An Early Florida Adventure Story The Fray Andrés de San Miguel Account

A rare eyewitness account of a journey from Spain to the Americas during the Spanish colonial period

Among
documents of Florida's Spanish colonial period, few eyewitness accounts
exist. One of these, the 1595 narrative by Fray Andrés 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 friar's 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 Andrés's 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 River--more 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 Andrés'
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 Andrés presents a cold-eyed view of the sailing
experience in the sixteenth century, trenchant observations of the
behavior of the ship's officers and the circumstances of the survival of
the crew, and insight into the ambitions, concerns, and religiosity of
the Spaniards. The book includes Hann's translation of a brief
introductory essay written by Fray Andrés' Mexican publisher, telling of
the young man's 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.