[1] "Pilar" was a nickname for Hemingway's second wife, Pauline, and also the name of the woman leader of the partisan band in his 1940 novel The Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

In addition to fishing trips on Pilar, Hemingway contributed to scientific research, including collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution.

Several of Hemingway's books were influenced by time spent on the boat, most notably The Old Man and the Sea (1953) and Islands in the Stream (1970).

The opening and other scenes in the 2012 film Hemingway & Gellhorn depict a miniature boat replica.

The boat was constructed in the Coney Island yard of the Wheeler company, now of Chapel Hill, NC (which also built Fidel Castro's "Granma"), and delivered to Hemingway at Miami, attached to a wooden cradle which was part of the purchase price.

During World War II, Hemingway used his boat to search for German U-boats in the Caribbean waters.

Other accounts of these patrols imply that they were a farce and that he did them in return for extra gas rations and immunity from Cuban police for driving drunk.

[7] On a subsequent trip, he fished with Bror von Blixen-Finecke, with whom he had been on a safari and whose former wife was Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa.

He found that a tuna's primary defense against sharks was speed, and as the fish tire, they became easy targets.

He used a Thompson sub-machine gun to shoot at sharks that would appear as the tuna tired and neared the boat.

He also staged boxing matches with the locals, offering $100 (which ranged upward to $250 based on various accounts) to anyone who could last a few rounds with him.

In 1935, he won every tournament in the Key West-Havana-Bimini triangle, competing against notable sportsmen Michael Lerner and S. Kip Farrington.

During the first summer of owning the boat, an aspiring writer, Arnold Samuelson, served as a deckhand and recorded the dictated logs on paper.

[17] Fuentes, one of the hired captains of the boat, is said to have been the basis for the character Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea and Eddy from Islands in the Stream.

The sister ship of Pilar is on display in the Bass Pro Shops store in Islamorada, Florida.