On August 18, 1521, Spanish seafarers from Santo Domingo sighted this harbor, named its eastern headland Punta de Santa Elena, and claimed the area for the King of Spain. For nearly half a century it drew Spain's repeatedly frustrated efforts to establish a settlement on the Atlantic Coast. After Ribaut's garrison abandoned Charlesfort at Port Royal, Menéndez de Avilés arrived to block further French incursions, assert Spanish sovereignty, and Christianize the natives. Sent by Phillip II of Spain in 1565 with a fleet and more than 2500 colonists, he made landfall at Cape Canaveral, expelled the French from Fort Caroline on the River May, established and fortified St. Augustine, and took vengeance on the returning Rebaut. In the summer of 1567 he went on to Santa Elena, apparently his original destination, where he planted Fort San Felipe, the northernmost known bastion of the province of Florida, and built the city planned for its development. During twenty years of Spanish tenure, relations with the Indians deteriorated, and they destroyed the fort and settlement in 1577. Fort San Marcos quickly replaced the fortress with cedar-log palisades brought from St. Augustine, but the settlement remained in ashes until 1580, when it was rebuilt to its former condition with about sixty buildings, half of them tabby. Partially governed by its inhabitants, it offered what was possibly the first instance of democratic process and woman suffrage in the New World. In 1587, both fort and settlement were abandoned when the inhabitants were withdrawn to St. Augustine to strengthen its defenses after Sir Francis Drake's raid the previous year.