Bit by bit the work went on, in spite of trouble with the Choctaws, in spite of the worrisome impossibility of driving out the Carolina settlers, in spite of the pirate destruction of the Apalache outpost in the west and the ever-present fear of invasion. But when the supply vessel carrying desperately needed provisions and clothing journeyed safely all the way from New Spain, only to be miserably lost on a sand bar within the very harbor of St. Augustine, it was a heartbreaking loss. Salazar became disconsolate. The help he begged from Havana never came; for 4 years he had missed no opportunity to write the Viceroy regarding the serious needs of the presidio, and for 4 long years he had not a single reply to his letters. Old, discouraged, sick, Salazar wrote to the Crown that in this remote province he was “without human recourse.” Opposition and contradictions from the royal officials on his staff added to his burdens. Yet the old warrior did not give up. Finally the Viceroy released 5,000 pesos more for the work. As soon as Salazar got up from his sickbed he was back at the fort. The masons and stonecutters were leveling the tops of the curtains and the western bastions; the sweating laborers dumped their loads of rubble between the inner and outer courses of the massive walls. The Governor looked on, impatient with the snail’s pace of progress. Many of his artisans were gone. Some had died. With another 5,000 pesos and a few more masons from Havana, said the old Governor, “I promise to leave the work in very good condition....” Before he could make good that promise, he was replaced by Juan Cabrera, who arrived in the fall of 1680 to take over the reins of government. Cabrera and his master of construction, Juan Marqués, carefully checked the construction. They found a number of mistakes and the blame had to be laid upon the now deceased construction master, Lorenzo Lagones. Either incompetent or careless, Lagones had started to put the cordon (on which the parapet was to be built) on the northwest bastion of San Pablo a good 3 feet below where it should have been. Some of his work elsewhere had to be torn out and rebuilt. This was the outcome of those long years without an engineer.