Quaint and Historic Forts of North America

by John Martin Hammond

The material of which the fort is constructed is the familiar sea-shell concretion used so largely in Florida and known as “coquina.” It was quarried on Anastatia Island, across Matanzas Inlet from the city, and was ferried over to the fort site in large barges. The substance is softer when first dug than when it has been exposed to the air and light for a season, sharing this property with concrete, to which it is analogous in other ways, so the walls of the fort are more solid to-day than when they were built.

The history of Fort Marion takes one back to early bickering between Spanish and French on the North American continent. In 1562 Jean Ribaut, a sturdy French mariner, sailed into the waters of Florida, explored the waters of the St. John’s River (at the mouth of which busy Jacksonville now stands) and planted a colony and a fort on the St. John’s with the name of Fort Caroline. The river he called the River of May, in remembrance of the month in which he first set eyes upon it. In 1564, Laudonierre, a second Frenchman, came with supplies and reinforcements for Fort Caroline, but paused on his passage to investigate an inlet farther south than the mouth of the St. John’s River. This inlet he called the River of Dolphins, from the abundance of such creatures at play in the waters here and on the shores of the inlet, which later generations were to know as St. Augustine harbor; he descried an Indian village known as Seloy.

The jealous King of Spain heard of the French settlement in Florida and was displeased. He sent an expedition under Juan Menendez de Aviles to colonize the country with Spaniards and to exterminate the French, who added to the misfortune of not being Spaniards the mistake of not being Catholics. Menendez sailed into Florida waters in September, 1565, reconnoitred the French colony on the St. John’s River and then sailed south several days, landing at the Indian village of Seloy. Here he decided to establish the capital of his domain. The large barn-like dwelling of the Indian chief was made into a fort. This was the original of Fort Marion of to-day. Then on September 8, 1565, Menendez took final possession of the territory, and named his fort San Juan de Pinos.

Of the Sixteenth Century quarrels of Frenchman and Spaniard, of Huguenot and Catholic, there is not space in this chapter to tell. Suffice it to say that even in so broad a land as Florida, which according to the interpretation of the day included all of the present United States and British Canada, there was not room enough for two separated small French and Spanish colonies to subsist together, and for Catholic and Huguenot to be in one world together was beyond all reason. So the next step in the history of our fort is the expedition of Menendez against the French and the perpetration by him of one of the most horrid massacres that has ever stained the New World.

Let us picture a blinding night in September, 1565, at Fort Caroline. The Spanish leader, it is known, has established himself at the River Dolphins. One of the equinoctial tempests to which Florida is subject was raging. The French in their dismantled little post have deemed no enemy hardy enough to venture out in such elemental fury. Laudonierre himself has dismissed the weary sentinels from the wall, secure in the thought that Nature, herself, is his protection. He does not know the tenacity of the Spaniard. Menendez, setting out from his new stronghold with a few hundred men and struggling on against the storm, is even now within striking distance of the doomed French retreat. A sudden rush upon the sleeping garrison and the Spaniards are within the fort. No mercy is shown. One hundred and thirty men are killed with little resistance. One old carpenter escaped to the woods during the mêlée, but surrendered himself to the Spaniards the next morning with pleas for mercy. He was butchered with his prayers upon his lips.

Menendez returned to St. Augustine and in a few days heard that some of the French ships which had fled in disorder during the rout at the fort had landed their crews about twenty miles south of St. Augustine. He immediately set out for the spot with one hundred and fifty men. The hapless French without food and without shelter surrendered themselves to Menendez. All of them (over a hundred in number) with the exception of twelve Breton sailors, who had been kidnapped, and four ships’ caulkers who might be useful to the Spaniards, were put to the knife in cold blood. Again, word came to Menendez that castaway Frenchmen were south of St. Augustine. It was the remainder of the French squadron under Ribaut—more than three hundred and fifty in number. Menendez repeated his tactics with this company as well. He allowed them to trust themselves to his mercy and then conclusively proved that there was no mercy in the heart of a Spaniard of the Inquisition by putting the whole company to death ten at a time. The spot where these two butcheries took place is known to this day as Matanzas, or the Place of the Slaughters.

Immediately now the Spaniard began to make himself more secure in Florida. His stronghold at St. Augustine was amplified and Fort Caroline, the luckless French fort, was rebuilt and renamed San Mateo. In 1568 the French under de Gorgues descended upon the Spanish at San Mateo and put the whole garrison to the sword. San Augustin was not attacked, however, and for two hundred years held the Spanish flag supreme in this part of the New World.

For twenty years after its foundation Menendez’s little fort of San Juan de Pinos saw no military service, though it was made strong and formidable. Then the clash of arms came to its ears, accompanied by great catastrophe. These were the years of the English sea-kings. Raleigh, Drake, Grenville, Gilbert, Frobisher were sweeping the oceans in their diminutive craft, making anxious the captains of many a Spanish galleon. In September, 1585, Drake sailed on a freebooting voyage from the harbor of Plymouth, England, with more than an ordinarily large number of men and ships, and in May, 1586, this little armada chanced to be in sight of San Augustin. The procedure may now be told in the words of one of Drake’s seamen:

Wee descried on the shore a place built like a Beacon which was indeede a scaffold upon foure long mastes raised on ende.... Wee might discover over against us a Fort which newly had bene built by the Spaniards; and some mile or therabout above the Fort was a little Towne or Village without walls, built of wooden houses as the Plot doeth plainely shew. Wee forthwith prepared to have ordnance for the batterie; and one peece was a little before the enemie planted, and the first shot being made by the Lieutenant generall himself at their ensigne strake through the Ensigne, as wee afterwards understood by a Frenchman, which came unto us from them. One shot more was then made which strake the foote of the Fort wall which was all massive timber of great trees like Mastes.