June 7, 1586. Historian Michael Gannon suggests the watchtower erected on the shore to guide Spanish supply ships was St. Augustine's first public works project - and a poor choice. For it was that watchtower that guided the enemy in.

   By some accounts there were 23 warships and nineteen smaller ships, with 2,300 men aboard, overkill for the tiny garrison at St. Augustine - 80 soldiers under Governor Pedro Menendez Marques, a nephew of St. Augustine founder Pedro Menendez who died twelve years earlier.

   Sir Francis Drake, England's most celebrated seaman of the Elizabethan Age, was in command of that fleet, returning home after terrorizing the Caribbean to disrupt preparations for a Spanish Armada.

   Marques ordered some 250 women and children in the humble village to gather what they could and hide in the forest, while his garrison turned their cannons on 1,000 English troops storming across Anastasia Island.

   Marques held off the attackers most of the day until finally, under cover of night, he ordered his force to the woods with the garrison's weapons and flags.

   While the Spanish defenders were occupied with the English attackers, neighboring Indians looted the abandoned village. Drake's troops finished the job, stomping down fruit trees and planted gardens, then setting fire to the entire settlement, including the fort - the seventh built in the 21 years since St. Augustine's founding.

   As Sir Francis Drake's sails disappeared over the horizon, the settlers and soldiers trudged out of the forest to find nothing left. But rather than abandon the settlement, the Spanish command ordered Santa Elena to the north abandoned and its people moved to St. Augustine to strengthen this garrison.

   And the Indians, who could now easily overpower these foreigners, instead returned many of the goods they had looted, and helped them rebuild their lives.

   Fourteen years after Drake's raid, the Spanish government conducted an inquiry as to whether there was enough value in St. Augustine to continue efforts to keep it alive. Ironically, the inquiry favored abandoning the garrison, but a lack of funds and initiative kept it from happening.

   And so an eighth fort was built, and later a ninth, before a soft but sturdy stone made of coquina was discovered on Anastasia Island, and another pirate raid, in 1668,  inspired the Spanish authorities to make use of that stone.

   The result is today's Castillo de San Marcos, destined never to fall to an enemy in battle.

Photo: http://www.drakesraid.com/