The Spaniards in Florida

A careful, compact chronicle, this work draws directly from the earliest Spanish and French accounts of Florida’s first European footholds. The author preserves the original flavor of those 16th‑century sources, letting readers hear the voices of explorers, missionaries, and soldiers as they described the new coastline, its native peoples, and the promise of a southern empire.

The narrative follows the daring French Huguenot settlement at Fort Caroline and the swift Spanish response that led Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to found St. Augustine, America’s oldest continuously inhabited European city. Early clashes, shipwrecks and uneasy alliances shape a vivid picture of a contested frontier, where ambition, faith, and survival collided on the Gulf’s edge.