But the ship was not manned by friends as was assumed. It had been seized by an English pirate, Robert Searles (alias Davis), in the vicinity of Cuba. When the vessel arrived off St. Augustine the Spanish captain and crew were compelled upon threat of death to appear on deck as if nothing were amiss. The unsuspecting harbor pilot was tricked into firing the identifying signal and made prisoner before he could warn the settlement.
The boundaries of Florida grew smaller.
Around midnight, when the town was peacefully sleeping, the pirate band rowed stealthily ashore undetected, and scattered through the streets. The people emerged from their homes expecting to greet friends, but their joy soon turned to anguished cries of terror. Many were killed by the pirates in attempting to resist or flee half-clad to safety. In the darkness it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. With shouting pirates at their heels, the governor and part of the garrison managed to reach their fort and beat off attempts to take it.
The next morning the pirates systematically looted the homes and churches, and a previously hidden pirate ship appeared in the bay. Unable to take the fort, the invaders left their captives on the beach and sailed away under the cover of darkness. St. Augustine’s residents returned to find sixty of their comrades dead in the blood-stained streets.
A Stone Fort at Last
The founding of Charleston, S. C., in 1670 brought the English threat still nearer. An expedition sailed from St. Augustine to attack the new settlement but ran into a severe storm and failed to reach its objective.
The success of the pirate raid on St. Augustine in 1668, combined with the growing English encroachment on Spanish territory to the north, finally convinced officials in Spain that something must be done to bolster Florida’s defenses. In the fall of 1669, Queen Regent Marianna of Spain issued a cédula directing the Viceroy of Mexico to provide funds for the construction of an impregnable stone fortress at St. Augustine, similar to the bastions guarding Spanish strongholds in the Caribbean. All previous forts in Florida had been of wood and soon rotted in the moist sea air. The new fort would be built of coquina, a shell-rock formation, found in abundance on Anastasia Island across the bay from the capital. Several earlier Florida governors had urged its use without success.
Florida’s next governor, Manuel Cendoya, went at once to Mexico to collect the funds appropriated to begin the new defense work. At Havana, Cuba, he engaged the services of a competent military engineer, Ignazio Daza, to plan and supervise its initial stages.
Work on the new structure began during the fall of 1672. Stone masons and other skilled artisans were brought from Cuba. Quarries were opened on Anastasia Island. Gangs of Indian workmen and yokes of oxen dragged the heavy coquina blocks to the water’s edge, where they were loaded on rafts or barges, and ferried across the bay to the fort site.