Billions of sea creatures produced the coquina that provided the building blocks of the Castillo. Because of the high water table, the layers of rock were damp when quarried. Once trimmed and shaped, the rock dried and hardened. During the British bombardment of 1740, the walls absorbed the impact of the cannon balls and very little damage was done.
Beginning the Castillo
To show her commitment to the proposed construction, the Queen Regent appointed Sgt. Maj. Don Manuel de Cendoya, a veteran of 22 years service, as successor to Governor Guerra.
In México City Cendoya followed Queen Mariana’s orders and delivered his message to the Viceroy, the Marquis de Mancera. Florida’s defenses were to be strengthened at once with a main castillo at St. Augustine, a second fort to protect the harbor entrance, and a third to prevent troop landings. Initial estimates were that the project would cost 30,000 pesos. At this point came the news of the English settlement at Charleston, and Cendoya at once suggested a fourth fort at Santa Catalina.
The viceroy’s finance council finally decided to allot 12,000 pesos to begin work on one fort. If suitable progress were made, they would consider sending 10,000 yearly until completion. The question of additional forts would be referred to the crown. Cendoya had to be satisfied with this arrangement and a levy of 17 soldiers. He left for Florida, making a stop at Havana where he sought skilled workers. There he also found an engineer, Ignacio Daza.
On August 8, 1671, a month after Cendoya’s arrival in St. Augustine, the first worker began to draw pay. By the time the mosquitoes were sluggish in the cooler fall weather, the quarrymen had opened coquina pits on Anastasia Island, and the lime burners were building two big kilns just north of the old fort. The carpenters put up a palm-thatched shelter at the quarry, built a dozen rafts for ferrying stone, firewood, and oyster shells for the limekilns across the water. They built boxes, handbarrows, and carretas—the long, narrow, hauling wagons—as well. The blacksmith hammered out axes, picks, stonecutters’ hatchets, crowbars, shovels, spades, hoes, wedges, and nails for the carpenters. The grindstone screeched as the cutting edge went on the tools.
Indians at the quarry chopped out the dense thickets of scrub oak and palmetto, driving out the rattlesnakes and clearing the ground for the shovelmen to uncover the top layer of coquina. Day after day Diego Díaz Mejía, the overseer, kept the picks and axes going, cutting deep groves into the soft yellow stone, while with wedge and bar the workers broke loose and pried up the blocks—small pieces that a single man could shoulder, and tremendously heavy cubes two feet thick and twice as long that six strong men could hardly lift.
Stone masons were the most skilled and highly paid laborers who worked on the Castillo.
Díaz watched his workers heave the finest stone on the wagons. He sent the oxen plodding to the wharf at the head of a marshy creek, where the load of rough stone was carefully balanced on the rafts for ferrying to the building site. And on the opposite shore of the bay, next to the old fort, the cache of unhewn stone grew larger daily, and the stonecutters shaped the soft coquina for the masons.