Beyond the military aspects, which were so vital to the decision to establish St. Augustine, the city had become a vibrant community of soldiers, their families, government officials, and shopkeepers. Religion and the church played an important part in the life of the community. This page from a Roman Catholic missal. printed in 1690, is open to the service for Easter The right-hand column recounts the story of how the Marys went to the tomb and found it empty.
The End of an Era
This was why the Castillo had been built—to resist aggression, to stand firm through the darkest hour. Years of dogged labor and privations had brought the Castillo to the point where it could easily withstand a siege. Yet it remained unfinished, while in 1742 Spanish forces from Havana and St. Augustine tried unsuccessfully to take Oglethorpe’s settlement at Fort Frederica. The next year Oglethorpe moved unsuccessfully against St. Augustine.
Work still needed to be done on the vaults, but other projects were even more urgent. First, came repair of the bombardment damage. After that, the defenses around fort and town were strengthened and a strong new earth wall called the hornwork was thrown up across the land approach, half a mile north of town. And for a year or more a sizable crew was busy at Matanzas building a permanent tower and battery, since the events of 1740 had again shown the vital defensive importance of this inlet a few miles south of St. Augustine.
Several years slipped by with nothing being done to Castillo itself, the heart of the defense system. Termites and rot were in the old rafters, and in 1749 part of the roof collapsed.
The governor’s appeal to the crown eventually brought action. Engineer Pedro de Brozas y Garay came from Ceuta in Africa to replace Ruiz, who was returning to Spain. Having overseen the construction of the last fort rooms, it was Brozas who, with Governor Alonso Fernández de Heredia, stood under the royal coat of arms at the sally port, as the masons set in the inscription giving credit to the governor and himself for completion of the Castillo in 1756. The ceremony was a politic gesture, carried out on the name day of King Fernando VI; but in truth there was still a great deal to do.
The new bombproof vaults had raised the Castillo’s walls by five feet. Where once they had measured about 25 feet from foundation to crown of parapet, now they were more than 30. The little ravelin of 1682 could no longer shield the main gate, and as yet the covered way screened only the base of the high new walls. The glacis existed only on the plans.
This British musket dates from 1777-90 and is of the type that would have been used by the British forces stationed at the Castillo from 1763 to 1784. It is 4 feet, 8 inches long.
So, having finished the vaults, the builders moved outside and worked until money ran out in the spring of 1758. The break lasted until 1762, by which time Britain and Spain were again at war. Spain, as an ally of France, got into the fracas just at the time when Britain had eliminated France as a factor in the control of North America and was quite ready to take on Spain. And this time the British would capture the pearl of the Antilles—Havana itself.