The Building of Castello de San Marcos: National Park Service Interpretive Series, History No. 1Manucy, Albert C.
History
The Building of Castello de San Marcos: National Park Service Interpretive Series, History No. 1
Manucy, Albert C.
Castillo de San Marcos (Saint Augustine, Fla.) -- History; Florida -- History -- Spanish colony, 1565-1763
Nor was it a problem to work out the plan for the castillo. Both Daza
and the Governor liked the design of the old fort. They, meeting with
the General Council, decided merely to build the castillo slightly
larger in order to make room for quarters, guardroom, chapel, wells,
ovens, powder magazine, and other essential rooms not included in the
old fort. In line with the more recent ideas, Daza recommended a slight
lengthening of the bastions. All around the castillo they planned to dig
a broad, deep moat, and then surround the land sides with a high
palisade.
It was a simple and unpretentious plan, but a good one. Daza was
apparently schooled in the Italian-Spanish principles of fortification
as developed from the sixteenth century designs of Franceso de Marchi,
for Sébastien de Vauban, the great French engineer, was still but a
young man in 1671. Little is known about Ignacio Daza, but if he were
the typical military engineer, he was nothing if not practical. And
Daza, if he were typical, was more than a draftsman. For a military
engineer, it was “not sufficient to know how to draw plans, profils and
landskips; to understand a few propositions in geometry, or to know how
to build a wall or a house; on the contrary, he ought to be well
grounded in all the most useful branches of the mathematics, and how to
apply them to practice, natural philosophy, and architecture; have a
good notion of all kind of handicraft works; and above all things, to be
well versed in mechanics.”
THE YEARS OF CONSTRUCTION
So the actual construction finally began. It was indeed the occasion for
a ceremony. About 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon, October 2, 1672, Governor
Cendoya gathered together the official witnesses, and, to record the
event for the information of Queen Mariana and for his own protection,
he commanded the public scribe, Juan Moreno, to be present. Into his
hands Cendoya took a spade. He walked to a likely looking spot between
the strings marking out the lines of the new fortification, drove down
his spade, and thus broke ground for the foundations of Castillo de San
Marcos, worthy successor to the name that for almost 100 years had been
used for the forts of the St. Augustine presidio. All this and more,
Juan Moreno noted. Characteristically, he faithfully certified that not
only was the work started that Sunday afternoon, but it continued, and
that at most of it he, the notary, was present. Because he wrote the
certification on ordinary paper, Juan explained that he was out of
official stamped paper.
[Illustration: 1. DESIGN—2. DEFENSE—3. ASSAULT]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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