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Mythical Spanish pirate From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
José Gaspar, also known by his nickname Gasparilla (supposedly lived c. 1756 – 1821), is a mythical Spanish pirate who supposedly terrorized the Gulf of Mexico from his base in southwest Florida during Florida's second Spanish period (1783 to 1821). Though details about his early life, motivations, and piratical exploits differ in various tellings, they agree that the 'Last of the Buccaneers" was a remarkably active figure who amassed a huge fortune by taking many prizes and ransoming many hostages during his long career, and that he died by leaping from his ship rather than face capture by the United States Navy, leaving behind his still-hidden treasure.[1]
While Gaspar is a popular figure in Florida folklore, there is no evidence that he existed.[2] No contemporary mention of his life or exploits has been found in Spanish or American ship logs, court records, newspapers, or other archives, and no physical artifacts linked to Gaspar have been discovered in the area where he supposedly established his "pirate kingdom."[3] The earliest known written mention of José Gaspar was a short biography included in an early 20th century promotional brochure for the Gasparilla Inn on Gasparilla Island at Charlotte Harbor, the author of which freely admitted that it was a work of fiction "without a true fact in it".[4] Subsequent retellings of the Gaspar legend are based upon this fanciful account, including the accidental inclusion of José Gaspar in a 1923 book on real pirates that has caused ongoing confusion about his historical authenticity.[5]
José Gaspar's legend is celebrated in Tampa, Florida during the annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival, which was first held in 1904.
The story of José Gaspar's life and career varies in different tellings. Most agree that Gaspar was born in Spain about 1756, was affiliated with the Spanish Navy until turning to piracy about 1783, and died in battle with the United States Navy off the coast of southwest Florida in 1821. However, the various versions differ greatly with regards to his origins and his personal character.[6]
In some versions of the story, Gaspar began life as a poverty-stricken Spanish youth who kidnapped a young girl for ransom. Captured and given a choice between prison and joining the navy, he chose to go to sea, where he served with distinction for several years before leading a mutiny against a tyrannical captain and fleeing to Florida with a stolen ship.[3][7]
Other versions of the story state that Gaspar was a Spanish nobleman and naval officer who reached a high ranking through his brilliant exploits, eventually becoming a councilor to King Charles III. He was popular in the royal court, but when he spurned one lover for another, the jilted lady levied false accusations against him, often said to involve the theft of the "crown jewels". Unjustly facing arrest, he commandeered a ship and fled, vowing to exact revenge on his country.[3][7]
In still other versions, Gaspar was a brilliant but nefarious Spanish admiral who actually succeed in stealing the crown jewels. When his theft was discovered, he seized the "prize vessel of the Spanish fleet" with a group of loyal followers and abandoned his wife and children to flee across the Atlantic Ocean.[1][8]
Whatever they claim about his motivations for fleeing Spain, the various legends agree that Gaspar established a base on Gasparilla Island along the virtually uninhabited southwestern coast of Spanish Florida and turned to piracy aboard his ship, the Floriblanca.[3] Roving across the Gulf of Mexico and the Spanish Main, he amassed an enormous fortune by preying on shipping for nearly four decades during a period coinciding with the second Spanish rule of Florida (1783–1821). Plundered vessels and cargo were sold in friendly ports, male prisoners were either put to death or forced to join his pirate band, and female prisoners were taken as captives to Captiva Island to be held for ransom or to serve as wives or concubines for the pirates.[3][7][9]
Different versions of Gaspar's legend relate a variety of adventues over his long career, some of which appear in conflicting variations depending on the source. One of the most famous episodes involves a Spanish princess (or Mexican, depending on the version) named Useppa, who was a passenger on a captured ship. The beautiful noblewoman rejected Gaspar's advances until he killed her in a rage (in some versions, because his crew demanded her death for refusing their captain). The pirate instantly regretted the deed and buried her body on a nearby island which he named Useppa in her memory. Some versions identify the lady with Josefa de Mayorga, daughter of Martín de Mayorga, viceroy of New Spain from 1779 to 1782, and contend that the island's name evolved to its current spelling over time. However, no evidence has been found to support this claim.[3]
Similarly, Sanibel Island is said to have been named by Gaspar's first mate, Rodrigo Lopez, after his lover whom he had left back in Spain. Empathizing with his friend's plight, Gaspar eventually allowed Lopez to return home. Some versions of the legend claim that Gaspar entrusted Lopez with his log or his diary, both of which have been cited as key sources for information about the pirate although they have never been produced.[3]
Gaspar has been associated with various other pirates, both historical and not. Some versions of Gaspar's story claim that he often partnered with the real pirate Pierre Lafitte and that Lafitte barely escaped the battle in which Gaspar was killed.[9] This is unlikely, as there is no record of Lafitte traveling to southwest Florida, and he died in Mexico before Gaspar's supposed demise.[10] Gaspar has also been associated with Henri Caesar and "Old King John", other semi-legendary pirates for whom there is little to no historical evidence.[7][3][11]
Most versions of the legend agree that José Gaspar met his end in late 1821, soon after Spain transferred control of the Florida Territory to the United States.[12] As the story goes, Gaspar had decided to retire after almost forty years of pirating, and he and his crew gathered on Gasparilla Island to split the enormous treasure cache he'd collected over his long career. During the distribution process, a lookout spotted what appeared to be a vulnerable merchant ship nearby. Gaspar could not resist taking one last prize, so he and his crew hurriedly boarded the Floriblanca to pursue their prey. However, when the pirates closed on their quarry and fired a warning shot, their intended victim raised an American flag to reveal that it was the US Navy pirate hunting schooner USS Enterprise in disguise. A fierce battle ensued in which the Floriblanca was hulled several times below the waterline and began to sink. Rather than surrender, Gaspar wrapped an anchor chain around his waist, dramatically shouted, "Gasparilla dies by his own hand, not the enemy's!", and leapt to his death in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.[1]
His surviving crew attempted to flee as the Floriblanca sank within sight of the shore, but most were captured and hanged, with only a handful escaping into the wilderness. Some versions of the story claim that one of the survivors was John Gómez, who would tell the tale to subsequent generations.[7][3]
Though his story has been retold in many forms since its first appearance around 1900, there is no evidence that José Gaspar was a real historical figure. The period in which he was supposedly active was well after the "Golden Age of Piracy" (c. 1650 - 1725), during which infamous figures such as Bartholomew Roberts, Blackbeard, and William Kidd operated in and around the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic basin. European nations began a concerted effort to suppress piracy near their colonial holdings in the early 1700s, and every major pirate of the "golden age" era had been killed by 1730, a quarter century before the usual year given for Gaspar's birth in Spain.[13]
Scattered seaborne attacks by small bands of privateers and pirates were a continuing nuisance in the Caribbean into the 1780s, when Jose Gaspar supposedly arrived at Charlotte Harbor. However, the navies of Britain, France, Spain, and the newly independent United States were actively patrolling nearby waters, making it improbable that any pirate could successfully prey on trade to the extent claimed by the tales of Gaspar's career.[13][3] The original published Gasparilla story and many subsequent tales claim that the pirate had amassed the enormous sum of $30 million in stolen wealth by the time of his death in 1821.[1] To put that figure in context, the total military budget of the United States in 1821 was about $8 million, and Spain transferred the entire Florida territory to the United States in that same year for $5 million.[14][15]
Even during piracy's "golden age", Caribbean pirates operated on a much smaller scale. The vast majority of plunder consisted not of Aztec gold pilfered from massive Spanish galleons but of basic trade goods such as food, tobacco, and lumber taken from small cargo ships which could then be quickly liquidated in nearby ports without drawing unwanted attention.[13] There were no convenient port towns along Florida's west coast until well after Gaspar's demise, making the area unsuitable for disposing of stolen goods. In fact, there is little evidence that pirates of any era used Charlotte Harbor as their base of operations.[7]
Several historians and other interested parties have attempted to find records proving Gaspar's existence without success. The original version of the story claims that he stole the "crown jewels" of Spain and the "prized vessel" of the Spanish fleet during the reign of Charles III and first minister José Moñino, Count of Floridablanca, after whom Gaspar presumably named his hijacked ship. However, research in Spanish archives and other historical records has turned up no mention of Gaspar's presence in the royal court, his career in the Spanish navy, or his spectacular crimes.[2][3][5][16]
Similarly, despite claims that he was the most feared pirate in the Gulf of Mexico for several decades, searches of contemporaneous American newspapers have found no mention of the name "Gaspar" or "Gasparilla", and the U.S. Naval archives make no mention of Gaspar in official ships' logs or in the extensive records of piracy trials held during the era.[3][7] While the USS Enterprise was assigned to the West Indies Squadron tasked with suppressing piracy in the Caribbean, it is documented to have been in Cuba in December 1821, not in Charlotte Harbor, where Gaspar supposedly jumped to his death in battle.[7]
While most versions of the Gaspar legend claim that several southwest Florida place names are associated with his activities, the names appear on maps drawn long before his supposed arrival in the 1780s. For example, "Gasparilla Island" appears on Spanish and English maps made in the early 1700s, with contemporary documents suggesting that it was named for Friar Gaspar, a Spanish missionary who visited the native Calusa in the 1600s.[7] The first written story of Gaspar also claimes that the nickname "Gasparilla" means "Gaspar, the outlaw" in Spanish. In actuality, this is a feminine diminutive meaning "little Gaspar" or "gentle Gaspar", a moniker more likely to be attached to a pacifist priest than a bloodthirsty buccaneer.[3][2]
Gasparilla Island is a narrow barrier island (about 7 miles (11 km) long and less than 1 mile (1.6 km) across at its widest point) located just north of the mouth of Charlotte Harbor.[17] The Gaspar stories claim that he constructed a "regal" home base there, with the first written account claiming that his hideout consisted of over a dozen buildings plus a tall watchtower perched atop an "ancient Indian mound filled with gold and the bleached bones of his victims".[9][18] However, no physical evidence has ever been found to support these claims.
When phosphate was discovered nearby on the mainland in the late 1800s, undeveloped Gasparilla Island's location at the mouth of Charlotte Harbor made it a convenient shipping point, and small port facilities along with a railroad bridge and other support buildings were constructed. Larger ports further up the coast had added phosphate infrastructure by the early 1900s, and Gasparilla Island transitioned to a tourism-based economy with an emphasis on sport fishing. A road bridge was constructed, the resort town of Boca Grande was established, and the Gasparilla Inn & Club opened at the end of the former phosphate rail line in 1911. As the area became popular with tourists and snowbirds, several more resorts, hundreds of homes, a golf course, and Gasparilla Island State Park were constructed in the decades that followed.[19] Yet while virtually all of Gasparilla Island above the high tide line had been developed by the close of the 20th century, no trace of Gaspar's "pirate kingdom" has ever been uncovered.[3][7][17][20]
Over the years, the persistent belief that Gaspar was a real historical figure has led to unsubstantiated rumors about mysterious maps and caches of coins, prompting professional and amateur treasure hunters to search for his lost loot across southwest Florida. But while there has been no documented recovery of any part of his treasure or the remains of his alleged victims, unauthorized gold seekers have repeatedly disrupted Native American archeological sites around Charlotte Harbor, often in violation of state law.[5][20] As explained by the Boca Grande Historical Society, the site of the Calusa's principal town at Mound Key along with other key sites in the Charlotte Harbor region have suffered "unimaginable damage" at the hands of "looters in search of a non-pirate's non-treasure."[21][22][23]
Local folklore about an earlier age featuring vanished native peoples, Spanish explorers, and various outlaws and pirates developed in southwest Florida in the second half of the 1800s as small settlements were established and slowly grew in the sub-tropical region. At the time, the remote Ten Thousand Islands to the south were home to a few scattered pioneers and others who wanted to be left alone, including the occasional criminal hiding from the law. The emerging informal folklore reflected this "romantic" isolation.[24][25][26]
Though there is no surviving evidence as to the earliest roots of the Gaspar legend, it is likely that various campfire stories and tall tales seeking to explain local place names eventualy coalesced into the myth of a feared pirate who once lived in the area, though the myth remained so obscure as to remain undocumented until the 20th century.[25]
John Gómez (also known as Juan Gómez and Panther John) was a real person who became entangled with the legend of José Gaspar. In the late 1800s, Gómez lived in a shack with his wife on otherwise uninhabited Panther Key, a small spit of land on the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands near Marco Island. He was well known along Florida's Gulf coast as an expert hunting and fishing guide, boat pilot, and an eccentric teller of tall tales, mostly about himself.[27] His self-reported age and birthplace varied, even on official documents. In the 1870 United States census, he was born in 1828.[28] However, during the 1880 US census, Gómez claimed to have been born in France in 1785.[29] In 1885, he told state census takers that he had been born in Corsica,[30] and reported to the 1900 US Census that he was born in Portugal in 1776.[31] Meanwhile, various contemporary letters and news articles report that Gómez claimed at different times to have been born in 1778, 1781 or 1795 in Honduras, Portugal, or Mauritius.[27][32][28] Most of his supposed birth years would have made him one of the oldest people in the world in 1900, when he died in a boating accident.[3]
Gómez's uncertain birth was said to be just the beginning of an exceedingly long and adventure-filled life. He claimed to have seen Napoleon as a youth in France (or was drafted into Napoleon's army), sailed the world as a cabin boy on a merchant ship, served as a scout for the U.S. Army during the Seminole Wars, served as a coastal pilot for the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, was involved in filibustering (and perhaps pirating) in Central America and the Caribbean, and escaped a Cuban prison just before his scheduled execution, among other remarkable exploits spread out over the entirety of the 19th century.[28][3][7] While none of these stories can be verified, researchers have found records indicating that Gómez lived in several locations around southwest Florida from about 1870 until his death, including the Florida Everglades, Key West, Tampa, Pass-a-Grille, and the Ten Thousand Islands.[7][32][27]
Between his skills as a boat pilot and outdoorsman and his reputation for storytelling, Gómez became a popular fishing and hunting guide along Florida's west coast, and he was mentioned in several issues of Forest and Stream, an early conservationist magazine.[32][27][28] His tall tales were usually shared in very informal settings during fishing trips and hunting expeditions and are only documented in a few personal accounts, including his obituary.[7][27] However, though many versions of the Gasparilla legend claim that Gómez was the last surviving member of the pirate's crew, no contemporary account of Gómez's life or tall tales mention José Gaspar at all. The connection was made after his death in 1900, when a promotional pamphlet for a Boca Grande resort (see below) claimed that the late John Gómez was the primary source of its tale of the pirate Gasparilla.[3][16][27][1]
Since the publication of that brochure, many elaborate and often conflicting stories have been told regarding Gómez's alleged exploits alongside José Gaspar. Some claim that Gómez was the pirate's cabin boy, others that he was Gaspar's brother-in-law, and still others that Gómez was Gaspar's first mate while John Gómez Jr. was the pirate's cabin boy. Some even suggest that Gómez was the extraordinarily long-lived José Gaspar himself living under a false name.[3][32] Most versions of the legend also claim that Gómez knew the whereabouts of Gaspar's vast treasure cache, which seems unlikely given that he petitioned the Lee County Commission for a $8 per month stipend due to "destitution".[3][16][27][28][33]
The first written account of José Gaspar comes from an early 1900s brochure for the Gasparilla Inn Resort and Club in the recently established tourist town of Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island at Charlotte Harbor.[3] Publicist Pat Lemoyne authored it for the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway Company, which had just opened the large hotel at the end of its old phosphate line.[4]
The brochure consisted of two parts: the first printed version of the legend of José Gaspar and a longer promotional section touting the Gasparilla Inn and the Charlotte Harbor area in general. It was freely distributed to guests at the Inn and northern markets to draw attention to the recently opened tourist destination.[1]
The cover of the brochure featured a blood-dripping color illustration of Gaspar, and the introduction claimed that the tale of the pirate contained therein was gleaned from stories told by the late John Gómez, who was described as the longest-lived member of the crew. Several episodes in Gaspar's career mentioned in the brochure have been repeated and expanded upon in later retellings, including the tale of the "little Spanish princess" and the details of his dramatic demise.[1] The story also claimed that his sprawling "pirate kingdon" had encompassed several islands in the vicinity, saying "Taking the best of everything when a capture was made, he chose the best of the islands in Charlotte Harbor for his own secret haunts."[1] It explained that Captiva Island was where captives were held, Sanibel Island was named after Gaspar's love interest, and his home was on Gasparilla Island, where it said that a burial mound "forty feet high and four hundred feet in circumference" had been found to contain "ornaments of gold and silver" along with "hundreds of human skeletons". It also asserted that the bulk of the buccaneer's vast cache of buried treasure "still lies unmoved" nearby, in the vicinity of the Gasparilla Inn.[3][1]
Though the brochure presents its "romantic" history of Gaspar as well-established truth, it is entirely fictional. Local place names mentioned were established long before the pirate's supposed arrival, and despite lurid tales regarding the discovery of gold and human remains, no such artifacts or any other physical evidence of Gaspar's "regal" outpost, victims, or treasure has ever been found on Gasparilla Island or anywhere else in the Charlotte Harbor area.[3][7][5][20]
In 1949, a retired Pat Lemoyne gave a history lecture at a Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce function in which he cheerfully admitted that his biography of José Gaspar was a "cockeyed lie without a true fact in it" and that he had written the brochure in a dramatic style that "tourists like to hear". He explained that the story had been inspired by John Gómez's tall tales, which Lemoyne had heard second-hand. Lemoyne described Gómez as a "colorful" eccentric who was known to tell "gullible" tourists that he had been a pirate so that he could sell them fake treasure maps for a "fancy figure".[4]
In 1923, Boston historian Francis B. C. Bradlee received a copy of the Gasparilla Inn brochure from Robert Bradley, then president of the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway Company.[34] Bradlee assumed that the story of Gaspar was true, and without any additional research or fact checking, he included the fictional pirate in a book he had been writing, Piracy In The West Indies And Its Suppression[3]
This proportedly historical work repeated many details from the promotional brochure, including the specious claim that a mound built by a "prehistoric race" on Gasparilla Island had recenty been excavated and found to contain gold and silver artifacts along with "hundreds of human skeletons" of Gaspar's victims. It also added a few details, such as an aside about a dying John Gómez admitting that he'd witnessed the murder of the "Little Spanish princess" and sketching a map that led searchers to her body.[35] However, none of these claims were true, as no treasure, murder victims, or other physical trace of Gaspar's exploits has ever been found in the area, and John Gómez drowned while fishing alone, making a deathbed confession impossible.[3][20][27]
Despite the obvious inaccuracies in his chapter on Gaspar, Bradlee's book was used as a source for later works such as Philip Gosse's Pirates' Who's Who and Frederick W. Dau's Florida Old and New, the authors of which also took Gaspar's authenticity for granted. Over the next few decades, several more books about pirates or Florida history erroneously included José Gaspar / Gasparilla as a real historical figure, leading to continuing confusion about his authenticity and repeated attempts to find his lost treasure.[3][5][7][20]
In 1904, officials in Tampa decided to enliven the city's May Day festival by adding a pirate "invasion" inspired by the still-obscure legend of Jose Gaspar with added elements from Mardi Gras in New Orleans.[36] The event proved popular, and leading citizens established "Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla" (YMKG) to organize future editions of what became known as the Gasparilla Pirate Festival.
In 1936, YMKG commissioned Tampa Tribune editor Edwin D. Lambright to write an authorized history of the organization. Along with a factual history of the krewe and the Gasparilla festival up to that point, the volume included a version of the legend of José Gaspar in which he was depicted as a "respectable" and "courtly" pirate who only resorted to violence when necessary.[3] Lambright claimed that his biography of Gaspar was supported by "unquestionable records", including a diary written by the pirate himself and taken to Spain by a member of his crew, perhaps Juan Gómez. However, the diary was said to have been lost, and no other evidence was disclosed.[5][7]
In 2004, YMKG published a new centennial history of the organization. This document recounts the Gasparilla legend first published in 1936 but adds a coda that concedes that scholarly research conducted in both Spanish and American archives had not uncovered evidence of Gaspar's existence. The history concludes with this statement:
Whether Gasparilla, the pirate, actually existed or not is a moot point. The legend exists, and that's what matters. The story of Gasparilla and his pirates has lent a certain flair of mystery and adventure to Florida's West Coast since the late 1800s. And on that legend, Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla was founded 100 years ago.[18]
In 1949, Fort Myers author Jack Beater published a mass-market paperback version of the legend called The Gasparilla Story. Though written in the style of a light adventure novel, the narrator claimed that it was a true tale gleaned from a "mouse-eaten Cuban manuscript" supposedly written by José Gaspar's cousin Leon and corroborated with an old map found at a used bookstore, neither of which were made public. The book also included advertisements for hotels and real estate firms in the Fort Myers and Charlotte Harbor area and invited readers to "Make [their] conquest of Sanibel and Captiva Islands, in the manner of the buccaneers!"[3][37]
Beater published several additional books about southwest Florida; some marketed as fiction, some as non-fiction, and some as guidebooks for tourists, most of which included tongue-in-cheek melodramatic tales about Gaspar and other pirates. His works and the writings of other local authors with similar themes expanded the story of Gaspar while continuing to sow confusion about its basis in fact.[3]
In the 1930s, construction worker Ernesto Lopez showed his family a mysterious box he claimed to have found while working with a repair crew on the Cass Street Bridge in downtown Tampa. According to family stories, the wooden box contained a pile of Spanish and Portuguese coins, a severed hand wearing a ring engraved with the name "Gaspar", and a "treasure map" indicating that Gaspar's treasure was hidden near the Hillsborough River in Tampa.[38][39]
In 2015, Lopez's great-grandchildren found a box in their late grandfather's attic containing the items Ernesto Lopez found along with his wedding photo. The family brought the box to the attention of a local reporter, whose TV news report on the strange find was picked up by several national and international news outlets.[39][40][41] However, upon examination, experts at the Tampa Bay History Center determined that the box contained several non-precious old coins, souvenirs from early Gasparilla parades, and a plat map from the 1920s with local streets, businesses, and landmarks from that time clearly depicted. The origin of the hand remained a mystery, though the curator of the history center opined that it might be a mummified monkey hand.[38][41]
In 1904, members of the Tampa business elite staged a surprise pirate "invasion" during the city's previously sedate May Day celebration.[36] Under the guise of "Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla" (YMKG), an organization modeled after the New Orleans Mardi Gras krewes, the "invaders" donned pirate costumes and rode through the streets on horseback encouraging residents to follow them to the festivities. The event was a hit, and the following year, the Krewe organized a parade in which all 60 of Tampa's cars rode through downtown. The first seaborne "invasion" came in 1911, and YMKG has organized a theatrical pirate invasion and parade almost every year since.[16][36]
Tampa now hosts many community events during its "Gasparilla Season" from approximately January to March. The focal point is still an "invasion" by José Gaspar and his crew, which takes place on the last Saturday in January. Members of Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, accompanied by a flotilla of hundreds of private boats, sail across Tampa Bay to downtown Tampa on the José Gasparilla, a 165' long "pirate" ship which was specially built for this purpose in 1954.[42] The mayor of Tampa then surrenders the key of the city to the "pirate captain", and a "victory parade" ensues down Bayshore Boulevard. Dozens of other Krewes have joined the festivities over the years, becoming one of the United States' largest parades. An average of over 300,000 people attend the event, which contributes over $20 million to the local economy.[43]
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