Protection of original seawall first

   City commissioners Monday advanced to public hearing in two weeks an ordinance for the Mooring Fields Pilot Program, with an amendment requiring registration with the Municipal Marina every six months rather than one year for non-live aboard "wet storage" of boats outside the city's mooring fields.

   Mayor Joe Boles pushed the amendment, arguing boaters in the mooring fields are helping support the city, while those outside pay nothing.

   And Tom Caswell of the University of Florida got commission endorsement on a grant application to archive "11,000 maps, drawings, photos, and documents" on the city's history. He said all the information would be available on line and will feature "geo-referencing, which means you can Google, say, the Fatio House, and all its information on it will come up."

   Here's the website with archives scanned in so far.

  Remodeling of the Visitor Information Center as an event venue and a review of city codes for better use of the promenade between the visitor center and parking facility were focal points in a two-hour City Commission workshop before Monday's regular City Commission meeting.

   "Remodeling of this space is the most realistic way to create exhibit space," City Manager John Regan said as he promised to have architectural and business plans prepared for redesign of existing space.

   At an estimated cost of $400,000 to $500,000, City Commissioner Leanna Freeman said, "I'm not comfortable unless it makes sense" in return on investment. "We don't have money for our Spanish Quarter but now we're talking about spending money on the visitor center."

   Plans for the visitor center opened on a note that as a "limited public forum" area, use of the promenade could not include revenue-generating alcohol sales - a provision that scuttled plans for a revised Days in Spain celebration in September.

   While city officials work on possible revisions, Days in Spain promoter Stuart Gamsey promised to work on revising another historic event, Ponce de Leon Days, traditionally celebrated in the spring.

   The continuing need for dredging of the St. Augustine inlet is reflected in historic accounts of crossing the St. Augustine bar. The following is from research by Dr. Sam Turner of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program.  

   In the mid-eighteenth century, it was not uncommon for arriving and departing vessels at St. Augustine to be obliged to wait between one to two weeks in order to have the necessary conditions of wind and tide to cross the bar.

   A quick passage over the bar could go a long way to making a voyage profitable. The crew of a vessel required to wait two weeks without the bar would consume a great deal of provisions thus adding to the cost of the voyage. If the same vessel was obliged to wait two weeks before leaving on its outbound leg that would make a total of one month's additional provisions for the entire crew.   

   In cases where profit margins were close, such waits could be very detrimental to a vessel's financial bottom line.

   One traveler, Johann Schopf, a German surgeon serving with British forces during the Revolutionary War, described the bar and its channels and some of the prevailing conditions at the time.

   "Ordinarily there are but 3, often only 2 channels where it can be crossed, and these at ebb-tide with only 4-4 1/2 ft. of water, and at high tide with not more than 8-9.

   "These channels which of themselves admit nothing but small and light vessels, are besides narrow and crooked, and what is worse they shift so generally after stormy weather, on account of the quick-sand which forms the bar, that a seaman, quite familiar with them, after a brief absence from Augustine cannot without risk take the old course to which he had been used.

   "The pilots therefore, as often as they come out to bring in a ship, must examine the passage anew. ... It has become so common at St. Augustine to see ships aground on this bar and this coast generally, that disasters of the sort have almost ceased to arouse sympathy or wonder."

   Toward the end of the British Period in 1782, after the fall of Savannah and then Charleston to Patriot forces, a great many vessels bearing loyal British refugees made for the loyal colony of St. Augustine.

   In a number of cases vessels had to wait offshore for the weather to improve before attempting to cross the dangerous bar into the harbor, and often vessels were cast away when they neglected to take on board competent pilots.

   In one particularly horrendous case, nine transports were lost on the St. Augustine bar in late December, 1782. The traveler Johann Schopf reported in his journal that following the fall of Charleston over one two-day period no less than sixteen vessels bearing Loyalists went to pieces on the bar with a significant loss of life.

   Image: Sloop in St. Augustine harbor, ca. 1750, from the St. Augustine Historical Society.