Psst. Wanna buy a frame ($250)? Only 29 left. How about a set of oars ($350)? Or some Chalupa planks, knees, mast steps, and gunwales ($500)?

  The nonprofit St. Augustine Maritime Heritage Foundation (SAMHF) invites contributors to be part of building a 16th century chalupa by sponsoring parts of the craft. It's being built at the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park for next year's 500th anniversary of Ponce de Leon's epic voyage of discovery to America.

   The nimble utility longboat was vital to early explorers, allowing them to cross sandbars, explore shallow creeks, and land soldiers, arms, and equipment ashore.

   The materials list to complete the craft in the SAMHF boatyard at the ranges from $100 to $6,000, with a breakout of everything from keel stems, oars, and planks to rudder, tiller, sails, and rigging.        Find the complete list here.

   Volunteers have already contributed 3,000 man hours, securing 5,680 roofing palm fronds with 10,000 nails on its 1,800 square foot post and beam boat shed. Now work begins on the keel already set in the shed. 

   Follow progress on the SAMHF website, http://staugmaritimeheritage.org/.

 

All work and no play? The SAMHF team will take some time off Sunday, July 29, from noon to 5 pm for a Build the Ship fundraiser at Ann O'Malley's Pub on Orange Street. Food and Beverage proceeds will benefit the chalupa project.

 

Menendez overruns Fort Caroline

   They marched the whole distance until Tuesday evening, the 18th of September, when they arrived within a quarter of a league of the enemy's fort (Caroline), where they remained all night up to their waists in water.

   ... It appears the enemy did not perceive their approach until the very moment of the attack, as it was very early in the morning and had rained in torrents.

   The greater part of the soldiers of the fort were still in bed. Some arose in their shirts and others, quite naked, begged for quarter. In spite of that, more than one hundred and forty were killed. A great Calvinist cosmographer and magician was found among the dead. The rest, numbering about three hundred, scaled the walls, and either took refuge in the forest or on their ships floating in the river, laden with treasures, so that in an hour the fort was in our possession, without our having lost a single man, or even one wounded.

   There were six vessels on the river at the time. The enemy took one brig, and an unfinished galley and another vessel, which had been just discharged of a load of rich merchandise, and sunk. These vessels were placed at the entrance to the bar to blockade the harbor, as they expected we would come by sea.

   Another, laden with wine and merchandise, was near the port. She refused to surrender and spread her sails, when they fired on her from the fort, and sunk her in a spot where neither the vessel nor cargo would be lost.

   The taking of this fort gained us many valuable objects - namely two hundred pikes, a hundred helmets, a quantity of arquebuses and shields, a quantity of clothing linen, fine cloths, two hundred tons of flour, a good many barrels of biscuit, two hundred bushels of wheat, three horses, four asses and two she-asses, hogs, tallow, books, flour, and many other things of little value.

   But the greatest advantage of this victory is certainly the triumph which our Lord has granted us, and which will be the means of the Holy Gospel being introduced into this country, a thing necessary to prevent the loss of many souls.

Relive St. Augustine's tumultuous history in St. Augustine Bedtime Stories. Click for details.

 

   The St. Augustine Report is published weekly, with additional Reports previewing City Commission meetings as well as Special Reports. The Report is written and distributed by George Gardner, St. Augustine Mayor (2002-2006) and Commissioner (2006-2008) and a former newspaper reporter and editor.  Contact the Report at gardner@aug.com