Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (15 February 1519 – 17 September 1574) was a Spanish admiral, explorer, and conquistador from Avilés, in Asturias, Spain. He is notable for planning the first regular trans-oceanic convoys, which became known as the Spanish treasure fleet, and for founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. This was the first successful European settlement in Spanish Florida and the most significant city in the region for nearly three centuries.
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited, European-established settlement in the continental United States. Menéndez de Avilés was the first governor of La Florida (1565–74). By his contract, or asiento, with Philip II, Menéndez was appointed adelantado and was responsible for implementing royal policies to build fortifications for the defense of conquered territories in La Florida and to establish Castilian governmental institutions in desirable areas.
Early years Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was born to an old noble family in the kingdom of Asturias. He was one of the younger sons of Juan Alonso Sánchez de Avilés, who had served the Catholic Monarchs in the War of Granada, and María Alonso y Menéndez Arango. His parents had twenty children, and Pedro was still a child when his father died.
After his mother remarried, Pedro was sent to live with a relative who promised to oversee his education. Pedro and his guardian did not get along, and he ran away from home. He was found six months later in Valladolid and taken back to his foster home. Eventually Menéndez entered the military and went off to fight in one of the wars with France. He served at sea in a small armada against the French corsairs who harassed the maritime commerce of Spain.
Military career
After two years of fighting, Menéndez returned to his family, having conceived a plan to use part of his inheritance to build his own vessel. He built a patache, a small but fast row-sailer, suitable for patrolling the coast. He recruited a number of his relatives to sail with him in search of adventure.
In this ship, the young Menéndez won his first victory of command in an engagement with French corsairs who had attacked three slow Spanish freighters off the coast of Galicia. By effective captainship, he separated the two swift zabras (Biscayan frigates) that pursued him and captured them both, and drove away the third. The exploits of Pedro Menéndez soon became a topic of conversation on the waterfronts of Spain and France, and in the royal courts. Meanwhile, the Seville merchants and the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) were chagrined by Menéndez's success and his growing influence with the Crown.
Treasure fleet
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.
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.extracted from the historical text available at http://augustine.com Written History
In 1559, Philip II again appointed Menéndez as Captain General, and his brother Bartolomé Menéndez as Admiral, of the Fleet of the Indies. He sailed for the Indies that October as captain general and 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 Florida Strait () and up the east coast of Florida, 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 1561, he designed and built a twelve-ship flotilla of 230-ton galley-like galleons (galeones agalerados) inspired by the Atlantic galleasses built by Álvaro de Bazán the Elder. The ships were used to escort the treasure fleet, being soon known as the "Twelve Apostles" for their reliability and success at hunting down foreign piracy and privateering. They were also used in combination with two heavy, 800-ton galleasses built by Cristóbal de Barros. Furthermore, in partnership with Bazán the Younger, he helped design the great galleons that carried the trade between Cádiz in Spain and Vera Cruz in Spanish Mexico."The galleon evolved in response to Spain's need for an ocean-crossing cargo ship that could beat off corsairs. Pedro de Menéndez, along with the marquis Santa Cruz (later a hero of the Battle of Lepanto), is credited with developing the prototypes which had the long hulland sometimes the oarsof a galley married to the poop and prow of a nao or merchantman. Galeones were classed as 1-, 2- or 3-deckers, and stepped two or more masts rigged with square sails and topsails (except for a lateen sail on the mizzenmast). Capacity ranged up to 900 tons or more. Menéndez's San Pelayo of 1565 was a 900-ton galleon, which was also called a nao and galeaza. She carried 77 crewmen, 18 gunners, transported 317 soldiers and 26 families, as well as provisions and cargo. Her armament was iron." Menéndez: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Captain General of the Ocean Sea. Albert C. Manucy. Pineapple Press, Inc. (1992). p. 100
Later, in his capacity as adelantado, Menéndez was required to explore this vast territory, which extended from the Gulf coast of present-day western Florida around the Florida keys to Newfoundland. He also was commanded by the king to establish two or three fortified presidios and settle them with settlers and slaves, and to begin the conversion of the Indians to Catholicism.
Enterprise of La Florida
In 1562, a group of Huguenots led by Jean Ribault arrived in territory claimed by Spain and called La Florida. 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 19 August 1563, Pedro Menéndez and his brother Bartolomé were imprisoned by the Casa de Contratación, 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 Juan 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. Menéndez conceived a plan for a voyage to La Florida to search for his son, who 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.
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. 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 22 June 1564, sailed up it a few miles, and founded Fort Caroline. 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 20 March 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. 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.
On 28 July 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. On the feast day of St. Augustine, 28 August, the fleet sighted land and anchored off the north inlet of the Matanzas River that the French called the River of Dolphins. 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 6 September, 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.
Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, the chaplain of the expedition, celebrated the first Thanksgiving Mass on the grounds. The formal Franciscan outpost, Mission Nombre de Dios, was founded at the landing point, perhaps the first mission in what would become the continental United States.Herreros, Mauricio Spiritual Florida: A Guide to Retreat Centers and Religious Sites in Florida, p. 25 The mission served nearby villages of the Mocama, a Timucua group, and was at the center of an important chiefdom in the late 16th and 17th century.