San Juan was one of the first to suffer.  An official report dated September 26, 1528, informs us that “on the day of the Apostle Saint John a French caravel and a tender bore down on the port of Cubagua and attempted to land artillery from the ship with the help of Indians brought from Margarita, five leagues distant.  On the 12th of August they took the town of San German, plundered and burned it; they also destroyed two caravels that were there....”

French privateers were sighted off the coast continually, but it would seem that the island, with its reputation for poverty, its two settlements 40 leagues apart, and scanty population, offered too little chance for booty, so that no other landing is recorded till 1538, when a privateer was seen chasing a caravel on her way to San German.  The caravel ran ashore at a point two leagues from the capital and the crew escaped into the woods.  The Frenchmen looted the vessel and then proceeded to Guadianilla, where they landed 80 men, 50 of them arquebusiers.  They burned the town, robbed the church and Dominican convent; but the people, after placing their families in security, returned, and under favor of a shower of rain, which made the arquebuses useless, fell upon them, killed 15 and took 3 prisoners, in exchange for whom the stolen church property was restored.  The people had only 1 killed.

The attack was duly reported to the sovereign, who ordered the construction of a fort, and appointed Juan de Castellanos, the treasurer, its commander (October 7, 1540).  The treasurer’s reply is characteristic:  “The fort which I have been ordered to make in the town of San German, of which I am to be the commander, shall be made as well as we may, though there is great want of money ... and of carts, negroes, etc.  It will be necessary to send masons from Sevilla, as there is only 1 here, also tools and 20 negroes....

“Forts for this island are well enough, but it would be better to favor the population, lending money or ceding the revenues for a few years, to construct sugar-mills....”

On June 12th of the same year the treasurer wrote again announcing that work on the San German fort had commenced, for which purpose he had bought some negroes and hired others at two and a half pesos per month.

But on February 12, 1542, the crown officers, including Castellanos, reported that the emperor’s order to suspend work on the fort of San German had been obeyed.

In February, 1543, the bishop wrote to the emperor:  “The people of San German, for fear of the French privateers, have taken their families and property into the woods.  If there were a fort they would not be so timid nor would the place be so depopulated.”

As late as September, 1548, he reported:  “I came here from la Espanola in the beginning of the year to visit my diocese.  I disembarked in San German with an order from the Audiencia to convoke the inhabitants, and found that there were a few over 30, who lived half a league from the port for fear of the privateers.  They don’t abandon the important place, but there ought to be a fort.”