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THE GUNS OF ANASTASIA
42" X 66" Oil Painting
Video
British Colonial artillery shell Spanish St. Augustine, 1740.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the old conflicts that
dominated the fate of Europe had spread to the colonial regions in
the Americas. The encroachment of British colonists from the Carolinas
into the frontier and coastal islands that separated them from Spanish
Florida became the catalyst for an exchange of hostilities both on the
Atlantic coast and inland.
In June of 1740, General James Oglethorpe, Governor and military leader
of the British colony of the Carolinas and the Georgia frontier, launched
a siege on St. Augustine by land and sea.
This portrayal depicts one of the British batteries preparing to shell
the Castillio De San Marcos in St. Augustine from the island of Anastasia.
The assembly of invaders included red-coated soldiers of Oglethorpe's own
47th Regiment of Foot, Carolinian Militia volunteers, Scottish immigrant
volunteers, Naval crews, Royal artillerymen and their allied Creek Indian
scouts. Conscripted black slaves were brought to labor in the construction
and the operation of the battery. Oglethorpe is seen in the center
foreground observing the preparation of a gun position as other batteries
fire upon the fort.
The siege lasted for nearly a month and was finally abandoned when English
provisions on the barn island were depleted. The Spanish defender's
successful resistance to the cannonade insured the survival of their
colony once more.
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