Home

Portfolio

Contact

Hita y Salazar and the Castillo de San Marcos

By Tony Bridges

Luis Rafael Arana, one of the most prominent historians on the Castillo de San Marcos, and the entire St. Augustine defense network, recently passed away without finishing his in depth work on the history of St. Augustine. What he had written at the time of his death has been edited and published in El Escribano, the St. Augustine Historical Society periodical. The majority of what he wrote was about Pablo de Hita y Salazar, who in the 1670s took the governorship of St. Augustine. More to the point, most of what he wrote was about the failures in construction of the Castillo occurred under Governor Hita y Salazar’s watch. This paper will show that while he had good intentions and even good ideas, Governor Hita y Salazar necessitated large repairs through incompetent management and an unwillingness to listen to his superiors.1

King Charles II of Spain Charles II was king of Spain for most of the construction
St. Augustine was founded in a strategic location to provide protection to Spanish fleets as they followed the Gulf Stream back to Spain. It was chosen to be Spain’s capitol in the Eastern Florida territory. As such an important location, it was fortified from the beginning. The Castillo de San Marcos is actually an evolution of all the forts that came before. Soon after the settlement of St. Augustine was founded in 1565, a wooden fort was constructed to help protect the town against hostile natives and piracy. Over the next hundred years, St. Augustine would go through nine of these wooden forts. Spain felt safe in Florida, particularly considering the failures the British had in colonizing the Americas, and would not send money for construction of a more solid masonry fortification, or even enough for proper maintenance of the wooden fort. As a result, when pirates struck on May 29th, 1668, the soldiers could do little but watch as the town was sacked and razed, as the timbers of the fort were too rotten and weak to support cannon. In addition, in 1670 the British founded Charles Town, a mere two days sailing from St. Augustine, and announced that much of Florida, including St. Augustine, was part of the British territory of Carolina. At that time, the governor was Manuel de Cendoya, who wrote to the Crown of Spain complaining of the indefensibility of St. Augustine, pointing out the importance of the harbor to fleets to and from Spain, including the treasure fleet, which routinely carried large hauls of gold and other valuables from the New World to Spain, and which were a prime target for pirates. He wrote to the Crown that St. Augustine needed 3 forts. One would overlook the harbor mouth, to protect against incoming ships. A second would be south of St. Augustine, to protect against troop landings. The third would be the Castillo at St. Augustine itself, to protect the town from overland attacks, and as a last stand against forces that got around the other two forts. The Crown ultimately agreed to provide partial funding for a single fort overlooking the town, and to provide additional funding contingent on satisfactory progress.2

Photo of the Castillo de San Marcos
The castle, therefore, was designed to serve multiple functions. It overlooked the inlet to control what ships could come in and out of the harbor, it controlled the most accessible mouth to the intercoastal waterway along which trade was conducted with natives and colonies in Florida, and it provided a bastion of safety for the town in the event of a land invasion. After a century of experimentation in the previous forts, the Spanish knew exactly where to build the new castle for optimum effect. The town of St. Augustine was on what was practically a peninsula. The ocean lay to the east, and to the north and south lay impassable marshland. Because of this, the castle was set on something of a rise (which was raised during construction) that looked straight down the inlet, and could also see over the town to the west. Also, the proximity of native labor helped choose the exact site of the castle. Given the flatness of the land, it was decided that the castle itself would be square so as to provide equal protection in all directions. Its walls were set to be around 25 feet high, in a compromiset between providing a small target for cannon fire and height for a commanding view of the surrounding area. The bastions at the corners of the fort, which today are probably the Castillo’s most prominent feature, were the end product of hundreds of years of evolution since the invention of gunpowder had changed castle construction forever. The distinctive triangular or pentagonal shape of a bastion provides for strong, short walls that can withstand enemy cannon, and also provides room for cannon to be trained on both enemies in the field and those at the walls. For further protection, it was surrounded by a moat, and then given yet another layer of protection by a high palisade on its three land sides. Therefore, attackers would have to first either scale or destroy the palisade, and then cross the moat, all while under fire from small arms and cannon.3

Ground was broken in October of 1672. Coquina, a native type of rock quarried on Anastasia Island across the inlet, ultimately proved to be ideally suited to the construction of a fortress. Though porous and relatively soft, it absorbed the impact of cannon fire, drastically reducing the effectiveness of enemy cannon. From the beginning, construction was plagued by a lack of funds and supplies, as well as trained labor, but nevertheless the foundations were dug and the walls began to grow.4

In 1675, Pablo de Hita y Salazar was sent from Spain to take control at St. Augustine. Shortly thereafter, on July 30th, he sent out two letters to the Crown relating the progress on the castle and giving suggestions. His report was promising, saying that the walls were making good progress and nearing their target height, and that the San Carlos bastion was in fact at height and was being topped with the paving stones that soldiers would stand and walk on. However, he also suggested a number of changes, and this is where controversy begins.5

The biggest change Hita y Salazar would propose was that the height of the entire fort be reduced from 25 to 20 feet. He felt that at 25 feet, the San Carlos bastion was too tall to command the entire inlet. At that height it would be lobbing cannonballs in ballistic arcs at targets, its success depending on how well his soldiers could guess ranges and hit their targets. He felt that the lower height would allow the soldiers to simply fire parallel to the water, essentially strafing fire across the inlet. Also, he felt that the towering stone structure would simply scare off attackers, and that they’d never engage the castle directly. Finally, he thought that they were feeding money into a fort that could sustain a massive siege, which seemed unlikely to happen.6

General Oglethorpe General Oglethorpe failed to take the Castillo
Instead, he felt that any serious attacker would simply take and hold Anastasia Island, cutting off re-supply fleets and shelling the castle at their leisure. To this end, he recommended building a four gun redoubt jutting out from the coast at El Pinillo, looking directly down the inlet, to provide better control of the inlet and the approaches to Anastasia Island. Many of his decisions seem to have been influenced by a near paranoia that an army on Anastasia Island would be able to bombard his castle to dust and cut off his supply lines. Well after he retired the lie would be given to his theory when General Oglethorpe attempted exactly that in 1739. However, supply ships were able to slip past Oglethorpe’s meager blockade, and the sustained bombardment proved ineffective, as the coquina rock of the Castillo simply absorbed the impact of the massive cannonballs.7

Hita y Salazar also wanted a battery in front of the castle to provide protection for his proposed covered wharf, so that some shipping activities could continue even in the face of attack. All of these changes were to be paid for at the expense of the land based defenses. When he arrived, the westward, or landward, wall was merely a stop-gap earthwork, a large pile of dirt and timber designed to slow an attack in the event one was staged before a real wall could be constructed. Looking at it, Hita y Salazar felt that with some thickening and fortifying, that earthwork would provide a satisfactory landward wall in place of a real stone wall. He also believed initially that all of the fort’s powder should be stored in a single room nearer to the ocean-facing cannon that he expected to see the most action.8

While waiting for a response from Spain, Hita y Salazar prepared for an affirmative answer by halting all the construction at 20 feet. Construction ground to a halt while mail ships traveled to and from Spain. In response to the halt in construction, on May 8th, 1676, Hita y Salazar’s staff wrote to the Crown complaining of his plans. They felt that he was not competent to be making these changes, as he had been a simple soldier in the military, and had no experience building fortifications. They cautioned the Crown to stay with the original plans drafted by a Royal Engineer. Their report was followed up by a letter on October 14th, 1676 from the Royal Accountant, Antonio Menendez Marquez, who gave a long list of expenses due to Governor Hita y Salazar’s changes and delays, including wages paid to laborers when nothing meaningful was being done.9

On July 3rd, in 1679, the Crown’s response finally arrived that construction should continue according to the original schematics. There are few reports on Hita y Salazar’s progress in the intervening years, but when the new governor, Major Juan Marquez Cabrera, came on November 30th, 1680, Hita issued a report, including a detailed diagram, of his progress so far. In this report he claimed that the San Carlos bastion was at 20 feet, had cordon laid and had the beginnings of a parapet. The East, South, and West curtains had reached height but needed thickness. The North curtain was complete along one quarter of its length, but the rest was not even to height. The San Augustin bastion had reached 20 feet, but had no cordon or parapet. The San Pablo bastion was 19 feet high, but needed 3 ½ feet to be level with the rest of the wall due to uneven ground. In other words, he had completely ignored the Crown’s orders to meet the original blueprints.10

Furthermore, Governor Cabrera’s own investigation found that even these unimpressive figures were a lie. His engineers found that many of the cordons were not level at all. Also, some of the walls and bastions had incomplete foundations, making them unstable, and one whole side of the San Carlos bastion had to be completely rebuilt, as it had been built incorrectly, resulting in a very uneven wall. The San Pablo bastion was in fact 16 ½ feet high. The original estimate had been completely wrong. Governor Hita y Salazar blamed the discrepancy on his engineer, Lorenzo Lajones, whom he claimed had provided him with his figures.11

From 1980 to 1981, the Stetson Collection shows a much higher level of correspondence between St. Augustine and the Crown. Many of these are receipts, long lists of repairs and changes, how much they will cost, and how much the Crown is willing to spend. Construction would continue until 1695, and cost literally tons of gold. By 1695, the walls stood 26 feet tall, and proved effective in the siege of 1702, holding the entire population of the city and 300 soldiers as the British surrounded the fort for two months before the siege was broken.12

Governor Hita y Salazar did foresee the problem of Anastasia Island, which was later exploited by General Oglethorpe, but he underestimated the likelihood of a land-based attack, which would happen several times throughout the fort’s history. By trying to build the west wall as a fortified earthwork, he showed, at least in the eyes of his staff whom wrote angrily to the Crown about him, a complete lack of understanding of fortifications. But above all, he mismanaged his staff. He ignored his advisors and his accountant, pushing ahead with his own ideas in the face of even explicit denial from the crown, but he took at face value the word of his engineer, who proved ultimately to be either incompetent or lying. Though ultimately the castle was never captured in battle, Governor Hita y Salazar’s letters clearly confirm Luis Arana’s view that his reign was a giant step backward in the construction of one of the most important fortifications in Florida.

  1. Luis Rafael Arana, The Endurance of the Castillo de San Marcos, El Escribano, The St. Augustine Journal of History, vol. 41 (n.p., 2004)
  2. Historic Print & Map Co., ed. The History of the Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida, (St. Augustine: Historic Print & Map Co), 1,8,13,24-25
  3. ibid, 26,27; National Park Service, “Architecture & Construction,” Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, 12 September 2006, National Park Service, 20 Novermber 2006, http://www.nps.gov/casa/historyculture/construction.htm
  4. History, 13, 15
  5. Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 14. AGI 58-1-26/33
  6. Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 14. AGI 58-1-26/35
  7. ibid, Endurance 13,14
  8. ibid 15; Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 14. AGI 58-1-26/35
  9. Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 54-5-14/141; Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 54-5-11/54
  10. Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 54-5-11/66; Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 2-4-1/3
  11. History 37; Endurance 23
  12. Endurance 26; History 42

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 14. AGI 58-1-26/33

Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 14. AGI 58-1-26/35

Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 54-5-14/141

Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 54-5-11/54

Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 54-5-11/66

Archivo General de Indias. Stetson Collection. Reel 15. AGI 2-4-1/3

Secondary Sources

Rafael, Arana Luis. The Endurance of the Castillo de San Marcos. El Escribano, The St. Augustine Journal of History, vol. 41. n.p., 2004.

Historic Print & Map Co., ed. The History of the Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida. St. Augustine: Historic Print & Map Co.

National Park Service, “Architecture & Construction.” Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. 12 September 2006. National Park Service. 20 Novermber 2006. http://www.nps.gov/casa/historyculture/construction.htm.