C

astillo de San Marcos

 

March 17, 2003





USA flag




Castillo de San Marcos park brochure

In its early years of colonization Spain had North America to itself. But by a hundred years after the discoveries made by Columbus, the British, French, Swedish, and Dutch all had North American colonies. By the late 17th century the British had taken the Dutch and Swedish colonies and controlled most of the east coast of what today is the USA. The exception was Florida. But Britain did have Caribbean colonies including Jamaica and Bermuda, so it was quite nearby.

What did Spain do when it became away of the serious British threat? One step was to build the Castillo de San Marcos.No easy task, it took from 1672 to 1695 to get the materials in place and the foundations right. The fort helped shore up Spanish rule for a while, but Spain was on a downhill course as far as Florida was concerned and in 1821 gave it up entirely to the USA. Thus Castillo de San Marcos became Fort Marion (named after a colonial American soldier). As the power of gunpowder increased, the ancient canons and even style of the fort became passé and the fort fell into disuse and was decommissioned. In 1924 it became a national monument, originally named Ft Marion. By 1942 the tide of nativism had turned and the fort's original Spanish name was restored. [We wish that they had adopted the approach of the folks in Tucson, who faced with a similar naming problem combined old and new, Spanish and Anglo-Saxon, instead of choosing one over the other.]

Exterior wall of Fort San Marco Double wall defense with moat outside San Marco; ticket office now present

We had driven south from New York so rapidly that when we arrived in Florida we still had not acclimatized to the change of weather from cold, with snow on the ground, to warm sunshine, and the need for a cool breeze. Castillo de San Marcos was our first outing where it was both warm and we were surrounded by other, often foreign, tourists. It was a bit of a culture shock.

Old canons in place in Castillo de San Marcos

We parked about half a mile away and approached the fort as if we were American invaders in 1814, fighting alongside Andrew Jackson's forces. We came to the fort, its outer walls looking rather impenetrable, and wondered whether an attack from the left or right would be more effective — given the warm weather we didn't want to squander our resources. We went to the right and were confronted by an outer wall separated from the inner wall by a moat. How on earth would we cross this barrier?

Fortunately, thanks to Jan's prescience, we had come armed with a powerful weapon. She had predicted while we were still in Virginia that we would need some means of gaining entrance to protected places like this. So, armed with our National Parks Pass, we made our assault on the ticket office and, as if by magic, the barriers fell away and in we went.

Crowd of tourists listening to lecture about Castillo de San Marcos Ranger guide explaining history of Castillo de San Marcos

Inside we found unfamiliar hordes that seemed strangely subdued. They were paying very close attention to someone of impressive girth who seemed to have them under control. From listening carefully we learned that he was a Ranger. This seems to be a powerful position. It certainly appears to entitle one to a large ration. He was well informed and related all the history recounted above and much more.

He explained to us, for instance, that the 12 foot thick, 33 foot high, fort walls are made of coquina, a type of very coarse or incomplete limestone formed almost entirely of assorted and cemented coarse shells and shell fragments. Unlike the limestone with which we are familiar, when you look at this stuff you can tell immediately what it is made of. It is strong, or at least enduring stuff; the walls are still standing today. We had had our first introduction to the stuff a week earlier in Georgia. There, outside St Mary's, we had made a brief self-guilded tour of a sugar and rum refinery that dated to colonial days; its walls too were made of conquina.

Flags that have flown over Castillo de San Marcos

Inside the rooms built into the fort walls there is a small museum. One part displays all of the flags that have flown over the fort. Other rooms show where powder was stored. There are no living quarters, because for the most part the soldiers lived outside the walls. Since the fort was never attacked there was rarely occasion for it to be fully manned.

After the US gained control in 1821 it became Fort Marion and then was used primarily as a prison. During the Second Seminole War (1835-42) rebellious indians were held here. Florida was granted statehood in 1845 and in 1861 succeded from the Union along with other souther states. Federal troops captured and held St Augustine throughout the Civil War and Fort Marion became a prision for Confederate soldiers.

While inside the fort, we met some Germans and had a pleasant time with them. One part of our conversation was about their amazement that Americans didn't get six weeks of vacation a year and our amazement that Germany had managed to keep its bubble going so long. We felt that eventually the bill would come due: that retirement money would not be there. And so it seems to be according to the newspaper reports that started to appear a few months later.

Jan and Gerry sitting outside Castillo de San Marcos admiring it.

Having completed our tour of the fort's courtyard and museum, we climbed up onto the Castillo's roof to marvel at the views it afforded us of the ocean and the area outside of its walls. We sat there for a while and enjoyed the blue skies, the warm sun, and the sea breeze before continuing on to see what prizes our conquest would bring us in the nearby civil encampment.

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August 28, 2003