José Gaspar

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.

[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.

[6] The first published version of the Gaspar legend claims that he was a Spanish nobleman whose brilliant exploits helped him to rise to the rank of admiral and key advisor to King Charles III.

[1][3][7] Other versions follow a similar course but claim that Gaspar did not actually steal the crown jewels but was instead falsely accused of the crime by a jilted lover in the Spanish royal court.

[8] Whatever Gaspar's origins, the various versions of his story agree that he established a base on Gasparilla Island on the uninhabited southwestern coast of Spanish Florida and turned to piracy aboard his ship, the Floriblanca.

[13] 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.

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" had been killed by 1730, over a quarter century before Gaspar's supposed birth in Spain.

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.

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.

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.

[3][8] 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.

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.

[3][8][18][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.

"[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.

[8][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.

[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".

[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.

[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.

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][8][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".

[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.

[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.

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.

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.

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 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.

[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.

[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.