Fort Caroline

Fort Caroline National Memorial
IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape)
Location	Jacksonville, Florida, United States
Coordinates
Area	138.39 acres (0.56 km2)
Established	January 16, 1953
Visitors	145,736 (in 2005)
Governing body	National Park Service
Fort Caroline National Memorial
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
Nearest city	Jacksonville, Florida
Area	128 acres (51.8 ha)
Built	1564
NRHP Reference #	66000061
Added to NRHP	October 15, 1966

Fort Caroline was the first French colony in the present-day United States, located on the banks of the St. Johns River in what is now Jacksonville, Florida. It was established under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière on June 22, 1564, as a new territorial claim in French Florida and a safe haven for Huguenots. The French settlement came into conflict with the Spanish, who established St. Augustine in September 1565, and Fort Caroline was sacked by Spanish troops under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés on September 20. The Spanish continued to occupy the site as San Mateo until 1569.

The original location is unknown. In 1953 the National Park Service established the Fort Caroline National Memorial along the southern bank of the St. John's River near the point that commemorates Laudonnière's first landing. The memorial is now managed as a part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve although it remains a distinct National Park Service entity.

History

Further information: French Florida

Charlesfort (1562)

Fort Caroline shown in an old etching

Founding of Fort Caroline

A French expedition, organized by Protestant leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and led by the French Explorer Jean Ribault, had landed at the site on the May River (now the St. Johns River) in February 1562, here Ribault encountered the Timucuans who were led by Chief Saturiwa. Ribault then travelled to Present day South Carolina and with twenty-eight men built a settlement known as Charlesfort. Ribault then returned to Europe to arrange supplies for the new colony, but was arrested in England due to complications arising from the French Wars of Religion, which prevented his return.

Without supplies or leadership, and beset by hostility from the native populations, all but one of the colonists sailed back to Europe after only a year. During their voyage in an open boat, they were reduced to cannibalism before the survivors were rescued in English waters.

Fort Caroline (1564)

Floride françoise ("French Florida"), by Pierre du Val, 17th century.

Meanwhile, René Goulaine de Laudonnière, who had been Ribault's second-in-command on the 1562 expedition, led a contingent of around 200 new settlers back to Florida, where they founded Fort Caroline (or Fort de la Caroline) on a small plain formed by the western slope of the high steep bank later called St. Johns Bluff on June 22, 1564. The fort was named for King Charles IX of France. For just over a year, this colony was beset by hunger, Indian attacks, and mutiny, and attracted the attention of Spanish authorities who considered it a challenge to their control over the area.

In June 1565, Ribault had been released from English custody, and Coligny sent him back to Florida. In late August, Ribault arrived at Fort Caroline, with a large fleet and hundreds of soldiers and settlers, and took command of the settlement. However, the recently appointed Spanish Governor of Florida, Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, had simultaneously been dispatched from Spain with orders to remove the French outpost, and arrived within days of Ribault's landing. After a brief skirmish between Ribault's ships and Menéndez's ships, the latter retreated 35 miles (56 km) southward, where they established the settlement of St. Augustine. Ribault pursued the Spanish with several of his ships and most of his troops, but he was surprised at sea by a violent storm lasting several days. Meanwhile, Menéndez launched an assault on Fort Caroline by marching his forces overland during the storm, leading a surprise dawn attack on Fort Caroline on September 20. At this time, the garrison contained 200 to 250 people. The only survivors were about 50 women and children who were taken prisoner and a few defenders, including Laudonnière, who managed to escape; the rest were massacred.

As for Ribault's fleet, all of the ships either sank or ran aground south of St. Augustine during the storm, and many of the Frenchmen onboard were lost at sea. Ribault and his marooned sailors were located by Menéndez with his troops and summoned to surrender. Apparently believing that his men would be well treated, Ribault capitulated. Menéndez then executed Ribault and several hundred Huguenots (French Protestants) as heretics at what is now known as the Matanzas Inlet. The atrocity shocked Europeans even in that bloody era of religious strife. A fort built much later, Fort Matanzas, is in the vicinity of the site. This massacre put an end to France's attempts at colonization of the southeastern Atlantic coast of North America.

File:Timucuan chickee.jpg

Timucuan chickee reproduction

The Spanish destroyed Fort Caroline, but built their own fort on the same site. In April 1568, Dominique de Gourgues led a French force which attacked, captured and burned the fort. He then slaughtered the Spanish prisoners in revenge for the 1565 massacre. The Spanish rebuilt, but permanently abandoned the fort the following year. The exact location of the settlement is not known.

Fort Caroline (20th-century reproductions)

The original site of Fort de la Caroline has never been determined, but it is believed to have been located near the present day Fort Caroline National Memorial. The National Park Service constructed an outdoor exhibit of the original fort in 1964, but it was destroyed by Hurricane Dora in the same year. Today, the second replica, a near full-scale "interpretive model" of the original Fort de la Caroline, also constructed and maintained by the National Park Service, illustrates the modest defenses upon which the 16th-century French colonists depended.

Proposed alternative location

On February 21, 2014, researchers Fletcher Crowe and Anita Spring presented a theory at a conference hosted by Florida State University's Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies that Fort Caroline was located not on the St. Johns River, but on the Altamaha River in southeast Georgia. The scholars believe period French maps, particularly a 1685 map of "French Florida" from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, support the more northern location. They further argue that the Native Americans living near the fort spoke Guale, the language spoken in what is now Coastal Georgia, rather than Timucua, the language of northeast Florida. Other scholars have been skeptical of the hypothesis. University of North Florida archaeologist Robert Thunen considers the documentary evidence weak and believes the location is implausibly far from St. Augustine, considering the Spanish were able to march overland to Fort Caroline in two days amid a hurricane. Chuck Meide, archaeologist at the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, expressed similar criticism on the museum's blog, noting that other French and American scholars at the conference seemed similarly skeptical.

See also

• List of French possessions and colonies

References

Sources

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• Official website
• Short film entitled French in Florida: 1562 -1566: [1]
• University of Florida online finding aid for Fort Caroline: [2]
• The Fort Caroline Archeology Project - Official website
• Fort Matanzas National Monument
• Fort Caroline shown on an engraving by Jacques Le Moyne
• Les expéditions françaises en Floride (1562-1568) - in French by Hélène LHOUMEAU
• Robert Viking O'Brien's article on the French Florida colony from The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature
• "Le Moyne's Florida Indians" - eyewitness written accounts and artwork of French artist Le Moyne while at Fort Caroline
• Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) No. FL-521, "Fort Caroline National Memorial, Visitor Center, Jacksonville, Duval County, FL", 1 color transparency, 1 photo caption page
• "FOURTH EXPEDITION TO FLORIDA IN 1567, COMMANDED BY THE CHEVALIER DE GOURGUES." - written account of the de Gourgues revenge attack on Fort Caroline/San Mateo in 1567.