Re-enactors also fire cannons at Fort Matanzas, about 14 miles south. This fort, built of coquina as well, is so much smaller that four of it would fit into the Castillo's courtyard without touching. The name Matanzas derives from the fate of hundreds of French soldiers led by Jean Ribault who were swept south in a 1565 hurricane while going to attack St. Augustine. They were caught by Spanish forces led by the city's founder, Gen. Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who ordered them slain 10 at a time. How the soldiers' quarters may have appeared.
Visitors reach the little fort on Rattlesnake Island via a free ferry running once an hour.
Built between 1740-1742, Fort Matanzas became a U.S. possession in 1821. But it deteriorated into a cracked ruin and sprouted trees. In the early 1700s, British slaves in the Carolina territory learned that the lives of their counterparts in Spanish Florida was better. Word quickly spread among slaves in Carolina of a 1733 Spanish decree that any who reached St. Augustine, accepted Roman Catholicism and swore fealty to the king of Spain would be granted freedom. About two miles north of the Castillo, the ex-slaves built a wooden fort and a town, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.