While these king’s men marched down the coast and marched back again, Montiano was desperately trying to keep communications open with Havana. He had twenty-four hundred people on his hands, and few supplies. “Unless help can come by June 20,” he wrote Guemes, “it is the most natural thing in the world that this garrison perish.” Out in the bay at least, Montiano cold move constructively. His six galliots, sheltering at times under the guns of the castillo, would be both an attack and a defense force. These maneuverable vessles, manned by thirty men and two officers (twenty men at the oars) were armed with a nine-pounder at the bow, and swivel guns fore and aft. Error! Bookmark not defined. (From Mose in Secondary Literature by Amy)