In this new era, the aging fort was already a relic. Fortunately for its preservation, the US. strategy for coastal defense did not require much alteration of the Castillo. U.S. Army engineers added only a water battery in the east moat, mounted a few new guns on the bastions, and improved the glacis during the 1840s.
The fort’s name was also changed, for the Americans chose to honor Gen. Francis Marion, Revolutionary leader and son of the very colony against whose possible aggression San Marcos had been built. Congress restored the original name in 1942, almost 20 years after the fort had been designated a national monument.
Heavy doors and iron bars that once protected precious stores of food and ammunition made the old fort a good prison, and the prison days soon obscured the olden times when Spain’s hold upon Florida depended upon the strength of these walls and the brave hearts that served here.
Now the echo of the Spanish tongue has faded and the scarred walls are silent. The records tell of the people who built and defended the Castillo—and those who attacked it, too. In the archives are countless instances of unselfish zeal and loyalty, the cases of Ransom, Collins, and Carr, the crown’s patriarchal protection of its Indian vassals, the unflagging work of the friars. The structure itself tells its own story. As William Cullen Bryant, 19th-century poet wrote: “The old fort of St. Mark is a noble work, frowning over the Matanzas, and it is worth making a long journey to see.”
The Spanish government constructed replicas of Christopher Columbus’ three ships to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his voyage to America. The ships followed Columbus’ route across the Atlantic and made calls at ports throughout the Americas. Here the Santa Maria, in the foreground, Pinta, and Niña visit St. Augustine in 1992.
Guide and Advisor
St. Augustine is the oldest, continuously inhabited city founded by Europeans in the present-day United States. It represents the beginnings of contact between Spanish settlers and the native inhabitants, the emergence of the Hispanic American, the struggle between Spanish, French, and English settlers for control of the southeastern Atlantic coast, and ultimately the birth of the United States.