Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

Menéndez is credited as the Spanish leader who first surveyed and authorized the building of the royal fortresses at major Caribbean ports. He was appointed by the Crown in 1554 as Captain-General of the Fleet of the Indies, the Spanish treasure fleet; that year he departed with the fleet and brought it back safely to Spain. He was affirmed in his belief of the strategic importance of the Bahama Channel and that Havana, on the island of Cuba, was the key port to conduct a rendezvous of the annual Flota of treasure galleons. The appointment was highly prestigious, and it was unusual for the Crown to make the appointment. In the past the Casa de Contratación had controlled this position.[6]

King Phillip II and Menéndez maintained a close relationship. The Crown invited him to be a part of the Royal Party when Phillip married Mary I, Queen of England.[7][6]

In 1559, Philip II again appointed Menéndez as Captain General, and his brother Bartolomé Menéndez as Admiral, of the Fleet of the Indies.[8] He sailed for the Indies that October as captain general. He commanded the galleons of the great Armada de la Carrera, or Spanish Treasure Fleet, on their return voyage from the Caribbean and Mexico to Spain. Menéndez determined the route they followed, which led through the Straits of Florida (Spanish: Estrecho de Florida) and up the east coast of Florida,[9] taking advantage of the current of the Gulf Stream. In 1561, however, Menéndez was jailed by Casa officials for alleged smuggling, but he got his case transferred to court and won his release.

Menéndez is credited as the chief planner of the formalized Spanish treasure fleet convoy system that became the main link between Spain and her overseas territories. In partnership with ÁlvaIro de Bazán, he helped design the great galleons that carried the trade between Cadiz in Spain and Vera Cruz in Spanish Mexico.[10]

Later, in his capacity as adelantado, Menéndez was responsible for implementing royal policies to build fortification for the defense of conquered territories in La Florida and establish Castilian governmental institutions in desirable areas.[11]

In 1562, a group of Huguenots led by Jean Ribault arrived in territory claimed by Spain and called La Florida.[12] They explored the mouth of the St. Johns River in Florida, calling it la Rivière de Mai (the River May). The French sailed northward and established a settlement called Charlesfort at Port Royal Sound in present-day South Carolina.

On August 19, 1563, Pedro Menéndez and his brother Bartolomé were imprisoned by the Casa de Contratación, or House of Trade, accused of accepting bribes and smuggling silver into Spain. In September, he received news that La Concepción, flagship of the New Spain fleet and commanded by his son Admiral Juan Menéndez, had disappeared off the coast of South Carolina, and was assumed to be dead. The ship was lost in a hurricane that scattered the fleet as it was returning to Spain, at the latitude of Bermuda off the coast of South Carolina.[13] Menéndez conceived a plan for a voyage to La Florida to search for his son, whom he believed might have reached there, but he was powerless to initiate it from prison, and his petitions to King Philip II went unanswered.

Spain learned of the French expedition to Florida through its spies at ports on the Atlantic coast of France. Philip II was alarmed when Dr. Gabriel de Enveja reported that Jean Ribault had been appointed as "Captain-General and Viceroy of New France". He also said that a large expedition of ships, soldiers and supplies was being fitted at Dieppe for a voyage to Florida: it was to have more than 500 arquebusiers, and many dismounted bronze cannons were loaded aboard the vessels.

After his release from prison, Menéndez was available again to serve the king's purposes. He was appointed as adelantado of La Florida, with the promise of a large land grant and the title of marquis if he was successful. He advised the king of the strategic importance of exploring the Florida coast for discovery of trade passages to the riches of China and Molucca. There was the hope that such waterways might also lead to the mines of New Spain in central Mexico and to the Pacific. He proposed colonizing several areas to defend the territory against incursions by the Indians and foreign powers.

Menéndez expected to make vast profits for himself and to increase the royal treasury with this Florida enterprise, as it was to include the development of agriculture, fisheries, and naval stores. This ambitious venture was supported materially and politically by his kinship alliance of seventeen families from northern Spain, all tied by blood relations and marriage. They pledged their persons and fortunes to the adelentado, hoping to enrich themselves later with large grants of lands and royal honors of civil and military offices in La Florida. This support gave Menéndez a loyal cadre of lieutenants and officials who had blood connection to him, and had invested their own futures in his success.[14]

In early 1564 Menéndez asked permission to go to Florida to search for La Concepcion and his son, Admiral Juan Menéndez, who had been its commander. As noted above, they were lost in 1563 in a hurricane.[13] The crown continued to refuse his request.

René de Laudonnière, a Huguenot aristocrat who had participated in the first Jean Ribault expedition, returned to Florida in 1564 with three ships and 300 Huguenot colonists. He reached the River May on June 22, 1564, sailed up it a few miles, and founded Fort Caroline. (Modern Jacksonville later developed here.) The Crown was alarmed by these encroachments on Spanish territory in such proximity to the course of the Spanish treasure fleet.

Desiring to protect its claimed territories in North America against further incursions by European powers, the Spanish Crown issued an asiento to Menéndez, signed by Philip II on March 20, 1565, granting him expansive trade privileges, the power to distribute lands, and licenses to sell 500 slaves, as well as various titles, including that of adelantado of Florida.[15] Menéndez was commissioned to reconnoiter North America from the Florida Keys to present-day Canada, and report on its coastal features, with a view to establishing a permanent settlement for the defense of the Spanish treasure fleet. He was ordered as well to drive away any intruders who were not subjects of the Spanish crown.[16]

On July 28, 1565, Menéndez set sail from Cádiz with a fleet led by his 600-ton flagship, the San Pelayo, accompanied by several smaller ships, and carrying over 1,000 sailors, soldiers, and settlers.[17] On the feast day of St. Augustine, August 28, the fleet sighted land and anchored off the north inlet of the tidal channel that the French called the River of Dolphins.[18] This was developed as the site of the present-day city of St. Augustine. Menéndez sailed north and confronted Ribault's fleet outside the bar of the River May in a brief skirmish. On September 6, he returned to his first landfall, naming the site it after the Catholic saint, disembarked his troops, and quickly constructed fortifications to protect his people and supplies.[19][20]

Menéndez marched his soldiers overland from St. Augustine to destroy the French settlement at Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River. On 20 September 1565, they made a surprise attack and killed everyone in the fort except for the women and children; 132 Frenchmen were killed.[21] Menéndez left a Spanish garrison at the captured fort, now renamed San Mateo. (In 1568 French soldiers returned and destroyed it, killing the Spanish garrison in retaliation for the 1565 massacre.)

Menéndez pursued Jean Ribault, who had already left with four ships to attack the Spanish at St. Augustine. After Ribault had put out to sea, he was surprised by a storm that wrecked three of his ships near what is now the Ponce de Leon Inlet. His flagship was grounded near present-day Cape Canaveral.[22] Informed by Indian allies that the French survivors were walking northward on the coast, Menéndez began to search for them, finding the party at the banks of the Matanzas River's south entrance.[23] After several parleys with the Spanish, Ribault and the 150-350 Frenchmen with him (sources differ) surrendered. The Spanish executed nearly all of them in the dunes near the inlet. It was later known as Matanzas (Spanish for "slaughters").[24] Having taken control of the Florida coast, Menéndez had his soldiers complete the fort in St. Augustine. He also established missions to the natives for the Catholic Church, and explored the east coast and interior of the peninsula.

In May 1566, as relations with the neighboring Timucua Indians deteriorated, Menéndez moved the Spanish settlement to a more defensible position on the north end of the barrier island between the mainland and the sea, building a wooden fort there. In 1572, the settlement was relocated to the mainland, in the area just south of the future town plaza. Secure as governor, Menéndez explored the area and built additional fortifications.

He also commissioned the Juan Pardo expedition, to travel from Santa Elena, at Port Royal Sound in present-day South Carolina, into the interior of the Southeast. Captain Pardo was to find and supply an alternate overland route to the Spanish silver mines in central Mexico, as the Spanish mistakenly thought the Appalachian Mountains were part of a range extending that far. In the next couple of years, Pardo and his men traveled into present-day South Carolina and Western North Carolina, stopping at the Mississippian chiefdom of Joara, where they built Fort San Juan and wintered over. In total, his expedition built six forts along this route, extending as far as one known as San Pedro at Chiaha in southeastern Tennessee. Pardo left the expedition for other business. In 1568 all the Spanish men but one in the garrisons were killed by Native Americans resisting their treatment, and the forts were destroyed. The Spanish did not attempt other colonization in this region.

Confident that he had fulfilled his primary contract with the King, including construction of forts along the coast of La Florida, Menéndez returned to Spain in 1567.[25] He was appointed governor of Cuba, in October of that year.[26] After several more transatlantic crossings, Menéndez fell ill and died on September 17, 1574.[27]