Trip Report - Fort Frederica, Saint Simon Island, Georgia
August 31, 2003
FREDERICA, FORT AND TOWN: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
A regular engagement ensued, lasting about one hour, before the
Spanish broke off contact and retreated again. Unsure of the terrain or how many enemy soldiers he faced, Montaino reembarked his forces,
set sail, and returned to Florida. Never again would the tread of the Spanish boot break the stillness of Georgia's oak and pine forests.
By 1743, nearly 1,000 people lived at Frederica. The town enjoyed a relative measure of prosperity owing to the crown's dispensation,
but it was a prosperity that was built on military outlays. For Frederica, the peace treaty that Great Britain and Spain signed in
1748 sounded its death knell. No longer needed to guard against Spanish attack, the garrison was withdrawn and disbanded.
The effect was similar to base closings today.
Interest revived in Fort Frederica in the 1900s. Local residents took a lead
in preserving the site as a reminder of America's colonial past. In 1945,
Fort Frederica National Monument was established.
Archaeological excavations were done in time that uncovered Frederica's past
and allowed its story to be told again to new
generations of Americans. Although it failed as a settlement, its success in
defending Georgia from Spanish attack made its success as first as a British
colony and
later as part of the United States possible. The National Park service, in line
with avowed mission will continue to preserve, protect and Interpfret for future
generations.
Three years after founding Georgia in 1733, Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe established Fort Frederica to defend the fledgling colony against
Spanish attack from Florida. In time, long after the British garrison had left and the original townspeople abandoned Frederica the famed
Quaker, naturalist William Bartram, would stand on the grounds of Frederica. He wrote in his famous Travels of William Bartram:
"The fortress was regular and beautiful, constructed chiefly with brick, and
was the largest, most regular, and perhaps most costly of any in North America,
of British construction: it is now in ruins, yet occupied by a small garrison;
the ruins also of the town ownly remain; peach
trees, figs, pomegranates, and other shrubs grow out of the ruinous walls of
former spacious and expensive buildings, not only in the town, but at a distance
in various parts of the island; yet there are a few neat houses in good repair,
and inhabited: it seems now recovering
again, owing to the public and liberal spirit and exertions of J. Spalding, esq.,
who is the president of the island, and engaging in very extensive mercantile
concerns." The NPS restoration has attempted to show future generations of the
glory of what was.
Initially, the purpose of the Georgia colony was not so ambitious. Its founders,
General Oglethorpe and twenty other trustees saw it as a social experiment, a
humanitarian mission to relieve unemployment and relief to those who crowded
England's squalid debtors prisons.
This altruistic goal eventually expanded to include the more pragmatic purposes
of expanding trade for the mother country and providing a buffer colony on the
southern frontier.
The original goal of General Oglethorpe and the other trustees to relieve the
suffering of those in debtors prisons remains a powerful
myth even today, but despite these good intentions, the reality was far different.
History records only eleven families fitting the description of debtors that
eventually settled in Georgia during its early history. Even as the trustees
began their work of establishing
Georgia, they realized that the new colony required people with specific skills
and recruited settlers accordingly. At Fort Frederica, this meant people who
could provide products or services of use to the soldiers of the garrison and
to the other settlers in the community. This elimenated many of the debtors
that did not have the required and desired skills.
The first settlers in Georgia arrived in 1733. Sailing up the Savannah River,
they established a settlement on a defensible bluff that
General Oglethorpe selected for that reason. He would spend the next ten years
working to make the colony succeed. One of Gen. Oglethorpe's primary concerns
involved Georgia's defense. The colony lay in an area between South Carolina
and Florida,
"debatable" land that was claimed by both Great Britain and Spain. The Spanish
claim predated Britain's by more than a century and a half and at one point,
Spain occupied a number of missions along the Georgia coast. These, it eventually
withdrew, providing
Britain with a window of opportunity to fill the vacuum. Nevertheless, General
Oglethorpe did not trust Spain which had denounced the new colony of its border
with Florida and knew that his venture would not go unchallenged.
To forestall any Spanish attempt to regain the Georgia land, General Oglethorpe
pushed south from Savannah. Exploring the coast, he
selected St. Simons Island for a new fortification. The site, sixty miles south
of Savannah, would become the military headquarters for the new colony.
Here,
in 1736, he established Fort Frederica, named for the Prince of Wales, Frederick
Louis (1702-1754).
The feminine spelling was added to distinguish it from another fort with the
same name.)
Fort Frederica combined both a military installation, a fort, with a settlement,
the town of Frederica. Due to the Spanish threatonly seventy-five miles away,
General Oglethorpe took measures to fortify both, surrounding the entire forty-acre
area with an outer wall. This consisted of an earthen wall called a rampart that
gave protection to soldiers from enemy shot and shell, a dry moat and two
ten-foot tall wooden palisades. The wall measure one mile in circumference. Contained
within this outer defense perimeter was a stronger fort that guarded Frederica's
water approaches. Designed in the traditional European pattern of the period,
the fort
included three bastions, a projecting spur battery now washed away, two storehouses,
a guardhouse, and a stockade. The entire structure was surrounded in a manner
similar to the town by earthen walls and cedar posts approximately ten feet high.
The moat fiulled with water depending on the tides, it still does to a degree
these days.
The fort's
location on a bend in the Frederica River allowed it to control approaches
by
enemy ships.
Although little remains to remind us of its prowess today, a visitor in 1745
described it as "a pretty strong fort of tabby, which
has several 18 pounders mounted on a ravelin (triangular embankment) mounted
in its front, and commands the river both upwards and downwards. It is surrounded
by a quadrangular rampart, with four bastions of earth well stocked and turned,
and a palisade ditch."
Frederica town followed the traditional pattern of an English village. Similar
in style if not in scale to Williamsburg, VA., its lots were laid out in two
wards separated by a central roadway called Broad St. Each house occupied a lot
sixty by ninety feet.
Lots had room for gardens and settlers were given additional acreage elsewhere
on the island for growing crops.
The first shelters at Frederica were called palmetto bowers. These involved wooden
branches covered with palmetto leaves which while lacking amenities of a more
permanent structure proved adequate for providing shelter from the sun and rain
but not the insects, malaria was endemic..
In time, many settlers
replaced their bowers with more substantial structures than these, but nothing
more than foundations remain today. Frederica was never intended to be self-sufficient.
Even before the settlers left England, the trustees had provided that adequate
stores be furnished
for their needs. These were distributed to the towns people on a regular basis.
Nevertheless, the settlers were also not expected to remain idle. General Oglethorpe
had banned slavery from the colony for that very reason. Although the trustees'
involvement was purely philanthropic, it was expected that the colonists would
prosper by producing
wine, silk, or some other commodity. General Oglethorpe imported 5,000 mulberry
trees to try an encourage silk production, but at no success. As an economic
venture, Frederica failed as well as Georgia.
In other ways, though, Frederica did succeed. As a military bastion, the fort
served as a clear reminder of British power in the region.
Nor was it alone it this purpose. In addition to Fort Frederica, there were four
other British outposts located farther south. One of these was Fort St. Simons,
located on the south end of St. Simons Island, where the lighthouse currently
stands.
It guarded the entrance
into Jekyll Sound that provided access to Frederica's back door. Other forts
were located at the north and south ends of Cumberland Island and on the St.
Johns River in Florida.
Lacking sufficient numbers of soldiers, General Oglethorpe returned to England in 1737 to raise a regiment of redcoats. He was given the
42nd Regiment of Foote, now known as "Oglethorpe's Regiment," consisting of 250 men from Gibraltar, 300 men recruited in England,
and 45 men from the tower of London. These combined with the soldiers already in Georgia placed nearly 1,000 men under his command. Returning from England, the regiment fell in for the first time on September 28, 1738.
General Oglethorpe's foresight proved fortunate. A year after the regiment arrived at Fort Frederica, Great Britain declared war on Spain. This started a nine-year struggle known in Europe as the War of the Austrian Succession, and America as King George's War. In the
southeast, General Oglethorpe made the first move and launched an attack against St. Augustine. Although equipped with sufficient men
and supplies, General Oglethorpe's siege failed and the impregnable Castillo de San Marco remained in Spanish control.
The British
forces retreated northward, but General Oglethorpe understood that whatever respite they had gained would be temporary.
The Spanish response came two years later. A fleet with thirty-six ships and 2,000 soldiers sailed from St. Augustine and arrived off
St. Simons Island early in July. The ships forced a passage of Jekyll sound, following a lengthy cannonade with Fort St. Simons.
Little damage was done to the Spanish fleet and the soldiers landed unopposed at Gascoigne Bluff, near where the causeway is today.
There, they proceeded to march overland and capture Fort St. Simons without further resistance. The British garrison there evacuated
before the Spanish soldiers arrived and retreated north to Fort Frederica.
Despite his initial success, the Spanish commander, Manuel de Montiano, proceeded captiously. He sent a reconnaissance in force of
200 men up the Military Road in the direction of Fort Frederica. Before they arrived outside the gates of the town, General Oglethorpe
took the offensive. He sent a column of his own troops out to meet the Spanish in the wooded thickets east of Frederica. At a spot
where the road crossed a sluggish stream named Gully Hole Creek, the British sprung their trap, firing a volley of bullets into the
lead group of Spanish troops.
Caught off guard, the Spanish recoiled in shock and confusion, retreating back toward their
compatriots at Fort St. Simons. The British followed up their victory by pursuing the Spanish. Montiano sent reinforcement to help the first column of soldiers,
but these too were caught unawares and ambushed at Bloody Marsh.
The local economy collapsed and as many as half the town's people left to seek their
fortunes elsewhere. Those that remained continued to call Frederica home until 1758. In that year, a fire started and before the last
flame died out what remained of the town was a blackened, charred ruin. Nature finished the process of reclaiming Frederica with vines
overgrowing the few tabby ruins still standing and in time little was left but a memory.
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