Florida’s new governor, Manuel Cendoya, was
responsible for building the new fort. About four o’clock
Sunday afternoon, October 2nd, 1672, Governor Cendoya thrust a spade into the earth
and thus broke ground for the Castillo de San Marcos. After
collecting funds, he found an experienced military engineer,
Ignacio Daza, to design it. He recruited large numbers of Indians,
slaves, and skilled craftsmen. They discovered a readily available
building material on nearby Anastasia Island called coquina: rock
composed of tiny seashells concreted together beneath the sea. An
elaborate system of ferry boats was required to transport the
coquina, and an earthwork surrounding the fort was built from soil
removed for a moat. Unfortunately, Daza and Governor Cendoya both
died during the first two years of the project, and a huge storm
destroyed the existing wooden fort in 1674. Twice, pirates
threatened the city and the work had to be stopped. But Governor
Quiroga successfully petitioned the King to allow coquina stones,
which had been reserved by the crown for use exclusively for the
castillo’s construction, to be used in building important
buildings in St. Augustine. This huge construction project resulted
in a sharp increase in the population of St. Augustine as skilled
craftsmen, engineers, laborers and slaves became residents. By
August 1695, the massive Castillo was at last complete and it was
christened as the “Castillo de San Marcos” or St.
Mark’s Castle.
The English hired Indians to harass Spanish
missions in Florida, and Christian Indians were often captured and
sold into slavery in the Carolinas. The English Carolinians,
offered the Indians cash for Spaniard captives. In the fall of
1686, soldiers from the garrison at St. Augustine sacked the
Carolinian settlement at Port Royal. Not long after a boat filled
with slaves escaping from the Carolinas arrived in St.
Augustine,the slaves were promptly baptized into the Catholic faith
and allowed to settle in an area just north of town, and other
English slaves attempted to seek freedom in St. Augustine.
Quaker John Archdale, the new governor of Carolina,
tried to end Indian enslavement by the English. The two sides soon
reached an agreement—the English would return any Christian
Indians captured in Florida and the Spanish would return any
shipwrecked Englishmen. True to their word, the residents of St.
Augustine rescued a large contingent of Quakers during the winter
of 1696.
In 1702, the outbreak of the War of the Spanish
Succession, known in St. Augustine as Queen Anne's War, raised
financial fears for the town's survival. In Carolina, newly
appointed Governor Moore obtained the Carolina's Assembly to
increase English expansion into La Florida. He put together an army
of 600 militiamen and several hundred Indian allies, and boarded 14
ships for St. Augustine in 1702. Spanish governor Zuniga learned of
the planned attack and requested troops, weapons, and supplies from
Havana.
After burning the Spanish outpost at Amelia Island,
Moore sent Colonel Daniel to St. Augustine, and the Carolinian
troops arrived on November 10. Daniel's forces advanced on the town
from the south, while Governor Moore sailed into the harbor with
the main force of Carolinians. 1,500 Spaniards waited out the
attack from inside the strong walls of the Castillo, where their
biggest fear was not the English cannons but the possibility of
starvation. The Castillo's coquina walls made Governor Moore's guns
virtually useless, and he requested bigger cannons from Jamaica.
While they waited for reinforcements, the English destroyed the
town of St. Augustine. Finally two large Spanish warships, under
the command of General Berrora, arrived in answer to Zuniga's
request. Faced with inevitable failure, the English departed on
December 30. |