José Gaspar (cinematographer)

José Gaspar, also known by his nickname Gasparilla (supposedly lived c. 1756 – 1821), is an apocryphal Spanish pirate who 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 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.

While Gaspar is a popular figure in Florida folklore, there is no evidence that he actually existed. No contemporaneous mention of his life or exploits have 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." The earliest known written mention of José Gaspar was a short biography included in an early 1900s promotional brochure for the Gasparilla Inn on Gasparilla Island at Charlotte Harbor, the author of which freely admitted that the dramatic tale was a work of fiction "without a true fact in it". 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.

José Gaspar's legend is celebrated in Tampa, Florida during the annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival, which was first held in 1904.

Legend

The story of José Gaspar's life and career vary in different tellings, especially regarding his origin. Most agree that Gaspar was born in Spain about 1756, served in the Spanish Navy until turning to piracy about 1783, and met his end in southwest Florida during a battle against the United States Navy in late 1821. However, the retellings differ greatly in the details.

Early years

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 the 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.

Other versions of the story state that Gaspar was a nobleman who achieved a high rank in the Spanish Royal Navy and became a councilor to King Charles III of Spain. He was popular in the court, but when he spurned one lover for another, the jilted lady levied false charges 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.

In still other versions, Gaspar was a brilliant Spanish admiral of questionable character who actually succeeded 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.

Piratical career

In all versions, the renegade settled along the virtually uninhabited southwest coast of Spanish Florida around 1783 and turned to piracy aboard his ship, the ''Floriblanca''. Gaspar established a base on Gasparilla Island and was soon the feared scourge of the Gulf of Mexico and the Spanish Main, taking many ships as prizes and amassing a huge treasure cache in the period coinciding with the second Spanish rule of Florida. Most male prisoners would be forced to join his crew or be put to death, while women would be taken to a nearby isle (called Captiva Island for this reason) to be held for ransom or serve as wives or concubines for the pirates.Bradlee, p. 54

Different versions of Gaspar's legend relate different episodes in his piratical career. One of the most famous involves a Spanish princess (or Mexican, depending on the version) named Useppa who was a passenger on a captured ship. The noble woman rejected the pirate's advances until he threatened to behead her if she would not submit to his lust. Still she refused, and he killed her in a rage (or alternately, because his crew demanded her death). Gaspar instantly regretted the deed and took her body to a nearby island, which he named Useppa in her honor, and buried her himself. 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 over time. However, no evidence has been found to support this claim.

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 personal log or diary, which have been cited as sources for information about the pirate although neither has ever been produced.

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. This is unlikely, as there is no record of Lafitte spending time on the southwest Florida coast, and he died in Mexico before Gaspar's supposed demise. 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.

Demise

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. Gaspar had decided to retire after almost four decades of pirating, and he and his crew gathered on Gasparilla Island to split the enormous treasure cache he'd gathered over his long career.

During the distribution process, a lookout spotted what appeared to be a vulnerable British merchant ship sailing nearby. Gaspar could not resist taking one last prize, so he led his crew aboard the ''Floriblanca'' to pursue their prey. However, when the pirates fired a warning shot, their intended victim raised an American flag to reveal that it was no merchant vessel, but the United States 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 supposedly wrapped an anchor chain around his waist and leapt from the bow, dramatically shouting "Gasparilla dies by his own hand, not the enemy's!" before plunging into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico within sight of the shore. Most of his surviving crew were captured and hanged, but a few escaped or were imprisoned. Some versions of the story claim that one of the escapees was John Gómez, who would tell the tale to subsequent generations.

Plausibility

Historical context

Though his story has been retold in many forms since its first appearance around 1900, there is no evidence that the pirate José Gaspar existed. The period in which he was supposedly active was well after the "Golden Age of Piracy" (c. 1650 - 1725), when real historical figures such as Bartholomew Roberts, Blackbeard, and William Kidd operated in and around the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic basin. European nations began to make a concerted effort to suppress piracy in the early 1700s, and by 1730, every major pirate of the "golden age" era had been killed.

While scattered seaborne attacks by privateers and pirates were a continuing nuisance when Gaspar supposedly arrived at Charlotte Harbor in the 1780s, 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 harass shipping for decades at the enormous scale claimed by most accounts of Jose Gaspar. The original published Gasparilla story and many subsequent tales claim that the pirate had amassed about $30 million in stolen booty by the time of his death in 1821. To put that figure in context, Spain transferred the entire Florida territory to the United States that same year for $5 million.

There is little evidence that pirates of any era based their operations in southwest Florida. The vast majority of loot taken by real-life pirates consisted not of Aztec gold or Inca silver plundered from massive Spanish galleons but of easily liquidated trade goods such as food, tobacco, and lumber taken from small merchant vessels. Since there were no towns along Florida's west coast where stolen cargo could be sold until well after piracy had been stamped out in the Gulf of Mexico, the area was sometimes a refuge for those hiding from the authorities, but it was never a convenient staging ground for active buccaneers.

Archival evidence

Several historians and other interested parties have attempted to find records proving Gaspar's existence without success. Though the original version of the story claims that he stole the "crown jewels" of Spain and then fled with the "prized vessel" of the Spanish fleet, research in Spanish archives has turned up no mention of Gaspar's presence in the royal court, his career in the Spanish navy, or his spectacular crimes. And 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" or of a pirate ship called ''Floriblanca'', and searches of U.S. Navy archives have found no mention of Gaspar in ships' logs or in official court records of the many well-documented piracy trials of the era. 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 all versions of Gaspar's story claim that his last battle took place.

Local place names

There is no evidence to support the claim that several local place names in southwest Florida originated with Gaspar, as many appeared on maps drawn long before his supposed arrival in the 1780s. "Gasparilla Island" appears on Spanish and English maps made in the early 1700s, and contemporary documents suggest that the barrier island was named for Friar Gaspar, a Spanish missionary who visited the native Calusa in the 1600s. While several purported biographies of the pirate state that the nickname "Gasparilla" means "Gaspar, the outlaw" in Spanish, it is actually a feminine diminutive meaning "little Gaspar" or "gentle Gaspar", a moniker more likely to be attached to a pacifist priest than a bloodthirsty buccaneer.

Physical evidence

Gasparilla Island is a narrow barrier island on the northern side of the mouth of Charlotte Harbor that is about long and less than across at its widest point. The various versions of the Gaspar legend claim that he constructed a "regal" home base there, with the initial 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". However, no physical evidence has ever been found to support these claims.

Gasparilla Island became an active shipping point soon after phosphate was found nearby in the late 1800s, and modern port facilities along with a railway and the first bridge to the mainland were constructed at that time. Excellent sport fishing waters nearby helped the area transition to less industrial uses with the opening of the Gasparilla Inn & Club at the end of the railroad line and the establishment of the resort town of Boca Grande in the early 1900s. Hundreds of homes along with a golf course and Gasparilla Island State Park were constructed over the course of the 20th century, and though virtually all of Gasparilla Island above the high tide line has now been developed, no trace of Gaspar's "pirate kingdom" has ever been uncovered.

Over the years, the persistent belief that Gaspar was real has led to unsubstantiated rumors about mysterious maps and caches of gold coins, prompting professional and amateur treasure hunters to search for his lost plunder across southwest Florida. But while there have been no documented recovery of any part of his treasure or the remains of his many alleged victims, unauthorized gold seekers have repeatedly disrupted archeological sites, often in violation of Florida law. As explained by the Boca Grande Historical Society, Calusa and other Native American sites in the Charlotte Harbor region have suffered "unimaginable damage" at the hands of "looters in search of a non-pirate's non-treasure."

Sources of the legend

The origin of the Gaspar legend is uncertain. Local folklore about an earlier age featuring pirates, Spanish explorers, the native Calusa people developed in southwest Florida as settled places in the area grew during the late 1800s. At the time, the Ten Thousand Islands to the south remained a largely unexplored refuge for isolated pioneers and real-life outlaws, though these consisted of land-based criminals fleeing the law, not sea-going buccaneers.

The tales were told informally and were not well documented, and no 19th century mention of a pirate named Jose Gaspar has been discovered. However, in the early decades of the 20th century, several people and organizations combined to coalesce various pirate stories into the legend of the fictional Jose Gaspar, who would soon become much more popular further north along Florida's Gulf coast.

John Gómez

John Gómez (also known as Juan Gómez and Panther John) was a real person who has become 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 near Marco Island in the Ten Thousand Islands region of Southwest Florida. 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. His self-reported age and birthplace varied, even on official documents. In the 1870 United States Census, he is listed as having been born in 1828. However, during the 1880 US census

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