Early Florida Adventure Story

A rare eyewitness account of a journey from Spain to the Americas during the Spanish colonial periodAmong documents of Floridas Spanish colonial period, few eyewitness accounts exist. One of these, the 1595 narrative by Fray Andrs de San Miguel, expertly translated into English by John Hann, describes the two-year odyssey of a teenager from Spain across the Atlantic to Mexico, Havana, and Florida and finally back to Spain. The future friars account of his experiences as a young sailor brings to life the fleets of Spain and reveals how his journeys would change his life forever. It also provides vivid information about the Indigenous people of the Georgia and Florida coast.After Andrss ship passed Cape Canaveral, it was battered by a four-day storm and separated from the fleet. The officers commandeered the only launch and escaped; the crew kept the ship afloat and improvised a box-like vessel in which 30 survivors reached shore near the mouth of the Altamaha Rivermore dead than alive for lack of food and water. The author offers detailed descriptions of the Guale Indians and of Mission San Pedro Mocama on Cumberland Island. He also provides vignettes of life in St. Augustine and, on his way to Havana, of encounters with South Florida Indians who came out to trade and with a gentlemanly English pirate. The adventure closes with Fray Andrs return to Cadiz, Spain, where he witnessed the 1596 British siege and burning of that port.Only seventeen years old at the time of the voyage, Fray Andrs presents a cold-eyed view of the sailing experience in the sixteenth century, trenchant observations of the behavior of the ships officers and the circumstances of the survival of the crew, and insight into the ambitions, concerns, and religiosity of the Spaniards. The book includes Hanns translation of a brief introductory essay written by Fray Andrs Mexican publisher, telling of the young mans entry into the Carmelites and his later life as a church architect, builder, and hydrographic expert involved in the drainage of the valley of Mexico City.