September 8, 1565: Our Nation's Oldest City 452 years ago (George Gardner's St. Augusine Report)

Happy birthday, St. Augustine -- we're 452 years young.

Not a word in the failed, flailing, mismanaged soon-to-be formerly MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS owned St. Augustine Record about our Nation's Oldest City's 452nd anniversary yesterday. Jacksonville residents provide editing and copy editing.

While promising to move here when he took over from failed editor KATHY NELSON, did CRAIG RICHARDSON ever move to St. Augustine?  Not as of the last time I asked him.  The Bolles graduate commutes from Jacksonville to St. Augustine, with copy editing functions in Jacksonville, as Opinion Editor Jim Sutton has admitted.

Here's some history from our wise, octogenarian former Mayor George R. Gardner's St. Augustine Report:

From former Mayor George Gardner's St. Augustine Report
History's highlight
Hurricane - September 1565
As the Spanish fleet sailed north along the Florida coast, Menendez spied the area where he would found his colony. But he continued north until the French settlement was spotted.
There followed a brief flexing of sea muscle; several of the lighter French ships made for the open sea, to draw off the Spanish and perhaps take some prizes. Several of the heavier Spanish ships gave chase but soon turned back. Shipwreck
Now the experienced Menendez, who had commanded ships of all descriptions in all kinds of weather since his teenage years, ordered his fleet south.
To the French, it was victory. To Menendez, it was common sense. He knew the sudden viciousness of autumn storms, and he sensed such a storm brewing now.
He put in at the bay he had passed earlier, sent officers ashore to scout a location for a fort, and two days later, Saturday, September 8, 1565, with trumpets blaring, pennants waving and the assemblage singing the hymn, Te Deum Laudamus, he knelt and kissed the cross that had been brought ashore, and proclaimed the establishment of St. Augustine. It was named for the saint on who's feast day he had first sighted the Florida coast.
His keen senses were correct, and a storm carried by ever blackening clouds frothed along the sea and pounded into the coast.
Ribault, meanwhile, his people swelled with confidence by earlier events, now realized the storm was coming, but decided this was the opportune time for his fleet to attack the Spanish in their harbor. Older hands thought otherwise, to which Ribault sternly charged that those not following the attack would be traitors.
Menendez had his own plan. Rather than risk his ships, he would lead his troops overland to Fort Caroline. Grumbles were met with his own charge: All not of the true faith would die.
Leaving a skeleton force at Fort Caroline, Captain Ribault, with eight ships and 350 men, drove into the storm. Menendez's troops, meanwhile, struggled through the wilderness in torrential rains, finally finding the fort virtually defenseless.
The few survivors of the relentless onslaught, women and children, were marched back to St. Augustine to spend months in servitude, awaiting ransom to free them. By Menendez's orders, they would not be harmed. Any soldier found molesting a captive would be put to death. Menendez even held out some hope that one day the women might intermarry with his people and strengthen the colony.
The fleet of Captain Jean Ribault, meanwhile, had been storm-driven fifteen miles south of its goal and tattered along the shoreline.