When France Tried To Colonize Florida By the time Spain established St. Augustine in 1565, France already had a toehold in Florida. The French had grand plans for the region, but they quickly ended in failure. By Wayne Curtis
On August 12, 2014,
two divers rolled into the water from the research vessel Roper, anchored just off the coast of Florida’s Cape Canaveral. They were pretty sure they’d find something beneath the sand that day. Earlier that summer, the ship had towed a side-scan sonar and a magnetometer over the seabed, and all of a sudden the computers had come alive and registered a major magnetic signature, indicating that some large object containing iron or steel was beneath them. “It was a pretty decent hit, and had a sizable magnetic anomaly,” says Chuck Meide, director of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum, who was leading the crew on board the boat that day. “When we saw our first anomaly in the survey area, everybody was huddled around the computers and we were all excited.” Some days later, divers swam down about 25 feet to the seabed. Using a 10-foot hydraulic probe, they repeatedly
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The French French built built Fort Fort Caroline Caroline in in 1564 1564 near near what what is is now now The the city of Jacksonville. This historical illustration of the the city of Jacksonville. This historical illustration of the fort was drawn by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues and fort was drawn by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues and reproduced by by Theodore Theodore de de Bry. Bry. reproduced
bore into the sand using a narrow, high-pressure stream of water. After a little over two-dozen probes, they got a “hard return”—meaning the probe detected something immovable not far beneath the surface. Had they at last found La Trinité, the French ship that
fall • 2015
