Spanish Rule (1539–1898) Upon the advice of
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, a battery was constructed on the rocky promontory called "the Morro", when the location of
La Fortaleza was deemed unsuitable. This battery consisted of a tower with 4
embrasures, and a Water Battery at the foot of the slope for 3 guns. By 1555, Morro had 8 bronze cannons, as a defense against French
privateers. During the Spanish government of the island, El Morro, also known as Castillo de San Felipe, survived several attacks from foreign powers on various occasions. In 1593 Portuguese soldiers, sent from Lisbon by order of Phillip II, composed the first garrison of the San Felipe del Morro fortress in Puerto Rico. Some brought their wives, while others married Puerto Rican women, and today there are many Puerto Rican families with Portuguese last names. In 1595, Englishman Sir
Francis Drake unsuccessfully attacked
San Juan with his fleet in the
Battle of San Juan (1595). In 1598, the English attacked again, led by
George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. Clifford succeeded because he attacked San Juan over land instead of trying to enter through the San Juan Bay. However, an epidemic of
dysentery forced him to flee the island after the
Battle of San Juan (1598). In 1625, the
Dutch, led by
Boudewijn Hendricksz, also attacked the island emulating George Clifford's overland invasion. To the amazement of the citizens, the invaders were able to pass in front of the castle's defenders and into the harbor, out of reach of the city's cannons. El Morro managed to resist the siege and eventually made the Dutch retire, although the attackers were able to sack and burn the city before leaving the
Battle of San Juan (1625). In 1797, British General Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Henry Harvey, with a force of 7,000–13,000 men, invaded the island of Puerto Rico. Captain General Don Ramón de Castro and his forces repelled the attack. Abercromby and Harvey were defeated in the
Battle of San Juan (1797). El Morro's last active fight occurred during a naval bombardment by the
United States Navy during the 1898
Spanish–American War, ending the age of naval warfare in the Caribbean, at least in the classical sense. During the Spanish–American War, the castle was attacked at least three times by American naval forces, the largest being the
Bombardment of San Juan on May 12, 1898. The war ended with the signing of the
Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded ownership of the islands of
Puerto Rico,
Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States.
American military occupation (1898–1961) El Morro and many other Spanish government buildings in Old San Juan became part of a large U.S. Army post, called
Fort Brooke. In the early 20th century, the U.S. military filled up the
esplanade (the green space in front of "El Morro") with baseball diamonds, hospitals, officers' quarters, an officers' club and even a
golf course. On March 21, 1915, Lt.
Teófilo Marxuach was the officer of the day at the El Morro fortress. The
Hamburg America Line cargo liner Odenwald tried to leave port without permission from the Customs Collector. Lt. Marxuach gave the order to open fire on her, which forced her to stop. The shots ordered by Lt. Marxuach are widely regarded to be the first shots fired by the United States in World War I, although the first actual wartime shot fired by the US came on the day war was declared, during the
scuttling of SMS Cormoran off
Guam. During World War II the United States Army added a massive concrete bunker to the top of El Morro to serve as a Harbor Defense Fire Control Station to direct a network of coastal artillery sites, and to keep watch for German submarines which were ravaging shipping in the Caribbean. A lighthouse, rebuilt by the U.S. Army in 1906–08 is the tallest point on El Morro, standing above sea level. Flagpoles on El Morro today customarily fly the
United States flag, the
Puerto Rican flag and the
Cross of Burgundy flag, also known in Spanish as las Aspas de Borgoña, a standard which was widely used by Spanish armies around the world from 1506 to 1785.
National Park (1961–present) In 1961, the United States Army officially retired from El Morro. The fort became a part of the National Park Service to be preserved as museums. In 1983, the Castillo and the city walls were declared a
World Heritage Site by the
United Nations. In honor of the Quincentennial of the voyages of Columbus in 1992 the exterior esplanade was cleared of palm trees that had been planted by the U.S. Army in the Fort Brooke era, and restored to the open appearance this "field-of-fire" for El Morro's cannon would have had in colonial Spanish times. Parking lots and paved roads were also removed, and the El Morro lighthouse repaired and restored to its original appearance. The 1963 film
Thunder Island featured an extensive foot chase and shootout scene filmed at El Morro. El Morro was also used as a film set in the 1996 motion picture
Amistad.
Steven Spielberg used it to represent a fort in
Sierra Leone where African slaves were auctioned in 1839. African slave labor was used in addition to local labor to help build the castillo. El Morro was a defensive military fortification and a major component of San Juan's harbor defense system. Puerto Rico as such was considered by the Spanish crown as the "Key to the Antilles"; no enemy ship could navigate its waters without fear of capture. An annual artisans festival is held at the fort every July. The fort is home to a resident colony of around 200 stray cats that are believed to have been descended from cats introduced either during colonial times or in the mid-20th century as part of rat eradication programs. Following concerns over an increase in their population, in 2023 the
National Park Service announced it would contract an animal welfare organization to remove the cats and threatened to hire a pest control agency if it were to fail. However, the plan was suspended following a lawsuit by animal welfare groups in 2024. ==Historical timeline==