The first and most pressing order of business was to rid Florida of the French colony under Rene de Laudonniere, for the settlers at Fort Caroline were due to be reinforced by a fleet under Jean Ribault. The French had planted themselves at the mouth of the St. Johns River, beside the fast-moving northward-flowing Gulf Stream. With his main fleet, which had gathered in the port of Cadiz, Menendez raced across the Atlantic to a Puerto Rican rendezvous. From there, without waiting for the fleet from northern Spain, he made his way through the Bahamas to the Florida coast. The French fleet under Ribault had preceded him and lay at anchor in the mouth of the St. Johns River. After falling back to secure his ships and fortify a port 40 miles to the south, Menendez marched north through a storm to destroy Fort Caroline. The same storm drove Ribault's ships south and ran them aground near Cape Canaveral. Acting, in his own words, "as a good captain should," the Adelantado massacred two batches of French castaways as they came up the coast toward the Spanish camp. Later, near Cape Canaveral, he captured another group of castaways and sent them to the galleys. In two months's time, Florida had been virtually cleared of intruders. ...Several French castaways had sought refuge with the Indians of Guale, who hoped to use them in their war with the Oristas. Menendez sailed northward, partly to lay hands on these remaining corsairs, partly to establish northern outposts. Before he arrived, 15 of the Frenchmen had built a crude boat and set sail for the fisheries of Newfoundland. One young Frenchman who remained behind met the Adelantado at the landing place to reason with him that as "Guale" was a cognate of ··Gallia," this made the region French. Gallic logic did not prevail. Seeing how the wind lay, the Guales surrendered the youth and his companions to the more powerful Spanish. At that time, according to ethnohistorian Grant D. Jones, the principal town of the chief of Guale was either on the inland waterway on Skidaway Island or on Ossabaw Island along the Bear River. (Bushnell SS)