In a letter to Spain's Philip II from Cadiz on December 3, 1570, Pedro Menendez said that he planned to "place myself in the Bahama Channel where he (Jacques Sores, considered to be one of the best French corsairs and at the time at large in the Caribbean) could not come out without my seeing him."

Menendez had returned from Florida in hopes of rallying support for his infant colony. Over the next four years, he refined a set of strategic principles for both the Caribbean and English Channel, considered at least thirty or more years ahead of their time, and in concept used so successfully by Admiral Lord Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar250 years later.

Menendez recognized that control of the Bahama Channel was essential for the security of the Caribbean. His strategy was to control large areas of the sea through control of a strategic narrow-water passage.

The Bahama Channel was a bottleneck which exposed ships to capture, but its winds and currents were so favorable that the corsair problem was assumed a necessary evil.

According to Menendez's report, based on interviews of prisoners taken in the capture of Fort Caroline, Jean Ribault planned in January of 1566 to seize and fortify the Martyrs (Florida Keys), and build a fort at the Bay of Juan Ponce to provide a base for attacks on New Spain, Honduras, and Yucatan.

There was enough information available to the Spanish to conclude that a corsair base was being built on the lifeline of the empire.

That belief formed the basis for Menendez's execution of the French he found in Florida.

While Menendez did not have any opportunity to put his plan into effect in the Indies, he submitted it in a letter of August 15, 1574 for control of the English Channel. An armada would patrol the channel that winter, intercepting corsairs coming out of or returning to the channel. It would keep England's fleet mobilized and prevent Dutch rebels from dispersing their fleet along the Flanders coast.

This winter patrol would keep the Indies free of additional corsairs by preventing their leaving Europe. Construction of twenty shallow draft galeotas in the spring would give Spain numerical superiority in the channel that summer.

Unfortunately for Spain, the political situation in Flanders and England eased enough so that Menendez' sudden death on September 17, 1574, was sufficient reason to disband the fleet.

Pedro Menendez drew from a commonly-held recognition of an important bottleneck to maritime commerce, the ideas of the French corsairs under Ribault, his knowledge of the Caribbean and of ships, and possibly the experience of the English or his Spanish contemporaries, to fashion a modern set of strategic principles for securing control of the Caribbean and geographically similar English Channel-North Sea area.

In both cases, his genius recognized the strategic possibilities of the narrow waters.

Image: Mariners Museum