Maritime history of Florida
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.
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.
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.
His expedition first arrived in Florida, and marked a spot on the St. Johns River for future settlement and then headed north to establish Charlesfort in present-day Parris Island, South Carolina.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
After the Civil War, tenant farmers and sharecroppers took over plantation lands, and agriculture, cattle ranching, lumber, manufacturing and extractive industries like phosphate mining became important, prompting improvements in transportation.
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.
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.
