Day 306 – 311; 3/20 – 3/25: Wednesday, 3/20 Chris and Tricia arrived from MD right on time and we were off to dinner at our host yacht club in Daytona Beach – the Halifax River YC. It was great to see Chris and Tricia again on Legacy! Thursday morning we were off to Palm Coast and enjoyed a sunny ride accompanied by dolphins in the bow. It was about a 3 hour run to Hammock Beach Marina where we were quite excited to be able to sit by the wind protected heated pool for a couple hours before dinner. Hooray for sunshine since the forecast was for a bit of a spitty day on Friday. Initially, the marina was part of a larger resort including a golf course, pools, lazy river, tennis, fitness center and more as well as several restaurants. Unbeknownst to us, the marina was sold off and now separate. For a “small fee”…. $35/per person per day….we could venture over to the resort via golf cart and “use” the restaurant. Well that was a ‘no’ and we enjoyed a delicious shrimp stir fry creation by Gary, followed by the Baltimore Blast game on Twitch.
Since the Blast were no longer in the hunt for a playoff spot (they had been eliminated the night before), Quantrell, the backup goalkeeper, started against the Texas Outlaws. Blast lost 9-4, but it was good experience for Quantrell. The indoor game is very fast and with balls being played off the walls, it takes some time (and hard knocks) to learn. Michael had the night off except for one short appearance where his experience was better suited for the situation they faced.
Friday morning we were off to St. Augustine in a slight rain. We ran from inside (the pilot house) instead of the bridge most of the way, venturing out to see the dolphins in the bow.
It was a little over a 3 hour run, arriving a little after 1:00. After a quick lunch, we were on foot to get our steps in with a 10 minute walk to beautiful downtown St. Augustine. We met up with a large group of loopers at the downtown marina and enjoyed docktails with them in the lounge, followed by dinner at Hurricane Patty’s where it was ‘all you can eat snow crab night’….. Yum!!!
Saturday, 3/23, was a beautiful sunny day so we were up and out early. We enjoyed a hop-on, hop-off tour through the old city, which in one go would take about 2 hours, but we spent the entire day. Troy was an amazing driver and tour guide, filling us with the rich history of the city…. A small portion of which is below.
Founded in 1565, St. Augustine is the ‘oldest continuously occupied settlement’ in the United States. This was 42 years before the English colonized Jamestown and 55 years before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. The first Thanksgiving, Floridians will tell you, actually occurred in St. Augustine, not New England.
Ponce de Leon is credited with discovering Florida and claiming the land for Spain. So let’s back up that train……Ponce de Leon first came to the Americas as a “gentleman volunteer” with Christopher Columbus’s second expedition in 1493. By the early 1500s, Ponce de León was a top military official in the colonial government of Hispaniola, and island in the Caribbean. He was authorized to explore the neighboring island of Puerto Rico in 1508 and took office as the first Governor of Puerto Rico in 1509. While Ponce grew quite wealthy from his plantations and mines, he faced an ongoing legal conflict with Diego Colón, Christopher Columbus’s son, over the right to govern Puerto Rico. After a long court battle, Columbus kicked him out of the governorship in 1511. Ponce decided to follow the advice of the sympathetic King Ferdinand and explore more of the Caribbean Sea.
In 1513, Ponce led the first known European expedition to La Florida, which he named during his first voyage to the area. In popular culture he was supposedly searching for the Fountain of Youth, but there is no real evidence to support the story, which most modern historians consider a myth.
In the following half century, the government of Spain launched no less than six expeditions attempting to settle Florida; all failed. In 1564 French Huguenots (Protestants) succeeded in establishing a fort and colony near the mouth of the St. Johns River at what is today Jacksonville. Many a skirmish between the Spanish and French occurred up and down the coast, attempting to claim the land and force their religions (Catholic vs. Protestant) on all those who were there or came there. St. Augustine was burned to the ground several times in these battles. The Spanish fort (Castillo de San Marcos) built in 1672 still stands as does the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. Built in 1793, it is the oldest Catholic Church in Florida. Its congregation, established in 1565, is the oldest Christian congregation in the contiguous US. Both structures are built with coquina – a natural stone made from small seashells broken down over time and hardened when exposed to air.
Fast forward to the 1763 Treaty of Paris, signed after Great Britain’s victory over France and Spain during the Seven Years’ War. Florida was ceded to Great Britain in exchange for the return of Havana and Manila. The vast majority of Spanish colonists in the region left Florida for Cuba as Florida became Great Britain’s fourteenth and fifteenth North American colonies (East and West Florida). Because of the political sympathies of its British inhabitants, the two Floridian colonies remained loyal to King George and St. Augustine became a Loyalist haven during the American Revolutionary War…. More on that below.
During the twenty-year period of British rule, Britain took command of both the Castillo de San Marcos (renamed Fort St. Mark) and of Fort Matanzas. They permanently stationed a small group of men at Fort Matanzas. Once war broke out, loyalist St. Augustine residents burned effigies of Patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock in the plaza. Fort St. Mark became a training and supply base, as well as a prisoner-of-war camp where three signers of the Declaration of Independence and South Carolina’s lieutenant governor Christopher Gadsden were held.
We always look at the American Revolution from an American perspective, with 13 colonies from New Hampshire down to Georgia. But when you look at the war from a British perspective, you realize that we’re not talking about 13 colonies, we’re talking about 33 colonies that they had to be concerned with, from Nova Scotia down to Grenada. Half of those colonies – 16 of them – were in the Caribbean.
During the American Revolution, approximately 60 percent of the British military was stationed in the Caribbean, to protect sugar production. In the 18th century, sugar was as important to the global economy as oil is today. The Floridas were located right between the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and the northern colonial revolt. The British launched attacks on the American rebellion from both St. Augustine in East Florida, and Pensacola in West Florida.
St. Augustine was particularly important to the British, as it had the only stone fortresses south of the Chesapeake Bay. The British had repeatedly attacked the Castillo de San Marcos when it was under Spanish control, and realized the strength of its coquina walls.
During a series of battles from 1779 to 1781, Spain was able to recapture West Florida from the British. When the American Revolution ended in 1783, England returned East Florida to the Spanish to keep control of Gibraltar. Spain continued to struggle to bring settlers to Florida and their control weakened. Gaining control of Florida for the US would mean gaining control of the Mississippi. In 1819, after years of negotiations, Secretary of State John Quincy Adam’s achieved a diplomatic coup with the signing the Florida Purchase Treaty which officially put Florida into US hands at no cost beyond US assumption of some $5 Million of claims by US citizens against Spain.
Florida would become a United States Territory in 1821. By 1840, the territory’s population had reached 54,477 people. Half the population were enslaved Africans. Florida was named a state in 1845. During the Civil War, Florida seceded from the Union (January 1861), being deemed a “slave state” and fought alongside the confederacy although it’s role was mostly one of supplying beef, pork, corn and molasses to the southern armies.
So much history, yet so much we’ve left out like John Flagler (close friend of John D. Rockefeller) being one of the richest men in the world who built extravagant hotels to make St. Augustine the “Newport of the South”. Those buildings, including the former Ponce De Leon Hotel, are now Flagler College complete with 79 Tiffany glass windows valued at over 130 Million! Also, Flagler’s duping of Franklin Smith as he attempted to build a hotel (Casa Monica) to complete with Flagler…..you’ll just have to go to St. Augustine and get the scoop on those on your own!
Sunday, 3/24 was Gary’s Birthday, so we enjoyed a bit of a walk about town finding a very local tavern for lunch, then venturing to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum – the first of the Ripley Museums in the country. That was quite the display of oddities! The Museum grounds include just one of two exact replicas of Michael Angelo’s David, the most recognized sculpture in the world. The replica was carved to the exact specifications of the original 17’ high statue and weighs 10 tons. The marble is even from the exact same quarry – Fantiscritti in Miseglia, Tuscany.
Michael Angelo’s David was first put on display, front and center of the Ripley property, right on the main drag…. let’s just say it caused quite the stir and even a few car accidents. David, in all of his nakedness, now sits behind a 12-13’ high set of hedges that shield him from the public (you can only see his shoulders and head) unless you walk into the viewing area within the hedges…. Of course we had to go see him! It’s art!
Ripley’s, as promised, was a strange collection of things from around the world, but did give us a few good laughs on what was a cool and windy day. Originally, the guys had planned on golfing but the winds were so strong they changed their golf plans to Monday, so the ladies similarly changed their shopping plans to Monday. Sunday was capped off by am amazing dinner at “The Fish Camp” … highly recommend….and of course, Gary’s favorite German chocolate cake back on the boat.
All good things must come to an end and Chris and Tricia headed back to the cold weather of MD on Monday afternoon, while we began to chart out our next ports of call on our adventure north. Next stop is one night in Sisters Creek, then on to Jacksonville, FL.
We are thrilled to have finally found the warm weather and are not wanting to head north too fast and get ahead of that! Mid June is still our “target date” to be home, but we still have lots of places to explore…. Stay tuned!
chashurley
Great history lesson! Lots I never knew. Chuck