On May 28 and 29, 1586, Sir Francis Drake led an attack on the Spanish city of St. Augustine. The Englishman commanded a fleet of 25 ships commissioned by Queen Elizabeth to conduct a series of raids against Spanish settlements in the Americas. Drake also attacked Cartagena, Columbia, and Santo Domingo, on the island of Hispaniola, during his expedition.
Baptista Boazio, Saint Augustine Map (1589)
Baptista Boazio, an Italian cartographer, created this map in 1589 in order to illustrate the exploits of Drake. This map is the oldest document in the collections of the State Library and Archives of Florida. Boazio’s map of St. Augustine is the earliest known visual depiction of a European settlement in what is now the United States.
Tags: maps, Sir Francis Drake, St. Augustine
To think that two years later Queen Elizabeth defeated the Spanish Armada with help of the weather. And thus began a long decline of Spain’s empire. A very neat map indeed. There is another in the Sevilla archives of the Indies that shows the layout of St. Augustine.