was ever fearful of attacks; the Battle of Salga (1581), led the military to strengthen the fortifications along the coast of Faial, repairing existing defences and constructing new battlements. During the Iberian Union crisis (1583), Santa Cruz defended Horta from a Spanish armada under the command of Pedro de Toledo, who disembarked in the nearby village of Pasteleiro. After marching from their beachhead to the village of Horta, the Spaniards attacked and defeated the regiment, eventually capturing and executing the Captain-major António Guedes de Sousa at the doors of the fort. The Spanish garrison was recalled to Terceira, when the local population complained that they could not support nor lodge the occupying armada. Ironically, this was a regrettable decision: on 6 September 1589 an English fleet, under the command of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland as part of his Azores Voyage of 1589, arrived in Horta harbour, captured a carrack from India and seven other ships at the port, and attacked the village, sacking the buildings and forcing the residents to flee into the interior. When they attacked the fort, the building was defended by seven soldiers, the vicar and captains Gaspar Dutra, Tomás Porrás, Domingos Fernandes and João Francisco. The privateers took all the artillery pieces that they encountered on the island (except two that they did not find in Porto Pim) and burned down buildings within the fort. Repaired, but with insufficient artillery, the military regiment could do little but prevent ships from off-loading their forces. This was the case in August 1597, when Walter Raleigh and his men attacked, sacked and set the village of Horta aflame, during the campaigns of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. After 1650, and until the second half of the 20th century, the fort served to house and garrison a small number of troops from the Horta garrison. At the time John Bass Dabney arrived in 1805, the fort extended into the harbour, and alongside, the fishermen (when not out with their boats) used to gather on the small quay to gossip. As U.S. Counsel General to the Western Islands, Dabney was there and participated covertly in the events leading to the destruction of the U.S. privateer General Armstrong in the Bay of Horta by British ships during the War of 1812. Dabney suggested to its captain that the Armstrong should hover within the guns of the "castle", intent on