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.
A league to the northward was Fort Mosa, abandoned outpost at the village of run-away Negroes. Oglethorpe’s Highlanders occupied it. At dawn, June 26, 1740, a sortie from the castillo surprised the Scotchmen and in the bloodiest action of the entire siege the Spaniards drove out the enemy and burned the palisaded fortification. After that blow, the siege dragged along. While General Oglethorpe and his men battled insects and shifting white sand on the barren, sun-parched shores across the bay, the Spaniards in the cramped quarters of San Marcos watched their supplies dwindle dangerously low. Before long, Montiano’s effective troops were reduced by more than half. Nor were the refugees in better shape. Just when the future looked darkest, news came that provisions from Havana had reached a harbor south of Matanzas, far down the coast. Skillfully avoiding the English blockade, Spanish seamen began to bring the provisions along the inland waterway. Oglethorpe made ready to assault the fort, then thought better of it, for the storm season was approaching, his ships were in danger, and his men were disheartened. To the wonderment of Montiano, the Georgia general suddenly raised the siege on its 38th day and marched back to the north.
THE END OF AN ERA
This was why the castillo had been built—to resist even the highest tide of colonial aggression, to stand firm through the darkest hour. It was the climax, the culmination of years of dogged labor and lean hunger. But it was also the end of a chapter, the closing of an era, for the finis was in sight. The attempted Spanish reprisal in 1742, Oglethorpe’s foolish march on the castillo the year following—these were the clumsy joustings of provincials, not the telling thrusts of powerful governments and strong armies. And because to the colonials their destiny was not yet clear, amidst the futile hostilities of the next 20 years the work of improving Castillo de San Marcos went forward. The slight damage suffered during the Siege of 1740 was soon repaired. Montiano and his engineer were indignantly acquitted of malicious and anonymous charges that faulty workmanship—too much sand in the mortar—was responsible.
Long after the stonecutter’s hatchet fell silent, the scrape and swish of the plasterer’s trowel went on until in 1756 Governor Alonso Fernández stopped work on a new, never-to-be-finished ravelin and stood under the royal coat of arms at the sally port to watch the masons erect the inscription giving credit for completion of the mighty fort to himself and Engineer Don Pedro de Brozas y Garay. It was a politic gesture, for the ceremony was carried out on the name day of King Fernando VI.
This Florida citadel was a simple masterpiece of European military architecture, even though a few courses of stone were still lacking in the outworks. Its every wall covered with a hard, waterproofing, white lime plaster, the castillo reflected the semitropical sunlight with a brilliance reminiscent of the old-time glory of Spain. In the haste of building, the engineers had not neglected ornamentation to keep the structure from starkness and bareness, for well-designed cornices and pilasters threw sharp shadows to relieve the expanses of smooth, white wall. There was color—a strong, darkish red, probably achieved by mixing a clay with the plaster. This color was conspicuous on the sentry towers crowning each bastion.
San Marcos was properly the background for St. Augustine activity, with its white walls rising high above the blue waters of the bay, red-covered towers thrusting toward the clouds, and guns of green-coated bronze and pitted iron looking over the turf and the sweep of the marshes to the gloom of the nearby forests or the surf breaking on the bar. The colorful uniforms of the Spanish soldiers, the severe habit of the friars, the picturesque garb of the stalwart Indians, no less than the silken magnificence of the Governor and his lady and the presence of an occasional foreign trader, gave this frontier post an interesting character.
The castillo was a busy place, and while in Spanish eyes much may have been lacking, the English looked at it with envy and respect, one Englishman reporting that: “there is 22 pieces of Cannon well mounted on the Bastions from 6 pound’rs to 36. They are very Cautious of the English & will not lett them go on the lines, there is a guard of a Lieutenant a Sergeant & 2 Corporals & 30 Soldiers here who is reliev’d Every Day. There is one Lieutenant a Sergeant & 12 Gunners who is reliev’d once a Week, the Castle is under ye Command of a Lieutenant who is always on it. the Riches of the Place is kept here as is the Privision w’ch is issued from the Town once a Week, there is 5 Centries on ye lines at a time all Night ye Man that is at the Bell Strikes it every 3. or 4. Minutes the Centry’s Calling from one to the other....
“There is a Mote Round it of 30. feet wide & a draw Bridge of about 15 feet long, they draw every Night & lett it down in the Morning....”
Ironically enough, before the eighth anniversary of the Fernández plaque, the alerta of the Spanish sentry was replaced by a challenge in English, for in 1763 the diplomats gave Florida and the castillo to England.