Fort San Felipe, Bacalar's bulwark against pirate attacks

A rusty cannon points toward Lago de Bacalar from one of the fort's four bastions. In my previous posting, I wrote about the piracy that plagued the Caribbean Sea and the coasts of the Yucatan Peninsula for 400 years. Between Bacalar's founding in 1544 and the early 18th century, the town's only defense consisted of a primitive earth and wood structure manned by local militia. As a result, Bacalar was subjected to a long series of devastating pirate attacks.

Finally, in 1725, the Spanish Crown bestirred itself and authorized the construction Fuerte (Fort) San Felipe. The fort is located on a bluff along the shore of Lago de Bacalar. In this position, it commands not only the approaches by water but also the trade route that runs north to south along the lakeshore. In this posting, I'll tell you about the history of the fort, its construction, and how it functioned as a military strong point. But first, a bit more about the pirates and those who opposed them.

Pirates attack a merchant ship. New World piracy started in the early16th century, while Cortez was still mopping up resistance to his conquest of the Aztec Empire. It began because the English, French, and Dutch had been excluded from the Americas by a Papal Bull in 1493. This decree gave the New World to the Spanish and Portuguese. The other powers responded by  sponsoring privateers. These were government-licensed business ventures authorized to attack Spanish shipping. In effect, they were legal pirates from whom the sponsoring government got a share of the spoils. Some corrupt officials turned a blind eye to "freebooters" (unlicensed pirates) in return for a personal cut of the spoils. The privateers/pirates not only attacked Spain's merchant ships, but also its coastal towns in the New World. After Bacalar was founded in 1544, the new trading center began to attract pirate attention.

At the beginning of the 17th century, a Dutch pirate named Cornelio Jol--better known as "Peg-leg"--became notorious in the Caribbean. Several times, he dispatched a Cuban, known as Diego the Mulatto, to raid Bacalar. Some of Diego's attacks came overland from the coast, but others arrived by shallow-draft sloops. They traveled from Chetumal Bay on the Caribbean up the Rio Hondo to  the swampy channels that connected the river to Lago de Bacalar.

Other pirates, English this time, nearly destroyed the town in 1628. Later in the century, a pirate named Abraham sacked Bacalar and abducted all of its women, but the Spanish rallied and freed the captives. Abraham had a long memory, however, and in 1652 he returned and thoroughly devastated Bacalar.  This raid, along with later epidemics and Maya uprisings, almost caused the town's abandonment.

However, the Spanish Crown was determined to revive Bacalar as a trading center. In 1725, they decided to build a powerful stone fort and man it with regular Spanish troops. The new structure was intended to replace the wood and earth structure that had proved so ineffective in defending the town. In 1726, colonists from the Canary Islands arrived to resettle and rebuild Bacalar.

Spanish colonial troops, similar to those that manned Fuerte San Felipe. Garrison duty in remote places like Bacalar was not a popular assignment. Regular army units tended to be understaffed and replacements for those felled by disease or wounds were often slow to arrive. So, to supplement the regulars, a local militia was formed from Bacalar's male population. Both the regular troops and the militia were armed with smoothbore flintlock muskets, tipped with long bayonets. Officers carried swords and flintlock pistols. There were also some artillery units, trained to operate the fort's several dozen cannons.

In the 18th century, regular armies were fairly small but highly trained. Men had to learn to maneuver in close order while surrounded by smoke, noise, and horrendous carnage. All the while, they had to perform a complex series of actions to load, aim, and fire their single shot weapons. The accurate range of the smoothbore muskets was fairly short, so coordinated massed-fire was necessary to stop a determined attack. All this required continuous training and drills.

Like the rest of Europe, Spain was a class-stratified society. Military officers were nearly always drawn from the aristocracy. Often they were second or third sons who saw no hope of inheritance and looked to the army for personal advancement. The enlisted men were virtually always commoners. Discipline for them was harsh and included flogging for even fairly minor offenses. This was considered especially necessary in remote outposts that were in constant danger of attack. The motivation among commoners to volunteer for the army would not have been patriotism, a concept foreign to the times. Most men joined simply to make a living or to escape a dull life as a farmworker or laborer. Some, no doubt, joined to evade civilian legal authorities.

In fact, the motivations for entering a life of piracy were nearly identical to those driving the common soldiers. Sometimes, after they were captured at sea or on a shore raid, honest men would join the pirate crews. After all, piracy held the possibility of high adventure and even riches. Another attraction was the amazingly democratic organization of pirate crews. They elected and removed their own officers and shared in the spoils according to the position they occupied in the pirate organization. One man stated that he became a pirate to avoid boredom and that he looked forward to "a short but merry life."

Exterior of Fuerte San Felipe

Fuerte San Felipe viewed from the street below the bluff on which it was built. This side of the fort faces the lake. The fort was first proposed in 1725 by Yucatan's Governor Antonio de Figueroa y Silva. The Crown approved the plan and work continued for eight years, until 1733. Various additions and improvements were added over the next century or so. The builders used wood from local trees and the abundant limestone of the Yucatan Peninsula. In this they followed the example of the pre-hispanic Maya who used the same materials for their palaces, temples, and pyramids.

Plan of the fort from 1772. At the top, you can see a series of profile views of the structure. At the bottom is a bird's eye view. The basic design was a square, with arrow-head-shaped bastions at each corner. Each bastion was named for a different saint, including Santa Ana, San Arturo, Santa Maria, and San Joaquin. The dark rectangular structure in the interior contained the officer's quarters, a storehouse for supplies and ammunition, and a chapel. A deep moat surrounds the fort's whole exterior. The Spanish had long experience in building such defenses and the fort was never successfully assaulted until the Caste War of the mid-19th century.

Carole walks up stone steps leading to the fort's moat and walls. While pirates continued to be a problem until the 19th century, by the time the fort was completed their "Golden Age" had passed. The British in Honduras (now Belize) and local Maya uprisings were now the main threats, with the British viewed as the greatest problem. The British arrived in Belize by accident, through a shipwreck in 1638. The settlement that resulted gradually evolved into many more, although the British refrained from establishing a formal colony until the mid-nineteenth century. The area of the British settlements lies along the coast of the Caribbean immediately to the south of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It was attractive to the British for several reasons: it was almost devoid of Spanish settlements; it provided good bases from which to prey upon Spanish shipping; and--best of all--Belize was the prime source for a type of wood used in the dyeing of textiles.

The high, crenellated, outer walls are surrounded by a deep moat. Sharp stakes were embedded in the bottom of the moat. These were intended to impale attackers attempting to reach the walls. Soldiers fired between the crenellations (open slots) along the top of the wall. The whole fort was constructed so that fire could be brought upon an enemy from multiple directions, leaving no place to hide.


Interior of Fort

View of the entrance of the fort, from the top of the blockhouse tower. Anyone approaching this entrance would first encounter a "V" shaped wall with firing slots on either side of the gate. They would then pass over the moat on a bridge. The one seen above is stone, but it was originally a wooden drawbridge. As you can see above, anyone attacking across the bridge could be brought under fire from multiple directions, including from the top of the blockhouse where I stood when I took this photo. The narrow bridge would force attackers to bunch up, making them easy targets.

View of the battlements from just inside the gate. One arm of the V-shaped wall can be seen on the right. The bridge leads off to the left, while the moat lies between the low wall in the center and the high crenellated wall in the back ground. Anyone standing in this spot could be fired upon from the front, both sides, and above.

The interior courtyard of the fort, including the all-important well. The courtyard is sizable, but troops assembled here could be quickly dispatched to any point that was threatened. The bridge from the gate reaches the courtyard between the two stone pillars in the upper right. In the upper left is one of the four bastions which contained most of the fort's cannons.

A well was an important feature in any fortification that might be brought under siege. Along with ammunition and food, an adequate supply of water was critical. Men could go without food for a considerable time and they could defend themselves with swords and bayonets if the ammunition ran low. However, men can last only about three days without water. A good well was much superior to water stored in casks, which could go stale or be used up.

The wheeled vehicles above are caissons. These were used to haul ammunition and to move cannons from one position to another. A few feet below the bastion's crenellations, you can see a ledge that extends along the walls. The stone ledge once supported a wood structure on which the soldiers could stand or move about while they fought off an attack.

Cannons faced in every direction from which an attack could be launched. In this position, they face inland, toward the town. By 1776, the fort had 24 cannons capable of firing projectiles measuring from one inch to six inches. Additional cannons were added later that had even greater firepower. By the mid-18th century, the threat of piracy had receded somewhat. However, an even greater threat loomed from British Honduras (now Belize). south of the Rio Hondo.

The Spanish had initially claimed that area, but had never settled it. Pirates began to use the bays and islands of northern Belize as supply depots and bases from which to attack Bacalar and other Spanish outposts. Some of these depots and bases eventually became English settlements. To the Spanish, these settlements posed an even greater threat, because they became focused on the exploitation of a valuable wood resource called Palo Tinte ("Dye Stick"). The wood was important in the process of dyeing textiles. There were no gold or silver mines or other high-profit resources in the area, so the wood was coveted by both the Spanish and the English.

View of the courtyard, including the well and the watchtower.  The flat root of this structure is the highest point in the fort. This meant if could function as lookout point, with a good view of a large stretch of the lake, as well as the whole interior of the fort. It would have been a good place from which the fort's commander could direct its defense. In addition, the watchtower could function as a "last ditch" stronghold if attackers managed to scale the outer defenses.

View from atop the lookout point down onto a gun position on the outer wall. This shot provides a sense of the depth of the moat and how difficult it would have been for an attacker to scale the walls. The construction of the original stone fort was not completed until 1733. During the succeeding decade, the attention of the Spanish Crown was focused elsewhere and maintenance was neglected. Finally in 1745, Governor Antonio Benavidez became concerned about the growing English settlements in Belize and the threat they posed to Bacalar. After inspecting Fuerte San Felipe, he persuaded the Crown to strengthen the defenses, including the moat and drawbridge, bastions at each corner, and more cannons.


The Barracks

The Barracks are a single-story, rectangular, stone building. Currently containing the fort's museum, this structure originally served multiple purposes, including that of a defensive position, should the walls be breached. Always deeply religious, the Spanish gave the Barracks the name Jesús Maria and included a small chapel in one of its rooms.

Floor plan showing the multiple functions of Jesús Maria. The chart shows areas for gunpowder storage, supplies, quarters for a small number of troops, the commander's room, the armory, and the chapel. Since the troop quarters are very small, most of the soldiers probably lived in town and only those on duty used this area. Likewise, the commander's room probably served as his office rather than living quarters.

Artifacts recovered in and around the fort. On the lower left are two large iron axes and a couple of iron nails. The long narrow object separating the axes from the cannon balls is a chain, which might have been part of the drawbridge mechanism. The various sizes of the cannon balls attest to the different calibers of the guns mounted on the parapets. At the upper right is an iron pot, possibly for cooking or carrying water.

This completes my posting on Bacalar's Fuerte San Felipe. I hope you have enjoyed it and, if so, you will leave any comments or questions in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim