Menendez had in that very year gained permission from the King of Spain to conquer and convert this land at his own cost.  In return he was to have free trade with the whole Spanish empire, and the title of Adelantado or governor of Florida for life—­absolute power over all of America north of Mexico, for Spain had never recognized any right of France or England in the region discovered by Cabot, Cartier, Verrazzano or others.  Menendez was allowed three years for his tremendous task.  He was to take with him five hundred men and as many slaves, a suitable supply of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and provisions, and sixteen priests, four of whom were to be Jesuits.  He had also to find ships to convey this great expedition.

But Menendez had been playing for big stakes all his life.  He was only ten years old when he ran away and went to sea on a Barbary pirate ship.  While yet a lad he was captain of a ship of his own, fighting pirates and French privateers.  He had served in the West Indies and he had commanded fleets.  King Philip had never really understood the enormous possibilities of Florida until Menendez explained them to him.  The soil was fertile, the climate good, there might be valuable mines, and there were above all countless heathen whom it was the deepest desire of Menendez to convert to the true faith.  In this last statement he was as sincere as he was in the others.  He expected to do in Florida what Cortes had done in Mexico.  Now heresy, the unpardonable sin, burned out and stamped out in Spain, had appeared in the province which he had bound himself at the cost of a million ducats to make Spanish and Catholic.  With furious energy he pushed on the work of preparation.

He had assembled in June, 1565, a fleet of thirty-four ships and a force of twenty-six hundred men.  Arciniega, another commander, was to join him with fifteen hundred.  On June 29 he sailed from Cadiz in the San Pelayo, a galleon of nearly a thousand tons, a leviathan for those days.  Ten other ships accompanied him; the rest of the fleet would follow later.  It was the plan of Menendez to wipe out the garrison at Fort Caroline before Ribault could get there, plant a colony there and one on the Chesapeake, to control the northern fisheries for Spain alone.  On the way a Caribbean tempest scattered the ships and only five met at Hispaniola, but Menendez did not wait for the rest.  When he reached the Florida coast he sent a captain ashore with twenty men to find out exactly where on that long, lonely shore line the French colony had squatted.

About half past eleven on the night of September 4, the watchman on one of the French ships anchored off shore saw the huge San Pelayo, the Spanish banner lifting sluggishly in the slow wind, coming up from the south.  Ribault was in the fort, so were most of the troops, and three of the ships were anchored inside the bar.  The strange fleet came steadily nearer, the great flagship moved to windward of Ribault’s flagship the Trinity, and dropped anchor.  The others did likewise.  Not a word was spoken by friend or foe.  The Spanish chaplain Mendoza afterward wrote: