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.