THE END OF AN ERA

This was why the castillo had been built—to resist even the highest tide of colonial aggression, to stand firm through the darkest hour. It was the climax, the culmination of years of dogged labor and lean hunger. But it was also the end of a chapter, the closing of an era, for the finis was in sight. The attempted Spanish reprisal in 1742, Oglethorpe's foolish march on the castillo the year following—these were the clumsy joustings of provincials, not the telling thrusts of powerful governments and strong armies. And because to the colonials their destiny was not yet clear, amidst the futile hostilities of the next 20 years the work of improving Castillo de San Marcos went forward. The slight damage suffered during the Siege of 1740 was soon repaired. Montiano and his engineer were indignantly acquitted of malicious and anonymous charges that faulty workmanship—too much sand in the mortar—was responsible.

Long after the stonecutter's hatchet fell silent, the scrape and swish of the plasterer's trowel went on until in 1756 Governor Alonso Fernandez stopped work on a new, never-to-be-finished ravelin and stood under the royal coat of arms at the sally port to watch the masons erect the inscription giving credit for completion of the mighty fort to himself and Engineer Don Pedro de Brozas y Garay. It was a politic gesture, for the ceremony was carried out on the name day of King Fernando VI.

This Florida citadel was a simple masterpiece of European military architecture, even though a few courses of stone were still lacking in the outworks. Its every wall covered with a hard, waterproofing, white lime plaster, the castillo reflected the semitropical sunlight with a brilliance reminiscent of the old-time glory of Spain. In the haste of building, the engineers had not neglected ornamentation to keep the structure from starkness and bareness, for well-designed cornices and pilasters threw sharp shadows to relieve the expanses of smooth, white wall. There was color—a strong, darkish red, probably achieved by mixing a clay with the plaster. This color was conspicuous on the sentry towers crowning each bastion.

San Marcos was properly the background for St. Augustine activity, with its white walls rising high above the blue waters of the bay, red-covered towers thrusting toward the clouds, and guns of green-coated bronze and pitted iron looking over the turf and the sweep of the marshes to the gloom of the nearby forests or the surf breaking on the bar. The colorful uniforms of the Spanish soldiers, the severe habit of the friars, the picturesque garb of the stalwart Indians, no less than the silken magnificence of the Governor and his lady and the presence of an occasional foreign trader, gave this frontier post an interesting character.

The castillo was a busy place, and while in Spanish eyes much may have been lacking, the English looked at it with envy and respect, one English man reporting that: "there is 22 pieces of Cannon well mounted on the Bastions from 6 pound'rs to 36. They are very Cautious of the English & will not lett them go on the lines, there is a guard of a Lieutenant a Sergeant & 2 Corporals & 30 Soldiers here who is reliev'd Every Day. There is one Lieutenant a Sergeant & 12 Gunners who is reliev'd once a Week, the Castle is under ye Command of a Lieutenant who is always on it. the Riches of the Place is kept here as is the Privision w'ch is issued from the Town once a Week, there is 5 Centries on ye lines at a time all Night ye Man that is at the Bell Strikes it every 3. or 4. Minutes the Centry's Calling from one to the other . . .

"There is a Mote Round it of 30. feet wide & a draw Bridge of about 15 feet long, they draw every Night & lett it down in the Morning. . .

Ironically enough, before the eighth anniversary of the Fernandez plaque, the alerta of the Spanish sentry was replaced by a challenge in English, for in 1763 the diplomats gave Florida and the castillo to England.

It was some years before the English put their ineffaceable mark on the fort, but in the summer after Lexington and Concord they went to work. The gates were repaired and the well in the courtyard, become brackish, was re-dug. A new palisade for the covered way was built and the glacis—the encircling earthwork—repaired. Several of the high arched rooms were given a second floor, in a sense a second story, in order to make more room for long bunkshelves, for St. Augustine was regimental headquarters and many red-coated troops were quartered in the Castle of St. Mark. Within the safety of the thick walls were stored the arms that went to ranger, regular, and Indian ally alike for repeated use against the rebellious colonials to the north. And a goodly number of those colonials and their friends languished in the damp prison of the castle.

Those were exciting times, but they were only an interlude. The Union Jack was not the flag for the fort. When the Spanish came back by the terms of the 1783 treaty, Florida had lost its old importance to the empire, even though San Marcos remained a bulwark that American advances never quite reached. For the Spanish, awaiting the manifest destiny that was to bring Florida into the union of the United States of America, there was little to do but maintenance work, such as repairs to the bridges, a new pine stairway for San Carlos tower, a bench for the criminals in the prison. In 1785 Mariano de la Rocque designed a beautiful entrance for the chapel doorway. It was built, only to crumble slowly away like the Spanish hold on Florida.

When at last the red and gold ensign of Spain fluttered down under the thunderous salute of the old smoothbores, to be replaced by the 23-star flag of 1821, the aging fort was obsolete—already a historical relic. Fortunately for its preservation, the strategy of St. Augustine Harbor was gone. The young republic built powerful seacoast forts from Maine to Texas but the only concession to this one-time capital of the southeast was the building of a water battery in the moat east of the fort and the mounting of a few big guns on the bastions. The fort remained unchanged, except in name. For more than 150 years St. Mark had been the patron saint of this defense. The Americans chose to honor Gen. Francis Marion, the Revolutionary leader and son of the very colony against which San Marcos had been built. Spanish Castillo de San Marcos became American Fort Marion. (Legislation enacted by Congress in June 1942 restored the original name of Castillo de Marcos.)

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 that the structure had outlived. The scarred walls of the past would not release their story and the accidental discovery of the sealed-up powder magazine and the chance mention of mouldering bones only served to deepen the mystery of its real story. Out of the "dungeon" darkness into the Anglo-Saxon mind flocked all the tales suborned by centuries of hate and misunderstanding. Forgotten was the fact that boot and rack, pincers and bar were in London Tower as well as in the Inquisitorial Chamber. None stopped to think that torture was past when the castillo was built. None knew how these isolated subjects of a decadent empire labored through the long, hard years, mingling their own sweat with that of the peons to build this impregnable defense. The countless instances of un selfish zeal and loyalty, the cases of Ransom, Collins, and Carr, the Crown's patriarchal protection of its Indian vassals, the unflagging work of the friar—these histories were not handed down to help the castillo tell its long story.

Yet, some saw past the blackness of the dungeon. "The old fort of St. Mark . . . is a noble work, frowning over the Matanzas," wrote William Cullen Bryant, "and it is worth making a long journey to see." His words have become increasingly true.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:—This publication is based mainly upon material in the Spanish records of the North Carolina Historical Commission. The translation quoted on page 5 is from the Ruth Kuykendall translation of the records for the North Carolina Historical Records Survey.

Last Modified: Thurs, Sep 11 2003 10:00:00 pm PST source/is1/is1e.htm