Pero Menéndez de Avilés (February 15, 1519 - September 17, 1574), was a sixteenth century Spanish admiral and pirate hunter, known most notably for his founding of St. Augustine, Florida and his subsequent destruction of the French settlement of Fort Caroline in 1565. The first Spanish governor of Spanish Florida, he founded St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement and oldest port city in what is now the continental United States, on August 28, 1565.