Castillo de San Marcos
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2020
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Allen Arnold joined me on the pod to discuss the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. Located on the western shore of Matanzas Bay in the city of St. Augustine, Florida, the fort was designed by the Spanish engineer Ignacio Daza. Construction began in 1672, 107 years after the city's founding by Spanish Admiral and conquistador Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, when Florida was part of the Spanish Empire. The fort's construction was ordered by Governor Francisco de la Guerra y de la Vega after the destructive raid of the English privateer Robert Searles in 1668. Work proceeded under the administration of Guerra's successor, Manuel de Cendoya in 1671, and the first coquina stones were laid in 1672. The construction of the core of the current fortress was completed in 1695, though it would undergo many alterations and renovations over the centuries.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, welcome to Dance Noes History here. I'm on Plymouth Ho. The great maritime city of |
| 0:04.8 | southwest England. I'm looking at over Drake Island, looking at the Great Bay, Plymouth Sound, |
| 0:10.7 | imagining Sir Francis Drake and Lord Howard of Effingham leading the ships out here in the summer |
| 0:16.4 | of 1588 against the Spanish Armada that's just been sighted off the lizard point. I've got my back to |
| 0:22.8 | the giant Stuart fortifications that are built on top of the Ho here. It is one of the great |
| 0:28.7 | sizes also the place where 400 years ago the Mayflower left this autumn, this fall. I'm here at the |
| 0:36.0 | moment to kick off this season of commemoration. 400 years since that ship that has come to symbolise |
| 0:41.7 | the gigantic movement of people across the Atlantic from the 17th century onwards with all the |
| 0:46.8 | attendant demographic strategic colonial repercussions on both sides of the Atlantic. There'll be a big |
| 0:54.7 | Mayflower 400 podcast coming out next week talking to us for experts and descendants both the |
| 0:58.8 | pilgrims and of course of the Aboriginal First Nations, North Americans who helped them through |
| 1:05.3 | that first winter but who would pay a terrible price for their hospitality. This podcast is a repeat, |
| 1:11.6 | this is one of our weekly repeat podcasts. It's a trip I took a few years ago to Florida when I looked |
| 1:18.1 | around the Castillo de San Marcos. It is the oldest masonry fort in the USA. It's in St. Augustine |
| 1:26.5 | in Florida. It was begun in 1672 by which stage the city had already been there but the settlement |
| 1:33.1 | had already been there for over 100 years and it was built obviously because of English raids down |
| 1:39.7 | that coast. I was shown around by Alan Arnold, he's an interpreted ranger for the National Park Service. |
| 1:45.8 | It was a wonderful experience and I think it gets us in the mood to think about European colonisation |
| 1:51.9 | on the North American continent. If you want to listen to other back episodes of this podcast please |
| 1:57.4 | I got a history hit TV it's like Netflix for history it's got all the podcasts on there, |
| 2:01.3 | hundreds of documentaries on there all sorts of good stuff. If you used to go to pod one, |
| 2:05.6 | P.O.D.1 you get a month for free and your second month for just one pound euro or dollar but the |
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