In the wake of the Stono Rebellion of 1739, locals mounted nightly patrols of [St. John's Parish] that rounded up a number of suspected slave conspirators and transported them to Charleston for trial. There, fifty of the captured slaves were executed at the rate of ten a day in a grisly display of uncertain power. Nine years later, planters discovered another nascent rebellion: 16 whites and 104 slaves from St. John's and surrounding parishes allegedly planned to set Charleston ablaze and escape to Spanish St. Augustine. These rebels, like others before and later, headed to St. Augustine after hearing of Spain's offer to free escaped slaves who would convert to Catholicism. The nearby refuge proved so provocative that Britain launched an expensive military and naval effort to seize St. Augustine in 1740. That expedition proved a failure, and runaway ads from South Carolina newspapers document continuing attempts by runaways to flee to St. Augustine. In 1754 a group of multilingual Havana-born slaves even tried to sail from Charleston to Cuba in search of freedom. Despite constant worries about escape and rebellion, planters continued to import slaves, and by the 1770s Afrians formed at least 90 percent of the population of St. John's Parish. Prince was thus entering a region that was largely African and famed for insurrection. Local slaves could tell tales of flight and resistance, of great imperial conflicts, and of alternate forms of government and freedom to the south. (Landers: Atlantic Creoles)