When Florida was officially transferred to the English, most of the Spanish residents chose to depart for Cuba. Some stayed, especially the very poor, many blacks, and individuals of mixed blood. Even a few of the wealthier Spanish settlers remained to maintain their extensive properties and investments in Florida. At least one stayed to spy on the English.
The English had obtained a great continental peninsula with its eastern boundaries on the Atlantic Ocean, and its western boundaries on the Mississippi River. As the Spanish had done, they divided the new province into two parts. All the lands west of the Apalachiola River, including the very small settlement at Pensacola, became British West Florida and a part of the
history of this region. The eastern lands, basically the Florida peninsula itself, became British East Florida, headquartered in Saint Augustine, home for virtually all of Florida 's residents.
In 1775, when armed conflict commenced, British East Florida 's security rested on the rather inadequate shoulders of a few companies of the English 14th and 16th Regiments of Foot and a handful of artillerymen at the Saint Augustine fort. By October of 1775, drafts of troops sent north had reduced the regular garrison in Saint Augustine to thirty-five soldiers of the 16th Foot and a company of hastily raised and ill-trained local militiamen. In the months that followed, Florida 's new governor, Patrick Tonyn, directed a number of small blockhouse forts to be constructed to help protect the province. Forts were established at Picolata, Anastasia, Matanzas, and Smyrna. A more substantial structure, Fort Tonyn, was built where the King's Road from Saint Augustine crossed the St. Mary's River, the official border separating the colonies of Georgia and Florida.
The Rebels to the north considered Florida to be a natural, or at least, a very desirable, part of the soon-to-be-declared new American nation. Their first act of war in Florida was the seizure of an English brig, the Betsey, and its load of 111 barrels of gunpowder by a Carolina privateer ship within sight of Saint Augustine. Between fall of 1775 and early spring of 1776, the Rebels raided Loyalist settlements along the Georgia-Florida border.
With fewer than four hundred muskets within its borders, Florida was virtually defenseless by land. Only the sloops, and later, frigates of the Royal Navy protected Florida from seaborne invasion. This essential function of the Navy would continue and prove crucial to the ultimate survival of British East Florida in the violent years ahead.
In the early summer of 1776, the American Rebels assembled a force of more than two thousand men in Savannah, Georgia, under the command of Colonel William Moultrie. The mission of this force was to invade and conquer Florida. Fortunately for Florida, command problems and widespread sickness so crippled this small army that it never advanced farther than Sunbury, Georgia. Even had it actually invaded, Florida was no longer quite as defenseless as it had been a few months earlier. The first contingent of the King's 60th Regiment of Foot (Royal Americans) had arrived in Saint Augustine under the command of Colonel, later Brigadier General, Augustine Prevost.
As important to the future survival of British Florida as the arrival of the 60th Foot, was the arrival of Thomas Browne, formerly of Augusta, Georgia. A man of quite considerable competence and energy, Browne had been tarred, feathered, and partially scalped by Georgia Rebels for his loyalty to King George III. Recognizing his merits, Governor Tonyn commissioned Browne a colonel, and authorized him to raise, equip, and lead a force of irregular militia. This force would be called the East Florida Rangers. Rarely numbering more than two hundred, Browne and his Rangers assisted by a large band of partially red-coated Seminole Indians, were to perform signal services to the crown during the next few years.
American privateers roamed the Atlantic Coast from Canada to the Caribbean Sea, capturing enemy merchant vessels and effectively blockading the east coast of Florida, the Tory residents (British) of Cow Ford (Jacksonville) were unable to obtain supplies and so fled northward into Bullock County, Georgia.
Following this incident, the British Navy would successfully patrol the ocean, intercostal waters, and rivers.
On November 2, 1775 Governor Tonyn issued a proclamation that invited the loyalist to come to Florida and promising them free land. Starting in the spring of 1778 large groups of Loyalist exiles from South Carolina arrived in Florida. The men formed two small regiments'the South Carolina Royalists and the Royal North Carolina Regiment. Other men enlisted in Browne's Rangers.
In the fall of 1776 the first batch of prisoners arrived in Saint Augustine from Virginia. There were twenty-eight prisoners and their slaves sent by Lord Dunmore.
Some were kept on the sloop, Otter that was used as a prison ship. Some including Colonel Lawson and Captain Weltcoat were kept in the fort.
In 1780 the brig Bellona under Captain Harrison from North Carolina drifted on to Anastasia Island. The crew of seventy plus men was made prisoners by the guards in the lighthouse. Some were held there and some were taken to the fort. Some of the European captives entered the 60th Regiment and some joined the British Navy.
Some French were also held prisoners here. They included Chevalier De Bretigny, sixteen of his officers, and two hundred of his enlisted men who were captured by the British Florida Navy. Included in this group was at least one person who would report back to France on the possibility of taking Saint Augustine. There were at least seventeen French vessels taken from the Charleston area with crews to Saint Augustine. These people were originally kept on Anastasia Island in the tower on the lighthouse. However as the group increased in size they were given liberty for the island. These men were finally sent on to the French Caribbean.
Dr. Father Pedro Camps was a Minorcan priest.
Father Camps kept the records of the births, deaths, and marriages in the Minorcan community in a book today
called the Golden Book of the Minorcans. November 9, 1777 in the New Smyrna church was transferred to Saint Augustine. Father Camps lived in Saint Augustine till his death in the 2nd Spanish period on May 19, 1790.
Reverend John Kennedy arrived in 1777 with a royal appointment to the Free Schools in East Florida as schoolmaster up to 1785. The subjects taught, according to a table of fees fixed by the Council in 1775, and included English, writing, arithmetic, Latin and Greek.
In May, 1777 American Colonel Samuel Elbert led an expeditionary force to invade Florida. His force totalled 600-800 men. He divided them into two groups, putting Colonel John Baker in charge of the land-based advance while he took the rest of the men aboard seven vessels to plow the coastal waters to the St. Mary River.
In 1763, the Spanish ceded Florida to the British in a trade for the port of Havana. The treaty was unclear as to the status of the Keys. An agent of the King of Spain claimed that the islands, rich in fish, turtles and mahogany for shipbuilding, were part of Cuba, fearing that the English might build fortresses and dominate the shipping lanes. The British also realized the treaty was ambiguous, but declared that the Keys should be occupied and defended as part of Florida. The British claim was never officially contested but no real government exercised control of the Keys. Most, if not all of the Florida indigenous natives had been killed or driven from their homeland by about 1763.
Key West and the entire chain of Keys provided many shipwrecks, lumbering, fishing and hiding areas, and fresh drinking water for every nation. The deep-water anchorage facility at Cayo Hueso (Key West) permitted anchoring for ships not wishing to stop in Havana or Charleston. It was a frequented by pirates, privateers and fisherman alike as well as those who made