Part 3

In this state of affairs, it was strange that Governor Cabrera found time for construction work. But he was a man who put first things first. From Havana, the nearest source, he asked help, and out of Havana came a military engineer for an occasional look at the castillo. He did little more than put Cabrera’s problems right back on Cabrera’s own capable shoulders. In order to hasten the work, the Governor asked the local curate for permission to work his men on holy days. There was ample precedent for granting this concession, but Cabrera had never got on well with the religious, and he was refused. As a result, the peons could not bring in materials. Construction fell almost a year behind schedule. Governor Cabrera appealed the decision to higher church authorities, and the permission to work on Sundays and holidays was eventually forthcoming, though it applied only to actual work on the fort, and that only during emergencies. The dispensation, however, came too late; Cabrera’s fear of attack had not been ill-founded.

On March 30, 1683, English corsairs landed a few leagues south of the _Centinela de Matanzas_, the watchtower at Matanzas Inlet, some 4 leagues from St. Augustine and near the south end of Anastasia Island. Under cover of darkness, some of the invaders crept up behind the tower and surprised the five sentries, who were either asleep or not on the alert. The next day, the pirate march on St. Augustine began. To within half a league they came. Fortunately for the presidio, an advanced sentry chanced to see the motley band, and posthaste he went to Cabrera, who dispatched Capt. Antonio de Argüelles with 30 musketeers to ambush them. The pirates walked straight into a withering fire and after a few exchange shots—one of which lodged in Captain Argüelles’ leg—they beat a hasty retreat back down the island to their boats. Then they sailed to St. Augustine bar and dropped anchor in plain sight of the unfinished castillo.

Cabrera, his soldiers, the men and even the women of the town were working day and night to strengthen the castillo. Missing parapets and firing steps were improvised from dry stone. Expecting the worst, the residents of the presidio crowded into the fortification, but the corsairs, nursing their wounds and without even scouting the undefended town, decided to sail northward on a hunt for easier prey.

After the excitement, work went forward with renewed zeal. Once again danger had passed by, but luck would not hold much longer. The portcullis or sliding grating at the fort’s entrance, the bridges, the encircling palisade, the rooms surrounding the courtyard, all came nearer and nearer to completion. This was progress made in the face of poverty and hunger—want that made the people demand of Cabrera that he buy supplies from a stray Dutch trader. It was unlawful, but people had to eat. Imagine the joy in the presidio shortly thereafter when two subsidy payments arrived at one time! Cabrera gave the soldiers 2 full years’ back pay and had on hand enough provisions for 14 months; the 27 guns, from the little iron 2-pounder to the heavy 40-pounder bronze, all were equipped with gunner’s ladles, rammers, sponges, and wormers; there was plenty of powder and shot; and San Carlos bastion had its alarm bell.

Still the work went on. There were continual distractions, such as the pirate Agramont’s raids in the Guale country and even on Matanzas in 1686, but by the summer of that year the main part of the castillo was essentially finished. Within the four curtains stood the thick courtyard walls, and pine beams a foot thick and half again as wide spanned the 15 to 20 feet between. Laid over these great beams was a covering of pine planking some 4 fingers thick, and under that heavy roof were more than 20 rooms for the quarters, the chapel of San Marcos, and the magazines for powder, food, supplies, and equipment.

Even the doors and windows were practically done. Now, with the roof or terreplein in place all around the castillo, the artillerymen no longer had to climb down into the courtyard to get from one bastion to the other, and the musketeers and pikemen had no trouble reaching their stations along the walls. Only a few of the higher parts of the parapet between the gun openings and firing steps for these defenders were still lacking. Outside the walls, a ravelin guarded the main doorway. The moat wall was from 6 to 8 feet high. The only major work yet to be done was finishing the moat excavation and the shore defenses on the bay side of the castillo.

With the fortification so far along, the Governor could afford to give more attention to other business in the province. There was the matter of Lord Cardross’ Scotch colony at Port Royal, S.C., a new and obnoxious settlement that encouraged the savage raids on the mission Indians. It existed in territory recognized as Spanish even by the English monarch. Out from St. Augustine in the stormy month of September 1686, Cabrera sent Tomás de León with three ships. León completely destroyed the Cardross colony and sailed northward to sack and burn Governor Morton’s plantation on Edisto Island. Then the Spaniards set their course for Charleston. Again, as it had 16 years before, a storm came up to save the hated and feared English colony. León’s vessel, the _Rosario_, was lost, and he along with it. Another of the trio was beached, and the last of the little armada limped slowly back to St. Augustine. Cabrera had his revenge, but the Georgia country remained irrevocably lost to Spain. And the contest for the hinterlands had begun.

The traders led the advance from Charleston; Cabrera sent soldiers and missionaries from St. Augustine to western Florida to bolster the Indians against them. For the Spanish, it was a losing fight—an exciting, exasperating struggle of diplomacy and intrigue, trade and cupidity, war and religion, slavery and death. The turn of affairs on the frontier and the threat of reprisal by the Carolinians sent Capt. Juan de Ayala directly to Spain for help, and he came back with 100 soldiers, the money for maintaining them, and even a Negro slave to help cultivate the fields. The single Negro, 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 Negro labor for both fields and fortifications.

From the Carolina plantations, an occasional Negro slave would slip away, searching his way southward along the waterways. In 1688 a small boat loaded with eight runaways and a baby girl found its way to St. Augustine. The men went to work on the castillo at 4 reales a day and the Governor took the two women into his household for servants. It was a fairly happy arrangement, for the slaves worked well and soon asked to become Catholic. A few months later, William Dunlop came from Charleston in search of them. The Governor, reluctant to surrender these converted slaves, offered to buy them for the Spanish Crown, and to this offer Dunlop agreed, even though the Governor was short of cash and had to promise to pay for them later. To seal the bargain, Dunlop gave the baby girl her freedom.

Obviously this incident could set a precedent, especially since the Spanish Crown eventually liberated the Negroes. Here was a basis for profitable slave trade from the Carolinas had the Florida province been richer and Spanish trade restrictions less severe; but since this commerce was illegal and the Crown was hardly in a position to buy every runaway coming to Florida, the 1680’s marked the beginning of an apparently insoluble problem. Learning of the reception awaiting them to the south, more and more of the Negroes left their English masters. Few of them could be reclaimed. Eventually the Spanish decreed freedom for any Carolina slave entering Florida, and a fortified village of the runaways was established hardly more than a cannon shot from the presidio. Meantime, growing more serious with each year, the slave trouble eliminated any possibility of amicable relations between the Spanish and English colonists.

Matters were brought momentarily to a focus with the Spanish declaration of war on France in 1690. Cabrera’s successor, Diego Quiroga, at the news of enemy vessels off both his northern and southern coasts, wrote a letter reporting a strength far beyond what he had against the chance that the enemy might capture the packet carrying the true news of appalling weakness. For until the outworks could be finished, the castillo was vulnerable to the siege guns and scaling ladders of any large force. Worse, at this crucial time, Quiroga found himself out of provisions. The heavy labor of quarrying, lumbering, and hauling had to be discontinued. With the royal slaves and a few of the Indians, work on the castillo went along in desultory fashion until finally there was “not one pound of maize, meat nor any other thing” to feed the workmen. Fortunate indeed was it that the English did not choose this moment to attack. As fate would have it, England and Spain were for once on the same side of the fence, fighting against France. There was a comparative truce on the Florida border during the 10 years before the turn of the century and on the surface, at least, friendly relations prevailed between the St. Augustine and Charleston colonies. Actually the combatants were girding themselves for the inevitable renewal of hostilities.

Relief came at last to St. Augustine in 1693, and with it came another Governor, Don Laureano de Torres. To lessen the chances of famine in the future, the Florida officials resolved to plant great crops of maize nearby. They found men to plow the broad, field-like clearings around the fort, and acres of waving corn soon extended almost up to the moat. Proudly they reported this accomplishment to the Crown. The reaction was not what they expected. On December 14, 1693, a royal order was promulgated prohibiting thenceforward the sowing of maize within a musket shot of the castillo. A very large army, said the War Council, could hide in the cornfield and approach to the very bastions without being seen by the sentries.

To Governor Torres belongs the credit for completing the seventeenth century part of the castillo. Somehow he found the means for carrying on Quiroga’s beginning, for putting in place the last stones of the water defenses—bright, yellow rock that was in strange contrast to the weathered gray of masonry already a quarter of a century old. This monumental pile of stone, on which Cendoya planned to spend some 70,000 pesos and which Salazar estimated would cost a good 80,000 pesos were it to be built elsewhere, by 1680 had already cost 75,000 pesos. When Cabrera completed the main part of it 7 years later, expenditures had reached 92,609 pesos. By the time Torres put on the finishing touches in 1696, the mounting costs of Castillo de San Marcos must have totaled close to 100,000 pesos, or approximately $150,000.

And what did completion of this citadel mean? Only a year later, gaunt Spanish soldiers slipped into the church and left an unsigned warning for the Governor: If the enemy came, they intended to surrender, for they were dying of hunger.

DEFENDING SAN MARCOS

The Castillo de San Marcos was a typical example of European design transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. It was a style of fortification evolved from the medieval castle. There was no great change in siegecraft and fortification until the gunpowder cannon came into use, but when that weapon did make its appearance the military engineers found themselves in a predicament. The towering walls of the ancient castles were conspicuous targets for the skilled artillerist. Adamant stone walls that had splintered the powerful crossbow shaft and resisted for days on end the pounding of the catapults tumbled into rubble after a roaring bombardment from heavy siege cannons. So the engineers lowered their targetlike walls, and in front of them they piled thick and high hills of earth to stop the cannonballs before they could hit the stone. Yet, because those walls still had to be too high for the scaling ladders, the surrounding moat was retained. Circular towers common to the older castles eventually gave way to the more scientific bastion, an angular salient from which the pikemen, harquebusiers, and artillerists could see to defend every adjacent part of the fort walls. The ultimate result was a rather complicated series of straight walls and angles—a sort of defense-in-depth plan—and in the center of it could usually be found the garrison quarters and the magazines.

Fortification was a remarkably exact science, and one that was universally respected. “Many ... arguments,” wrote an eighteenth-century expert, “might be alledged to prove the usefulness of fortified places, were it not that all the world is convinced of it at present, and therefore it would be needless to say any more about it.” A fort, however, can never win a victory. Primarily a defensive weapon, it protects vital points and delays the invader. It can also be, as was the case with the historic fort in Florida, a citadel and a pivot of maneuver for colonial troops.

For most defense problems, there was an answer in the book, though the brilliance of the engineer might well be measured by his ingenious use of natural defenses, as was the case at Castillo de San Marcos. There were as many different kinds of forts as there were uses for them. They promoted and protected trade, they guarded the pass into a country, or, like San Marcos, they secured the country from invasion. The following dogma, written three-quarters of a century after the castillo was started, might have referred specifically to the fort at St. Augustine: “In small states ... which cannot afford the expense of building many fortresses, and are not able to provide them when built with sufficient garrisons and other necessaries for their defence, or those whose chief dependance consists in the protection of their allies; the best way is to fortify their capital, which being made spacious, may serve as a retreat to the inhabitants in time of danger, with their wealth and cattle, till the succours of their allies arrive.”

To attack a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century fort, the enemy had first to cross natural barriers, advance over level ground where he was exposed to fire from almost every part of the fortification, drive the defenders from the outer works, cross the moat, and then, if there were any of him left, scale the main walls and fight the rest of the defenders hand to hand. It was no easy job. His approach to within striking distance generally involved the laborious digging of zigzag trenches up to the outworks. Meanwhile, his artillerymen tried to get their guns close enough to breach the walls.

Aside from the actual fighting, a serious problem was supplying provisions for the large besieging force, since the invading army was often far from its base and to some extent had to live off hostile country. On the other hand, once the attacker brought his artillery to bear, the garrison and refugees found themselves in the unpleasant position of stationary targets, subjected to devastating fire, particularly from the heavy mortars throwing 50- or 100-pound bombs (exploding shells) into the close confines of the fortification. And if the enemy isolated the fort, as he invariably tried to do, the length of the siege was often proportionate to the amounts of food and water inside the fort. For this reason, at least 5 of the 20 main rooms in Castillo de San Marcos were given over to food storage, and three wells were dug in the courtyard. As long as the provision magazines were well filled, the citadel was strong.

The test of its strength was not long delayed, for the border squabbles between Spaniard and Englishman soon flamed into open warfare. The Florida Governor, Joseph de Zuñiga, a Flanders veteran well-versed in the art of fortification, looked at the St. Augustine defenses with jaundiced eye. True, the castillo was a bulwark, but its guns were not only obsolete—many of them were unserviceable. The heavy powder supplied from New Spain so fouled the gun barrels that after “four Shots, the Ball would not go in the Cannon.” Harquebuses, muskets, powder, and shot were sorely needed. Captain Ayala, again sailing to Spain for aid, was racing against time; it was 1702 and James Moore, Governor of Carolina, was already marching on St. Augustine.

At this critical hour, help came from Havana. Threescore skilled Gallegos (Spanish soldiers native to Galicia) arrived in Florida and set about reconditioning the ordnance, but before Spanish preparations were completed Moore’s forces arrived, encircled the fort, and occupied the houses of the townspeople, who could do nothing other than flee to the shelter of San Marcos. On the south side of the fort where the outskirts of the town crept near, the Spanish burned many of their houses which might have given shelter to English troops advancing toward the fort.

Moore’s fighting forces of 800 Englishmen and Indians vastly outnumbered the Spanish garrison, but he was ill-equipped to besiege the fortification. Four cannons he had, and the Spanish boasted that a continuous fire from the fort walls kept him out of range. Indeed the Gallegos were useful! Moore settled down to await the arrival of more artillery from Jamaica, and thus matters stood when a pair of Spanish men-of-war sailed from the south and blocked the harbor entrance. With little hesitation, Moore burned his eight vessels, left many of his stores, and retreated overland to his province, leaving much of St. Augustine in ashes.

The Spanish estimated that the damage to the town amounted to 20,000 pesos or more, and the ease with which the English had occupied and held the town for almost 2 months made it clear that additional fortifications had to be built. In the quarter century that followed, out from the castillo went strong earthworks and palisades, strengthened at strategic points with redoubts, and St. Augustine became a walled town, secure against invasion as long as there were enough soldiers to man the walls. The years of building these town defenses were lean years. In 1712 came _la Gran Hambre_—the Great Hunger—and in those dark days the starving people ate even the dogs and cats until the storms isolating the colony finally abated.

But the work was done, and when in 1728 another South Carolinian, Colonel Palmer, marched against the presidio, the sight of the grim walls of the fort, the unwinking readiness of the heavy guns, and the needle-sharp points of the yucca plants lining the town palisades were a powerful deterrent. He “refrained” from taking the town. For their part, the Spaniards set off their artillery, but they made no sorties.

Nevertheless, Palmer’s bold march to the very gates of St. Augustine foreshadowed coming events, and the Spaniards again made ready, for the castillo now began to show its half-century age and the wooden palisades were rotting. That capable engineer and frontier diplomat, Don Antonio de Arredondo, came from Havana to inspect the Florida fortifications and make recommendations. Backed by Arredondo’s expert opinions, Governor Manuel de Montiano put all the cards on the table in a letter to the Havana Governor: “For Your Excellency must know that this castle, the only defense here, has no bombproofs for the protection of the garrison, that the counterscarp is too low, that there is no covered way, that the curtains are without demilunes, that there are no other exterior works to give them time for a long defense; but that we are as bare outside [the castle] as we are without life inside, for there are no guns that could last 24 hours, and if there were, we have no artillerymen to serve them.”

Unlike many of his predecessors, Montiano had the ear of the Cuban Governor. Guns and men came from Havana. There was money to strengthen the fortifications and in the summer of 1738 began the work of tearing down the old rooms inside the fort and laying foundations for the 28 great arches that were to make the new rooms proof against English bombs. While the carpenters were setting up the forms for the arches, while the quarries and the limekilns were again the scenes of feverish activity, James Oglethorpe in his buffer colony of Georgia was growing stronger and stronger, pushing the Florida boundary ever closer to the St. Johns River—a scant 35 miles north of the castillo.

Then the ponderous arches were finished and hurriedly leveled off with a packed fill of coquina chippings, sand, and shell. Hundreds of bushels of lime went into the tabby or mortar that was spread over the entire roof of the renovated fort to make its terreplein. The tampers beat the wet mixture smooth, and when the first layer was hardened, another and another was added until there was a bed of tabby 6 inches deep. Upon this smooth, hard surface the cannoneers could maneuver their heavy guns and the rooms below were safe under 2½ feet or more of solid masonry; in fact, on the eastern side, where heavy bombardment was most likely, the engineer allowed a minimum thickness of 4 feet. Some of the parapets had to be rebuilt for modernization. Outside the fort a new stockade was erected to strengthen the covered way, and the walls enclosing the town were reworked. Under Montiano’s dynamic leadership and the able supervision of Engineer Pedro Ruíz de Olano, the work was practically finished by 1740. There was no time to spare.

The War of Jenkins’ Ear precipitated Oglethorpe’s invasion of Florida. When the first English warship appeared off the bar of St. Augustine in June (by the Spanish calendar) of 1740, Montiano hastily sent the news to Havana: here was the long-expected Siege of St. Augustine. Reënforcements had brought the 350-man garrison up to about 750 against General Oglethorpe’s force of about 900 soldiers, sailors, and Indians. Oglethorpe landed his guns across the bay from the fort, and as British shells began to burst over the town, the inhabitants, almost 2,000 of them, fled to the fort. “It is impossible,” wrote Montiano to the Governor of Cuba, “to express the confusion of this place ... though nothing gives me anxiety but the want of provisions, and if Your Excellency ... cannot send relief, we must all indubitably perish.” There was no hint of surrender.

For 27 nerve-shattering days the English batteries thundered at the castillo. Newly laid stones at the eastern parapet scattered under the hits, but the weathered old walls of the curtains 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 an artilleryman’s leg, but only two of the persons sheltered in the fort were killed in the bombardment. The heavy guns of San Marcos and the long-range 9-pounders of the maneuverable Spanish galleys in the harbor held the enemy at bay.