Part 2

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.

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.

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.

Saint Augustine

Although Saint Augustine was primarily a military outpost intended to protect Spain’s dominion over Florida and the sea route of its treasure fleets, Saint Augustine also became a viable community as well, home to the settler-soldiers and their families. Except for the Castillo, which was finished in 1695, hardly any structure survives from Saint Augustine’s first 150 years. Archeological investigations show that almost all the earliest dwellings were small, crude structures made of local materials with thatched roofs and bare, dirt floors; coquina, the stone used in building the fort was not used for homes until 1690. The ordinary wear and tear of weather and time ensured that none of these early structures lasted.

Archeology can tell us about the lives of the people who lived in these houses, for more than 1,000 objects and pieces and bits of pottery dating to the 16th century have been found. Most of them are from local Indian sources and corroborate written records that show that by 1600 almost 25 percent of the soldiers had taken Indian wives because few Spanish women initially came to Florida. Besides using their local ceramics, the Indian women introduced New World foods to their families and into the Spanish diet, creating something that was neither wholly Spanish nor wholly Indian.

The town itself was laid out according to ordinances dictated by the Spanish government in 1563, resulting in a carefully planned community with houses fronting directly on standard-width streets with gardens in the rear or at the side. This showed clearly that Spain intended St. Augustine to be a permanent settlement, not a mere outpost on the fringes of empire. In the 18th century, indeed, it had become a vibrant community that numbered almost 3,000 persons when the garrison and all inhabitants withdrew after Florida became British in 1763.

The community and the people who lived in it were a mixture of influences showing graphically how quickly Spaniards adapted to the New World, using its materials, changing patterns that they had brought from their homeland to meet new conditions, and creating a society that simulated, but did not mirror, what they had left behind. Saint Augustine was the beginning of a new world for those who came here in 1565.

The new man, Major Juan Márquez Cabrera, formerly governor of Honduras, checked the Castillo work carefully with the construction master. Those long years without an engineer had left them a heritage of mistakes—skimpy foundations, levels miscalculated—that had to be set right. From Havana came a military engineer, Ensign Don Juan de Císcara. During his brief stay he gave valuable guidance for continuing the work, built the ramp to San Pablo bastion, and laid foundations for the ravelin and its moat wall.

The 1680s were turbulent years. In 1682, the year the ravelin was finished, a dozen or so pirate craft in the Straits of Florida seized numerous Spanish prizes, including the Florida frigate on its way to Veracruz. They raided Mosquito Inlet, only 60 miles south of St. Augustine. In the west, pirates struck Fort San Marcos de Apalache and even went up the San Martín (Suwanee) River to rob cattle ranches in Timucua.

Work on the Castillo fell further and further behind schedule. Márquez appealed to the curate for dispensation to work on Sundays and holy days. Because of a history of bad relations with Márquez, the request was refused. Márquez appealed to higher authorities. When approval came, however, it was too late, for invasion came first.

On March 30, 1683, English corsairs landed a short way south of the _Centinela de Matanzas_, the watchtower, at Matanzas Inlet near the south end of Anastasia Island and about 14 miles from St. Augustine. Under cover of darkness, a few of the raiders came up behind the tower and surprised the sentries.

The march on St. Augustine began the next day. Fortunately a soldier from St. Augustine happened by Matanzas and saw the motley band. Posthaste he warned the governor, who sent Capt. Antonio de Argüelles with 30 musketeers to meet them on Anastasia. A mile from the presidio the pirates walked into the captain’s ambush. After exchanging a few shots—one of which lodged in Argüelles’ leg—the Englishmen beat a hasty retreat down the island to their boats. They sailed to St. Augustine and anchored at the inlet in plain sight of the unfinished Castillo.

Márquez, his soldiers, and the townspeople worked day and night to strengthen the Castillo. Missing parapets and a firing step were improvised from dry stone. Expecting the worst, everybody crowded into the fort. But the corsairs, looking at the stone fort and nursing their wounds, decided to sail on.

After this scare, the Castillo crew worked with renewed zeal. By mid-1683 they had completed the San Agustín and San Pablo bastions. Governor Márquez sent the crown a wooden model to show what had been done.

This was progress made in the face of privation—hunger that made the people demand of Márquez that he buy supplies from a stray Dutch trader from New York. It was unlawful, but the people had to eat. Imagine the joy in the presidio soon afterward when two subsidy payments came at one time! Márquez gave the soldiers two years’ back pay and had enough provisions on hand for 14 months. The 27 guns of the presidio, from the iron 2-pounder to the 40-pounder bronze, all had their gunner’s ladle, rammer, sponge, and wormer, along with plenty of powder and shot. There was also an alarm bell in San Carlos bastion.

By August 1684 Governor Márquez started on the fort rooms and finished them the next spring. Courtyard walls paralleled the four curtains, and foot-square beams spanned the distance between them. Laid over these great beams were 3-inch planks, supporting a slab roof of tabby masonry. On the north were the powder magazine and two big storerooms. Quarters were along the west curtain, guardroom and chapel on the south, and rooms on the east included a latrine and prison. Altogether there were more than 20 rooms.

The only major work yet to do was beyond the walls. The surrounding moat, 40 feet wide, needed to be deepened, for only part of the moat wall was up to its full 8-foot depth. In fact, of the outworks only the ravelin was finished.

With the fortification this far along, Governor Márquez could give more attention to other business, such as Lord Cardross’ Scottish colony at Port Royal, South Carolina. This was, in the Spanish view, a new and obnoxious settlement that encouraged heathen Indians to raid mission Indians. Furthermore, it was in land recognized as Spanish even by the English monarch.

So in September 1686, Márquez sent Captain Alejandro Tomás de Léon, with orders to destroy the colony, which he did. He then sacked and burned Governor Joseph Morton’s plantation on Edisto Island.

The Castillo