First English siege within Castillo de San Marcos In 1670, Charles Town (modern-day
Charleston, South Carolina) was founded by English colonists. As it was just two days' sail from St. Augustine, the English settlement and encroachment of English traders into Spanish territory spurred the Spanish in their construction of a fort.
Slaves from the Carolina colony began escaping to St Augustine in 1687, where the Spanish agreed to free (and employ) them if they converted to
Catholicism. When an English major from Carolina attempted to retrieve escapees in 1688, the Spanish Governor
Diego de Quiroga refused.
Charles II of Spain issued an official policy in 1693, cementing the informal practice. The English
laid siege to St. Augustine in November 1702. About 1,500 town residents and soldiers were crammed into the fort during the two-month siege. The small English cannons had little effect on the walls of the fort, because the
coquina masonry was very effective at absorbing the impact of cannonballs causing them to sink into the walls, rather than shattering or puncturing them. The siege was broken when the Spanish fleet from Havana arrived, trapping some English vessels in the bay. The English decided to burn their ships to prevent them from falling under Spanish control, and then marched overland back to Carolina. The town of St. Augustine was destroyed, in part by the Spanish and in part by the English, as a result of the siege.
Second period of construction Beginning in 1738, under the supervision of Spanish engineer
Pedro Ruiz de Olano, the interior of the fort was redesigned and rebuilt. Interior rooms were made deeper, and
vaulted ceilings replaced the original wooden ones. The vaulted ceilings allowed for better protection from bombardments and allowed for cannon to be placed along the gun deck, not just at the corner
bastions. The new ceilings required the height of the exterior wall to be increased from 26 to .
Second British siege Spain and Britain were rivals in Europe, and since the two countries had both founded empires in the New World, their rivalry continued there as well. In 1733, the British merchantmen
Rebecca, commanded by Captain
Robert Jenkins, was seized in the Caribbean by the Spanish coast guard. Suspecting that
Rebecca had been trading illegally with Spanish colonies (which was forbidden by both Spain and Britain), the Spanish searched the ship. A fight broke out between the Spanish and British sailors. In the skirmish, Jenkins had his ear cut off by a Spanish officer, who picked it up and said "Take this to your king and tell him that if he were here I would serve him in the same manner!" When Jenkins reported the incident to British authorities, they used it as a
casus belli to declare war on Spain in 1739. The war was called the
War of Jenkins' Ear. After British Admiral
Edward Vernon won a
significant victory at
Portobelo, General
James Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, was quick to imitate him in North America. In June 1740, Oglethorpe and a British fleet of seven ships
appeared off St. Augustine. As in the 1702 siege, three hundred soldiers and 1,300 residents found refuge within the Castillo's walls. For 27 days the British bombarded the Castillo and St. Augustine. Realizing his cannon were not affecting the Castillo's walls of coquina, Oglethorpe decided to starve the people of St. Augustine into submission by blockading the inlet at the
Matanzas River and all roads into St. Augustine. However, some supplies were able to reach the city via the river, and with morale and supplies low for the British forces, Oglethorpe had to retreat. In order to protect the city from future blockades and sieges, the Spanish built
Fort Matanzas to guard the river, which could be used as a rear entrance to avoid St. Augustine's primary defense system.
British occupation In 1763, the British managed to take control of the Castillo but not by force. As a provision of the
Treaty of Paris (1763) after the
Seven Years' War,
Britain gained all of
Spanish Florida in exchange for returning
Havana and
Manila to
Spain. On July 21, 1763, the Spanish governor turned the Castillo over to the British, who established St. Augustine as the capital of the province of
East Florida, established by the
Royal Proclamation of 1763. The British made some changes to the fort, and renamed it Fort St. Mark. As
Great Britain was the dominant power in North America, they were not worried about keeping the fort in top condition. This attitude prevailed until the outbreak of the
American Revolutionary War. The fort was used as a military prison during the war. Among those imprisoned was
Christopher Gadsden, the Lieutenant governor of
South Carolina. He was also a delegate to the
Continental Congress and a
brigadier general in the
Continental Army during the war. He was released after 11 months. Improvements were begun on the fort, in keeping with its new role as a base of operations for the British in the
South. The gates and walls were repaired, and second floors were added to several rooms to increase the housing capacity of the fort. The Castillo saw action during the American Revolution mainly as a prison, although St. Augustine was targeted by several aborted expeditions from Georgia. Several revolutionary fighters who had been captured in Charleston were held there when it was taken by the British, including three
Founding Fathers;
Thomas Heyward Jr.,
Arthur Middleton, and
Edward Rutledge. The Spanish declared war on Britain in 1779, drawing off forces from Fort St. Mark and keeping the British occupied.
Bernardo de Gálvez, governor of
Spanish Louisiana, attacked several British-held cities in
West Florida, capturing all of them. The only major British operation that used troops from St. Augustine was the poorly coordinated but successful
capture of Savannah, Georgia; the city was taken by troops from New York before those from St. Augustine arrived. At the end of the war, the
Peace of Paris (1783) called for the return of Florida to Spain. On July 12, 1784, Spanish troops returned to St. Augustine.
Second Spanish period When Spain regained control over
Florida they found a much-changed territory. Many Spaniards had left
Florida after the handover to Britain, and many British citizens stayed after it was returned to
Spain. Many border problems arose between Spanish Florida and the new United States. Spain changed the name of the fort back to the Castillo de San Marcos, and continued to build upon the improvements that Britain had made to the fort in an effort to strengthen Spain's hold on the territory. However, due to increased pressure from the United States and several other factors, in 1819
Spain signed the
Adams–Onís Treaty, ceding
Florida to the United States, which was transferred in 1821.
First United States period Upon receiving the fort from Spain, the Americans changed its name to Fort Marion. It was named to honor General
Francis Marion, an American Revolutionary War hero nicknamed "The Swamp Fox." Structurally, the Americans made few changes to the fort during this time. Many storerooms were converted to prison cells on account of their heavy doors and barred windows. Also, part of the moat was filled in and transformed into an
artillery battery as part of the American
coastal defense system. The original Spanish seawall was dismantled to ground level and a new seawall constructed immediately adjacent to the seaward side of the original. At this time a hotshot furnace was also built in the filled-in section of the moat behind the newly built water battery.
Cannonballs were heated in the furnace to fire at wooden enemy ships. In October 1837, during the
Second Seminole War, Seminole chief
Osceola was taken prisoner by the Americans while attending a peace conference near
Fort Peyton under a
flag of truce. He was imprisoned in Fort Marion along with his followers, including
Uchee Billy,
King Philip and his son
Coacoochee (Wild Cat), and then transported to
Fort Moultrie on
Sullivan's Island in Charleston's harbor. Uchee Billy was captured on September 10, 1837, and he died at the fort on November 29. His skull was kept as a curio by Frederick Weedon. The doctor also
decapitated Osceola after his death in Fort Moultrie and kept the head in preservative. On November 19, 1837, Coacoochee and nineteen other Seminole, including two women, escaped from Fort Marion. Coacoochee, known for fabricating entertaining stories, later said that only he and his friend Talmus Hadjo had escaped - by squeezing through the eight-inch (203 mm) opening of the
embrasure located high in their cell and sliding down a makeshift rope into the dry moat. Hadjo, however, was not on the official list of prisoners. However the Seminole escaped, they made their way to their band's encampment at the headwaters of the
Tomoka River, about forty miles south of St. Augustine. Because of their having been poorly treated, they vowed to continue fighting, and the war was prolonged for four more years. The cell from which Coacoochee escaped was long part of the official lore of the fort.
Confederate States period In January 1861, Florida seceded from the United States in the opening months of the
American Civil War. Union troops had withdrawn from the fort, leaving only one man behind as caretaker. On January 7, 1861, three days before Florida seceded, 125 militiamen marched on the fort by the order of Governor
Madison S. Perry. The
Union soldier manning the fort refused to surrender it unless he was given a receipt for it from the Confederacy. He was given the receipt, and the fort was taken by the Confederacy without a shot.
General Robert E. Lee, then in command of the coastal defenses of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida, ordered that most of the artillery in the fort be sent to other, more strategic, forts. This left only five cannons in the water battery to defend Fort Marion. The
Saint Augustine Blues, a militia unit formed in St. Augustine, were enrolled into the Confederate Army at Ft. Marion on August 5, 1861. They were assigned to the recently organized Third Florida Infantry as its Company B. More than a dozen former members of the St. Augustine Blues are buried in a row at the city's
Tolomato Cemetery. Men from the unit were most likely part of the force that originally occupied the fort on January 7, 1861. The fort, along with the rest of the city of St. Augustine, was reoccupied by Union troops after acting mayor Cristobal Bravo officially surrendered the city to Union Navy fleet commander
Christopher Raymond Perry Rodgers on March 11, 1862. The Confederate forces left the city the previous evening in anticipation of the arrival of the Union fleet under the command of
Commodore Dupont.
Second United States period brochure showing an
exploded view drawing of fort. The fort was taken back by Union forces on March 11, 1862, when the
USS Wabash entered the bay, finding the city evacuated by
Confederate troops. The city leaders were willing to surrender in order to preserve the town, and the city and the fort were retaken without firing a shot. Throughout the rest of the fort's operational history, it was used as a military prison. Beginning in 1875, numerous
Native American prisoners were held at the fort in the aftermath of the Indian Wars in the west. Many would die at the fort. Among the captives were
Chief White Horse of the
Kiowa, and
Chief Grey Beard of the
southern Cheyenne. During this period,
Richard Henry Pratt, a Civil War veteran, supervised the prisoners and upgraded the conditions for them. He removed the prisoners' shackles and allowed them out of the casemates where they had been confined. He developed ways to give the men more autonomy and attempted to organize educational and cultural programs for them. They became a center of interest to northerners vacationing in
St. Augustine, who included teachers and
missionaries. Pratt recruited volunteers to teach the Indian prisoners English, the Christian religion, and elements of American culture. He and most US officials believed that such assimilation was needed for the Indians' survival in the changing society. The men were also encouraged to make art; they created hundreds of drawings. Some of the collection of
Ledger Art by Fort Marion artists is held by the
Smithsonian Institution. It may be viewed online. Encouraged by the men's progress in education, residents and visitors to St. Augustine raised funds for scholarships to support nearly 20 of the former prisoners in college after they were released from Ft. Marion. Seventeen men attended the
Hampton Institute, a
historically black college established in 1868 for
freedmen by the
American Missionary Association. Others were sponsored and educated in New York State at private colleges. Among the latter were
David Pendleton Oakerhater, as he became known, who was sponsored by
US Senator George H. Pendleton (D-OH) and his wife. Oakerhater studied and later was
ordained as an
Episcopal priest. He returned to the West to work as a missionary with Indian tribes. He was later recognized by the Episcopal Church as a saint. Pratt's experiences at Fort Marion were the basis for his campaign to create American Indian boarding schools. He was authorized to found the
Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, which became a model for other government-funded boarding schools established by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. It operated until 1918. At their peak, some 350-450 schools were established, and only 25 were off-reservation. prisoners at Ft. Marion From 1886 to 1887, approximately 491 Apaches were held prisoner at Fort Marion; many were of the
Chiricahua and
Warm Springs Apache bands from
Arizona. There were 82 men and the rest were women and children. Among the men, 14, including
Chatto, had previously been paid
scouts for the US Army. Among the Chiricahua were members of the notable chief
Geronimo's band, including his wife. Geronimo was sent to
Fort Pickens, in violation of his agreed terms of surrender. While at the fort, many of the prisoners had to camp in tents, as there was not sufficient space for them. At least 24 Apache died as prisoners and were buried in North Beach. In 1898, over 200 deserters from the
Spanish–American War were imprisoned at the fort. This marked one of the last uses of the fort as an operational base. In 1900, the fort was taken off the active duty rolls after 205 years of service under five different flags.
Preservation In 1924, Fort Marion was designated as a
National Monument. In 1933 it was transferred to the
National Park Service from the
War Department. In 1942, in honor of its Spanish heritage, Congress authorized renaming the fort as
Castillo de San Marcos. In 1964 the Castillo figured in the civil rights movement, when the "Freedom Tree" on the fort green became a gathering place for demonstrators who were not welcome across the street on what was state or private property in the age of segregation. The demonstrations in St. Augustine, led by
Robert Hayling,
Hosea Williams, and
Martin Luther King played an important role in bringing about passage of the landmark
Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the two great legislative accomplishments of the movement. As a historic property of the National Park Service, the National Monument was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on October 15, 1966. The National Park Service manages the Castillo together with
Fort Matanzas National Monument. In 1975, the Castillo was designated an
Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the
American Society of Civil Engineers. Since being transferred to the Park Service, the Castillo has become a popular tourist attraction. It occupies in downtown St. Augustine, Florida. ==In popular culture==