The maritime history of Florida describes significant past events relating to the U.S. state of Florida in areas concerning shipping, shipwrecks, and military installations and lighthouses constructed to protect or aid navigation and development of the Florida peninsula.
A long and flat peninsula surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Straits and the Atlantic Ocean, Florida has a long and rich maritime history. The size and shape of Florida, along with its natural features like reefs, shoals, water depth, currents, locations of rivers and inlets and the weather, have affected where people lived and where vessels wrecked. Florida has some of the best natural harbors in the country, resulting in the state becoming an international maritime crossroads.
Humans have inhabited Florida for at least twelve thousand years, and perhaps more. The earliest inhabitants would not recognize their home today, because the sea level is twenty to fifty fathoms higher and has covered nearly half of the Florida peninsula. Many people lived near springs and sinkholes and along rivers and near the coasts in areas like present-day Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, relying on fresh and saltwater fish and shellfish as important parts of their diet. The archeological remains at some of the earliest places they lived now are underwater and on the bottom of rivers and springs and offshore on the continental shelf.
From at least six thousand years ago, the native people of Florida traveled the waterways and coasts by canoe, facilitating communication and trade among the tribes. About three hundred prehistoric canoes have been found in more than two hundred sites in Florida.
European exploration (1500 - 1700s)
In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, looking for a faster way to Asia by sea, European explorers sailed west and ran into the Americas. Seeing new resources to exploit, people to convert and lands to claim, the Spanish, the French and the English sent militaries, missionaries and colonists to establish a foothold and expand their areas of control. The first evidence of a European encounter in Florida is the arrival of SpaniardJuan Ponce de León in the vicinity of present-day St. Augustine in 1513. Ponce de León named the land "La Florida" and attempted to circumnavigate what he thought was an island, sailing south to the Keys, naming a cluster of islands "Las Tortugas" and sailing north to present-day Tampa.
In 1565, Spaniard Pedro Menéndez de Avilés captured Fort Caroline in a brutal fight with the French and established St. Augustine, the first permanent European colony in the continental United States. In 1568, Frenchman Dominique de Gourgues recaptured Fort Caroline. In 1569, the Spanish built a watchtower at Matanzas Inlet to watch the horizon and warn St. Augustine of approaching ships, a strategy that failed them in 1586, when English privateer Sir Francis Drake attacked and looted St. Augustine. The French effort to establish a colony in Florida is memorialized today at Fort Caroline National Memorial. St. Augustine, which had aids-to-navigation (wooden watchtowers which may have been lit at night) established as early as the 1580s, and saw ships come and go on an annual basis through the present day, is considered the nation's oldest port.
Late 16th through the 18th centuries
From the late 16th through the 18th centuries, the Spanish sent annual convoys of merchant and military escort vessels from Cuba to Spain. Referred to as the Spanish plate fleets, the ships carried gold, silver and gemstones from the mines of Mexico and Peru, and porcelains, silks, pearls, spices and other highly sought goods from Asia that reached the Americas via the Spanish Manila Galleon fleet that crossed the Pacific.
The homeward bound Spanish plate fleets followed the Gulf Stream through the Straits of Florida and up the coast of North America before heading east for the Azores and Spain. The Spanish built Castillo de San Marcos and other coastal forts and settlements in Florida to provide protection from French and British raiders and pirates, and assist in saving survivors and salvaging cargoes from vessels that wrecked along Florida's shores as a result of hurricanes and mishaps.
17th and 18th centuries
The Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine—construction started in 1672 and was completed 23 years later
Over the years, many Spanish ships were lost off the Florida coast with the greatest disasters suffered by the fleets of 1622, 1715 and 1733. In 1622, eight ships were lost in a hurricane as they entered the Florida straits. During the 20th century, the remains of a number of lost ships have been found, including Nuestra Señora de Atocha from the 1622 fleet, Urca de Lima from the 1715 fleet and San Pedro from the 1733 fleet.
Eleven Spanish galleons were lost in the hurricane of 1715, wrecking on the shallow reefs between Sebastian Inlet and Fort Pierce. More than seven hundred men perished in the storm, including the Spanish Commander. The McLarty Treasure Museum at the southern end of Sebastian Inlet State Recreation Area takes an in-depth look at the history surrounding this disaster. The 11 lost ships were part of the Spanish Plate Fleet. The Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society Museum in Key West has displays of treasure and other artifacts from Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita, which was lost in 1622.
Fort Matanzas—view of fort's western and southern facades.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish, French and English continued to fight over territory and religion in Florida. The British in Georgia and South Carolina attempted to push southward and the French moved eastward along the Gulf Coast from the Mississippi River valley. The Spanish relied not only on Castillo de San Marcos to protect St. Augustine, but began construction of Fort Matanzas in 1740 for additional protection from the south.
During the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739 through 1748) between Spain and Great Britain, the Royal Navy patrolled the Caribbean and the North American coastline. One ship that was lost during this time was HMSFowey, the wreck of which is located within the boundaries of Biscayne National Park and which has been extensively studied by the National Park Service and Florida State University. In 1763, under the Treaty of Paris, Spain gave Britain control of Florida in exchange for Havana, Cuba, which the British had captured during the Seven Years' War (1756 through 1763). That same year, the British built a fort overlooking the entrance to Pensacola Bay. Almost the entire population of St. Augustine moved to Cuba at the end of the war.
Spain captured Pensacola in 1781 and regained control of the rest of Florida in 1783, when Britain gave Florida to Spain in exchange for the Bahamas and Gibraltar. Around 1797, Spain built two forts at Pensacola Bay in the vicinity of the earlier British fort. Little physical evidence of these forts remains but what does remain is preserved at Gulf Islands National Seashore.
Gulf Islands National Seashore, near Pensacola
Although Britain's control of Florida was brief, its effect on the economy and settlement was substantial. As the British population increased and slaves were brought in, colonial plantations and other industries sprouted and flourished, exporting their products to other British colonies and trading illegally with Spanish Louisiana and Mexico. This was made possible because surveyors mapped the landscape, land grants were given out, the first road was built and a packet system of shipping by rivers and along the coasts was introduced. This economic prosperity and maritime trade continued after Britain ceded Florida to Spain, with exports to neighboring Gulf Coast and Eastern seaboard areas, the Northeast and as far away as Europe.
It was during Florida's second Spanish period that folklore claims that shipping in the Gulf of Mexico was ravaged by the pirate José Gaspar (also known as Gasparilla) from his "regal" base in Charlotte Harbor. Though Gaspar is a well-known figure along Florida's Gulf coast and is celebrated at Tampa's annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival, there is no archival or physical evidence that he ever existed.[1]
18th and 19th centuries
Alligator Reef Lighthouse, east of Indian Key. Completed on November 25, 1873, it became automated in 1963
Spain ceded Florida to the United States as part of the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, and Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821. Coastal trade with other markets continued to expand and towns like Jacksonville, Pensacola and Tampa became important ports. After becoming a U.S. territory, the federal government began building a series of lighthouses as aids to navigation along the coasts of Florida to mark dangerous headlands, shoals, bars and reefs.
Florida's first coastal navigational aid was a 1586 Spanish watchtower at St. Augustine, but the first true lighthouse was a seventy three-foot harbor light built there in 1824. Masonry towers proved vulnerable to storms and erosion—the lighthouse built in Key West in 1825 and the lighthouse built in 1827 on Sand Key, near Key West, both collapsed in an 1846 hurricane, killing a total of twenty people who had sought refuge in the two towers. Other Florida lighthouses had to be abandoned or moved when the sand around their foundations washed away. Information about historic lighthouses in Florida has been recorded by the National Park Service in its Inventory of Historic Light Stations and by the United States Coast Guard (see List of the 1733 Spanish Plate Fleet Shipwrecks). As large parts of the Florida coast remained unprotected by lighthouses until late in the 19th century, ships frequently wrecked along coast, particularly along the Florida Keys, where for a while wrecking made Key West the largest and richest city in Florida.
The U.S. Navy has played a prominent role in Florida's maritime history. In the 1820s, the U.S. Navy was called upon to protect ships off Florida's coasts from pirates that plagued merchant ships in the Caribbean. One of the patrol ships was USSAlligator, lost near Islamorada while escorting a merchant convoy.
Artist illustration of USS Alligator, which ran aground on a reef near Islamorada on November 18, 1822
Near the end of the 19th century, and as a result of the Spanish–American War, Tampa and other Florida ports became staging areas for tens of thousands of U.S. troops and supplies headed to Cuba. With the advent of manned controlled flight and the building of aircraft carriers and seaplanes, an aviation training station was established by the U.S. Navy at Pensacola in 1913 and another in Jacksonville in 1940.
Following statehood in 1845, Florida's economy became stronger and the principal ports shipped vast quantities of citrus, cotton, lumber and other products to the Atlantic states, the Caribbean and Europe. The Federal government began construction of coastal forts including Fort Taylor in Key West and Fort Jefferson on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas to better control navigation through the Florida Straits. Although Fort Jefferson was never finished, construction continued for 30 years, and vast quantities of bricks were shipped to the key in flat-bottomed steamboats like that found at the Bird Key wreck, which was lost while transporting bricks.
Florida seceded from the Union in 1861 and joined the Confederacy. During the Civil War, Florida's ports were blockaded by the Union and blockade runners delivered supplies needed by the Confederacy in exchange for Florida products. Although there were some vessel casualties on both sides, the major naval battles took place in states north of Florida. One unfortunate casualty in Florida waters was the Union transport ship Maple Leaf that struck a Confederate mine.
After the Civil War, tenant farmers and sharecroppers took over plantation lands, and agriculture, cattle ranching, lumber, manufacturing and extractive industries like phosphatemining became important, prompting improvements in transportation. Railroads expanded across the state connecting the ports and the interior, and steamboats like City of Hawkinsville, SSTarpon and SSCopenhagen began providing regular passenger and freight service on inland waterways like the St. Johns River and ocean service to international destinations. Tourism flourished with steamboat tours and hotels near rail lines. In 1900, during the daytime, SS Copenhagen was heading south close to the Florida coast—to avoid the northerly Gulf Stream current—when it suddenly crashed into a reef offshore of present-day Pompano Beach at full speed. In 1994, the remains became the fifth Underwater Archaeological Preserve in the state.
Late 19th century
Underwater artifact with sea life off the coast of Florida
During the late 19th century, the federal government and local port authorities made improvements to channels and harbors and charted and mapped Florida's waters. These improvements, along with technological advances in navigation and shipbuilding during the 20th century, helped propel Florida's ports to global prominence in trade and commerce and the cruise industry and marine recreation. Florida may well hold the record for the number of pleasure boats used by sport fishermen, jet skiers, wind-surfers, power boaters, sail boaters, water-skiers and scuba divers.
The Florida Keys contain the only coral reefs in the continental United States, making it a haven for fish and coral. These same reefs are hazards to navigation. Thousands of ships have wrecked over the centuries in the Keys and elsewhere in the waters of Florida. The most famous Spanish wreck found west of the Florida Keys was the above-mentioned Nuestra Señora de Atocha, found after a sixteen-year search by Mel Fisher in 1985. The value of the ship's treasure has been estimated at $300,000,000.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the U.S. Coast Guard had to deal with thousands of Cubans trying to make it to the shores of Florida. More than 2,700 were stopped in 2005. Often crossing the strait in home-made rafts and boats, it is unknown how many have lost their lives in the attempt. Under U.S. and Cuban law, emigration is illegal, and any Cuban attempting to reach the U.S. found at sea will be deported. Under a 1995 migration accord between the two nations, Cubans who make it to the shores of Florida or other states are generally allowed to remain.
Wrecking is the practice of taking valuables from a shipwreck which has foundered or run aground close to shore. Often an unregulated activity of opportunity in coastal communities, wrecking has been subjected to increasing regulation and evolved into what is now known as marine salvage.
Key Biscayne is an island located in Miami-Dade County, Florida, located between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay. It is the southernmost of the barrier islands along the Atlantic coast of Florida, and lies south of Miami Beach and southeast of Miami. The key is connected to Miami via the Rickenbacker Causeway, originally built in 1947.
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral, explorer and conquistador from Avilés, in Asturias, Spain. He is notable for planning the first regular trans-oceanic convoys, which became known as the Spanish treasure fleet, and for founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. This was the first successful European settlement in La Florida and the most significant city in the region for nearly three centuries.
Boca Grande is a small residential community on Gasparilla Island in southwest Florida. Gasparilla Island is a part of both Charlotte and Lee counties, while the actual village of Boca Grande, which is home to many seasonal and some year-round residents, is entirely in the Lee County portion of the island. It is part of the Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Boca Grande is known for its historic downtown, sugar sand beaches, blue water and world class fishing.
José Gaspar, also known by his nickname Gasparilla, is a fictional Spanish pirate who terrorized the Gulf of Mexico from his base in southwest Florida during Florida's second Spanish period. 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 pirate 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 U.S. Navy, leaving behind his still-hidden treasure.
Spanish Florida was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery. La Florida formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire during Spanish colonization of the Americas. While its boundaries were never clearly or formally defined, the territory was initially much larger than the present-day state of Florida, extending over much of what is now the southeastern United States, including all of present-day Florida plus portions of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Parishes of Louisiana. Spain's claim to this vast area was based on several wide-ranging expeditions mounted during the 16th century. A number of missions, settlements, and small forts existed in the 16th and to a lesser extent in the 17th century; they were eventually abandoned due to pressure from the expanding English and French colonial settlements, the collapse of the native populations, and the general difficulty in becoming agriculturally or economically self-sufficient. By the 18th century, Spain's control over La Florida did not extend much beyond a handful of forts near St. Augustine, St. Marks, and Pensacola, all within the boundaries of present-day Florida.
Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge and State Park is a National Wildlife Refuge and State Park located on the island of Egmont Key, at the mouth of Tampa Bay. Egmont Key lies southwest of Fort De Soto Park and can only be reached by boat or ferry. Located within Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge and State Park are the 1858 Egmont Key Lighthouse, maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard, and the ruins of Fort Dade, a Spanish–American War era fort that housed 300 residents. Egmont Key is located in Hillsborough County Florida on a narrow strip of the county that extends along the Tampa Port Shipping Channel.
The Gasparilla Island Lights are on Gasparilla Island in Boca Grande, Florida. The Port Boca Grande Lighthouse is on the southern tip of Gasparilla Island, and marked the Boca Grande Pass entrance to Charlotte Harbor.
The St. Augustine Light Station is a privately maintained aid to navigation and an active, working lighthouse in St. Augustine, Florida. The current lighthouse stands at the north end of Anastasia Island and was built between 1871 and 1874. The tower is the second lighthouse tower in St. Augustine, the first being lit officially by the American territorial government in May 1824 as Florida's first lighthouse. However, both the Spanish and the British governments operated a major aid to navigation here including a series of wooden watch towers and beacons dating from 1565.
The archaeology of shipwrecks is the field of archaeology specialized most commonly in the study and exploration of shipwrecks. Its techniques combine those of archaeology with those of diving to become Underwater archaeology. However, shipwrecks are discovered on what have become terrestrial sites.
Ángel de Villafañe was a Spanish conquistador of Florida, Mexico, and Guatemala, and was an explorer, expedition leader, and ship captain, who worked with many 16th-century settlements and shipwrecks along the Gulf of Mexico.
George Robert Fischer was an American underwater archaeologist, considered the founding father of the field in the National Park Service. A native Californian, he did undergraduate and graduate work at Stanford University, and began his career with the National Park Service in 1959, which included assignments in six parks, the Washington, D.C. Office, and the Southeast Archaeological Center from which he retired in 1988. He began teaching courses in underwater archaeology at Florida State University in 1974 and co-instructed inter-disciplinary courses in scientific diving techniques. After retirement from the NPS his FSU activities were expanded and his assistance helped shape the university's program in underwater archaeology.
Charles T. Meide Jr., known as Chuck Meide, is an underwater and maritime archaeologist and currently the Director of LAMP, the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum located in St. Augustine, Florida. Meide, of Syrian descent on his father's side, was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and raised in the nearby coastal town of Atlantic Beach. He earned BA and MA degrees in Anthropology with a focus in underwater archaeology in 1993 and 2001 from Florida State University, where he studied under George R. Fischer, and undertook Ph.D. studies in Historical Archaeology at the College of William and Mary starting the following year. Meide has participated in a wide array of shipwreck and maritime archaeological projects across the U.S., especially in Florida, and throughout the Caribbean and Bermuda and in Australia and Ireland. From 1995 to 1997 he participated in the search for, discovery, and total excavation of La Salle's shipwreck, La Belle , lost in 1686. From December 1997 to January 1998 he served as Co-Director of the Kingstown Harbour Shipwreck Project, an investigation sponsored by the Institute of Maritime History and Florida State University into the wreck of the French frigate Junon(1778) lost in 1780 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In 1999 he directed the Dog Island Shipwreck Survey, a comprehensive maritime survey of the waters around a barrier island off the coast of Franklin County, Florida, and between 2004 and 2006 he directed the Achill Island Maritime Archaeology Project off the coast of County Mayo, Ireland. Since taking over as Director of LAMP in 2006, he has directed the First Coast Maritime Archaeology Project, a state-funded research and educational program focusing on shipwrecks and other maritime archaeological resources in the offshore and inland waters of Northeast Florida. In 2009, during this project, Meide discovered the "Storm Wreck," a ship from the final fleet to evacuate British troops and Loyalist refugees from Charleston at the end of the Revolutionary War, which wrecked trying to enter St. Augustine in late December 1782. He led the archaeological excavation of this shipwreck site each summer from 2010 through 2015, overseeing the recovery of thousands of well-preserved artifacts.
Guerrero was a Spanish slave ship that wrecked in 1827 on a reef near the Florida Keys with 561 Africans aboard. Forty-one of the Africans drowned in the wreck. Guerrero had been engaged in a battle with a British anti-slavery patrol ship, HMS Nimble, stationed on the northern approaches to Cuba. Nimble also ran onto the reef, but was refloated and returned to service. The two ships were attended by wreckers, who rescued the Spanish crew and surviving Africans from their ship and helped refloat Nimble. Spanish crew members hijacked two of the wrecking vessels and took almost 400 Africans to Cuba, where they were sold as slaves. Most of the remaining Africans were eventually returned to Africa.
This is a timeline of the U.S. state of Florida.
The Florida Public Archaeology Network, or FPAN, is a state supported organization of regional centers dedicated to public outreach and assisting Florida municipalities and the Florida Division of Historical Resources "to promote the stewardship and protection of Florida's archaeological resources." FPAN was established in 2004, upon legislation that sought to establish a "Florida network of public archaeology centers to help stem the rapid deterioration of this state's buried past and to expand public interest in archaeology."
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Wikipedia's articles on recreational dive sites. The level of coverage may vary:
Countess de Galvaez was launched in 1780 in the Americas, probably under another name, and lengthened and rebuilt in 1785, when she assumed British registry. She then traded with Mobile, New Orleans, Pensacola, or more simply, the "Mississippi". From 1791 on she made one voyage as a whaler and one as a slave ship in the triangular trade in enslaved people. There is some confusion about her ownership in the period 1791–1794. She was lost in 1794 on her return to England from her slave-trading voyage.
Recreational dive sites are specific places that recreational scuba divers go to enjoy the underwater environment or for training purposes. They include technical diving sites beyond the range generally accepted for recreational diving. In this context all diving done for recreational purposes is included. Professional diving tends to be done where the job is, and with the exception of diver training and leading groups of recreational divers, does not generally occur at specific sites chosen for their easy access, pleasant conditions or interesting features.
The Legend of Gasparilla: Myth and History on Florida's West Coast– (PDF)
The Pensacola Maritime Site–
This article contains text from the National Park Service, which is in the Public domain. The text is from the essay Brief Maritime History of Florida in the National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary Florida Shipwrecks: 500 Years of Maritime History–
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