The Drawbridge
The inner workings of the Castillo drawbridge.
Pulling up the drawbridge was like locking the door. Once it was pulled up flush against the walls and the portcullis—the heavy grating made of solid yellow pine—rolled shut, no one could get into the fort. To raise the bridge, trapdoors were removed so that the counterweights could descend into the pit. A windlass also lay beneath this trapdoor. Soldiers inserted bars into holes bored into the windlass and rotated it, causing the lifting drums to revolve. The chains, attached to the far end of the bridge, pulled the bridge up as the chains turned on the lifting drums. The counterweights helped neutralize the weight of the bridge so that three soldiers were able to lift its great weight—approximately 1,900 pounds. When the bridge was in the upright position, the soldiers then rolled the portcullis shut behind them, and secured it. This was done every night or in time of danger.
To lessen the chances of famine in the future, Florida officials resolved to plant great fields of corn nearby. And where was better than the broad clearings around the fort? Acres of waving corn soon covered the land almost up to the moat. When the crown heard of these plantings, back to Florida came a royal order banning corn fields within a musket shot of the Castillo. A whole army could hide in the tall corn without being seen by the sentries!
The Castillo drawbridge.
A new governor, Don Laureano de Torres y Ayala, arrived in 1693. At the outset he had to deal with hostilities between St. Augustine and Charleston—hostilities that mocked the Spanish-English alliance in Europe.
More importantly, however, to Governor Torres belongs the credit for completing Castillo de San Marcos. Torres saw the last stones go into place for the water battery—bright yellow coquina that was in contrast to weathered masonry almost a quarter of a century old. In August 1695 the workmen finally moved out of the Castillo to another job: a seawall that would keep storm tides out of the city.
The pile of stone on which Cendoya had planned to spend some 70,000 pesos and which Hita had estimated would cost a good 80,000 if built elsewhere, ended up costing at least 138,375 pesos, a tremendous sum impossible to translate into today’s money. But more than the money, it was the blood, sweat, and hardship of the Florida soldier that paid the cost. For the funds came out of money never paid. Let the Castillo be his monument!
And what did completion of this citadel mean? Only a year later, soldiers gaunt with hunger slipped into the church and left an unsigned warning for the governor: If the enemy came, they intended to surrender, for they were starving.
Weapons of the 17th and 18th centuries may seem crude and primitive to a late-20th-century observer, but they could rain death and destruction on any foe. See the feature on Ordnance, pages [44]-45, for more details.