Practically every phase of construction is shown here: ferrying the newly-quarried stones across from Anastasia Island, hauling them to the site, cutting and shaping the stones, mixing mortar, using oxen to hoist a load of stones to the work area, and setting the stones in place. Overseeing all this and reviewing the plans are the engineer and master mason.
Archeology, in one of its functions, provides us with glimpses into the life of days gone by. The three bone buttons were found in and around the Castillo. The light-colored, smooth button with one hole was found in a sentry box. Perhaps a coat caught on the entry way and the button tore off, never to be found by the owner? The brass button is from a 19th-century Spanish uniform.
And now Governor Hita’s first admiration for its design vanished. The Castillo, he said, was too massive. Surely no one would ever besiege it formally. Rather, the danger lay in a blockade of the harbor or occupation of Anastasia Island, actions that would cut the presidio’s lifeline. The San Carlos bastion was too high for effective fire on the inlet or to sweep Anastasia. He argued that the Castillo, including the parapet, should be held to a total height of only 20 feet and supplemented by a 6-gun redoubt directly facing the inlet.
Royal officials strenuously opposed the governor’s attempts to change Daza’s plan. They wrote the crown of Hita’s desire to tear finished walls down to the level he thought proper.
In Hita’s view the west wall, though temporary, was adequate. Therefore he would defer the permanent wall and start instead on the permanent guardroom, quarters, ravelin, and moat. Royal officials insisted, however, that since the west wall was nothing but a half-rotten fence and a mound of earth faced with stone, all the walls must be completed as soon as possible.
In the hope that the crown would agree to lower the walls, Hita let the work lag on the two seaward bastions while he began the west wall and bastions. Construction continued despite trouble with the Choctaws, despite the worrisome impossibility of driving out the Carolina settlers, despite the pirate raid on the port of Apalache in the west, and the ever-present fear of invasion. Lorenzo Lajones, the master of construction, died, but still the work went on. Even after the viceroy’s 10,000 pesos were spent, work continued with money diverted from the troop payroll. As a last resort, people gave what they could out of their own poverty. When these gifts were gone, the scrape of the trowel ceased and the hammer and axe were laid aside. Construction stopped on the last day of 1677.
At the same time, the supply vessel bringing desperately needed provisions and clothing from México arrived, only to be lost on a sand bar right in St. Augustine harbor. It was a heartbreaking loss. Hita became disconsolate. The help he begged from Havana never came, and for four years his reports to the viceroy were ignored. Old, discouraged, and sick, Hita wrote the crown that he was “without human recourse” in this remote province. Perhaps the final blow to his pride was a terse order from the crown to stick strictly to Daza’s plan for the Castillo.
Yet the old warrior did not give up. Eventually the viceroy released 5,000 more pesos, and after 20 months of idleness construction resumed on August 29, 1679. As soon as Hita left his sickbed he was back at the fort, impatient with the snail’s pace of progress under a new master of construction, Juan Márquez Molina from Havana, whose sharp-eyed inspections found stones missing from their courses and some of the walls too thin.