no peons to bear heavy timbers on their shoulders from the forests.
No silver lay in the King’s chest: the Florida colony existed almost
solely by means of a subsidy of money and provisions from New Spain,
whose commerce it protected, and the reluctance of the New Spain Viceroy
to pay that subsidy meant that the usual condition of St. Augustine was
one of direst poverty and extreme want.
Yet, if ever Florida needed a strong fort, it was now. Year by year the
corsairs were becoming bolder. Without stronger defenses for the
province, said one Governor, “the success of its defense would be
doubtful in spite of the great valor with which we would resist....” The
matter of building a permanent fort had been broached as early as 1586,
soon after the discovery of the native shellrock called coquina, and
before the turn of that century Governor Canço reported not only the
successful construction of a stone powder magazine but a renewed
enthusiasm for a masonry fort. The sandy, unstable coastal soil provided
the engineers with a problem, but the real obstacles to accomplishment
were the poverty of the presidio and the feeling of the Madrid officials
that Florida did not require strong military defenses. Even when the
Spanish Crown granted permission to build a stone fort (as happened more
than once) circumstances proved that the time for the castillo had not
yet come. Once a very practical Florida administrator cited the
abundance of native materials, and even went so far as to claim that no
additional funds would be needed for building a stone fort. All he
wanted was the prompt payment of the subsidy from New Spain—a not
unreasonable plea—and out of that money he would buy a dozen Negro
slaves versed in stonecutting and masonry, slaves such as were available
in any number of Caribbean towns, and to be sure the work was done right
he wanted the engineer from Cartagena assigned to the job. At the very
least, this Governor asked for the slaves: if nothing more, they could
face the walls of the wooden fort with stone.
[Illustration: WITH OXCARTS IN PLACE OF THE TRUCKS, THIS QUARRYING SCENE
ON ANASTASIA ISLAND MIGHT HAVE TAKEN PLACE ALMOST 300 YEARS AGO.]
Even this well-considered project was tabled. One of Florida’s royal
officials in a letter unwittingly mentioned the old fort as being in
fair condition, and the Council in Madrid decided to await more
information before doing anything.
The Council appeared more concerned over other Florida problems, and for
good reason. Even before fortification came the matter of keeping the
St. Augustine people from starvation such as came in the spring of 1662.
Expected provisions from New Spain failed to arrive; the frigate out of
St. Augustine, bringing maize from the granaries of the Apalache Indians
in western Florida, was long overdue and the people feared she was lost.
The tiny garrison was more or less accustomed to being underclothed,
underfed, and unpaid, but to make matters worse, the Royal Treasurer
refused to pension several veterans—men who had spent 50 years in the
service of the Crown. True, these soldiers were now too old even for
ordinary guard duty. The Treasurer was within his rights in refusing to
pay them when they did not work, but his refusal was a death knell for
the old men. The Governor saw it as something worse—a damaging
precedent. The younger soldiers would realize, argued the Governor, that
“they were wasting their youth and hoarding up for themselves a sentence
of death from starvation as the price of their services.”
The Council of the Indies sided with the Governor in this routine
instance of bleak poverty, and certainly the Treasurer was glad to
relieve his own conscience. Yet the fact remained that while the
officials in Spain recognized the shocking conditions of neglect, St.
Augustine was still far from succor. To the Viceroy of New Spain went
new orders to pay the subsidies. The royal commands were ignored. By
1668 more than 400,000 pesos—8 years’ payments—were owing to the Florida
presidio. Then came the midnight raid of 1668.
After that crippling blow, St. Augustine was left destitute. Once again
the soldiers were faced with the prospect of digging roots by day and
begging alms by night from the few more fortunate inhabitants of the
presidio—or starvation. As for the old wooden fort—the one nominal
defense of the colony—a gun platform had fallen under its artillery;
there was a great breach in the timber wall; the sea had washed away
part of the foundation.
Notwithstanding, the sack of St. Augustine proved to be a blessing in
disguise, for the turn of events shocked the home officials into action.
On October 30, 1669, Queen Regent Mariana commanded the Viceroy of New
Spain to provide 12,000 pesos to start a new fort of stone, and 10,000
pesos each year to carry it to completion, amounts over and above the
regular subsidy.
That year the Viceroy released more than 83,000 pesos for relief of the
stricken settlement. It was 12 months of life for the colony. Out of it
also came hire for mules that carried baggage from Mexico City to Vera
Cruz—baggage for soldiers recruited for Florida. Trouble there was in
finding even 75 men, and even more trouble in getting them aboard ship
for the long voyage to the hardships of the frontier province. Strangely
enough, the arrival of such reënforcements was not an occasion for
unmixed rejoicing, for these soldiers were mostly mulattoes and mestizos
who, reported Sgt. Maj. Nicolás Ponce, were not highly regarded for
their courage in the Queen’s cause.
To give impetus to the belated Spanish preparations for the defense of
Florida, an English settlement that became Charleston, S. C., was
founded in 1670. The Florida frontiersmen saw the need for vigorous
action—for uprooting the new colony before it waxed too strong. Under
the command of Juan Menéndez Marqués, a small St. Augustine fleet sailed
northward. However, the winds blew stormy as they had for the French
fleet before St. Augustine in 1565, the Spanish fleet was scattered, and
the fledgling English colony was saved. Then Mariana’s treaty with
England forbade the disturbance of established English settlements, so
with the English only a 2 days’ sail from St. Augustine there was
nothing left to do but prepare to defend Florida against certain
invasion. To the frontier at Santa Catalina Mission on the Georgia coast
a small garrison was sent. And construction of a Florida citadel, built
of imperishable stone, was soon to begin.