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Queen Anne's War in America

Source: Historical proof of the right of the Catholic King to the territory held to-day by the British King under the name of New Georgia #558

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14. After the year 1693, in which Don Laureano de Torres succeeded Don Diego Quiroga as governor of Florida and its provinces, there was no particular action or noteworthy event in the matter, the English remaining in possession of Santa Elena and the Spaniards of San Simon, 56. [Bolton note: I have seen no evidence that the Spaniards maintained a settlement on San Simon after 1686. Arredondo is dealing only with Guale, or the coast settlements, and does not here keep track of the contest for the back country.] Santa Maria, and Santa Cruz, in the province of Guale, until the year 1701. Then, war having been declared, Vice-Admiral Benbow went to the Indies with a fleet of twenty ships, carrying troops with which he reenforced Virginia, Carolina, San Cristoval, and other islands. When Don Joseph de Zuniga arrived to relieve Torres of the command, he saw the bad state of the defenses of the presidio of San Agustin and the settlements in its district, the delay of aid asked from the King by his predecessors, and the warlike movements with which its English neighbors were threatening it. He therefore decided to send Don Juan de Ayala, one of the captains of the soldiers in his command, to the Court, to inform the King of the danger in which San Agustin stood and of the preparations that were being made in South Carolina. 57. 
[Bolton note: This was the War of the Spanish Succession, or Queen Anne's War. France and Spain were allied against England. The war areas in America were extensive in this struggle. The West Indies, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana in the South, and New England, Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay in the North all were scenes of conflict. To strike at Spanish commerce England sent Admiral Benbow to the Caribbean, where he encountered the French fleet under Du Casse. New Providence, in the Bahamas, was captured by the French and Spaniards. The Indian allies of the English destroyed the Mission of Santa Fe in the Apalache district.

[Bolton note: The English traders of Carolina also turned their Creek allies against the French who had recently settled in the Mobile district. Clowes does not mention reenforcing the mainland colonies. Benbow left the Channel with ten vessels, but in the islands was reenforced "by several vessels from England." (Bolton and Marshall, Colonization, 267-271; Clowes, The Royal Navy, II, 367-373.) See Introduction, pp. 58-61.]