Defending San Marcos
The test of the Castillo’s strength was not long in coming. Relations with France had become peaceful, but incursions by the English-led Indians kept the backcountry inflamed. As tensions increased, Gov. José de Zúñiga y Cerda looked at the St. Augustine defenses with an experienced eye. Zúñiga knew, after a military career spanning 28 years, that strong walls were not enough. The Castillo’s guns were ancient and obsolete—many of them unserviceable. The powder from México so fouled the gun barrels that after “four shots, the Ball would not go in the Cannon.” Arquebuses, muskets, powder, and shot were in short supply.
Once again Captain Ayala sailed directly to Spain to ask for aid. It was a race against time, for the War of the Spanish Succession with France and Spain allied against England had broken out. Gov. James Moore of Carolina lost no time moving against St. Augustine in 1702. If he could capture the Castillo, he would clap an English lock on the Straits of Florida and forestall a possible Spanish-French attack on Charleston.
On the way south, Moore’s forces destroyed the Franciscan missions in the Guale country. At St. Augustine they avoided the Castillo and occupied the town, whose inhabitants had fled to the fort. South and west of its walls, where the town approached the fort, the Spaniards burned many structures that could have hidden the enemy advance.
Moore’s 500 Englishmen and 300 Indians vastly outnumbered the 230 soldiers and 180 Indians and Negroes in the Castillo’s garrison, but Moore was ill-equipped to besiege the Castillo. He settled down to await the arrival of more artillery from Jamaica, and thus matters stood when four Spanish men-of-war arrived and blocked the harbor entrance, bottling up Moore’s fleet of eight small vessels. Moore burned his ships, left most of his supplies, and retreated overland to the St. Johns River. He left St. Augustine in ashes, but the Castillo and its people survived.
The ease with which the English had taken and held the city for almost two months made it clear that more defenses were needed. Moreover, English and Indian obliteration of the missions in Apalache, Timucua, and Guale had reduced Spanish control to the tiny area directly under the Castillo guns.
In the next two decades strong earthworks and palisades, buttressed at strategic points with redoubts, made St. Augustine a walled town, secure as long as there were enough soldiers to man the walls. But in those dark days who could be sure of tomorrow? In 1712 came La Gran Hambre—the Great Hunger—when starving people even ate the dogs and cats.
At last the war ended in 1714. The threat to St. Augustine lessened, but it was an uneasy kind of peace with many “incidents.” In 1728 Col. William Palmer of Carolina marched against the presidio. The grim walls of the fort, the readiness of the heavy guns, and the needle-sharp points of the yucca plants lining the palisades were a powerful deterrent. Palmer “refrained” from taking the town. For their part, the Spaniards fired their guns, but made no sorties.
Palmer’s bold foray to the very gates of St. Augustine foreshadowed a new move southward by the English, beginning with the settlement of Savannah in 1732. With his eye on Florida, James Oglethorpe landed at St. Simons Island in 1736, built Fort Frederica, and nurtured it into a strong military post. From Frederica he pushed his Georgia boundary southward all the way to the St. Johns River—a scant 35 miles from St Augustine.
Mortars have long held an important place in the family of field artillery because of their ability to throw a projectile over a barrier. The Spaniards were among the earliest to use mortars whose trajectory could be varied, thereby making the mortars even more effective.
Meanwhile, Castillo de San Marcos began to show signs of being 50 years old. The capable engineer and frontier diplomat Antonio de Arredondo came from Havana to inspect Florida’s defenses and make recommendations. Backed by Arredondo’s expertise, Gov. Manuel de Montiano wrote a frank letter to the governor of Cuba, who was now responsible for Florida’s security: “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; ... we are as bare outside as we are without life inside, for there are no guns that could last 24 hours and if there were, we have no artillery-men to serve them.”