José Gaspar is a mythical Spanish pirate who established a hidden base on the southwestern Florida coast, from which he and the motley crew of his ship, the Gasparilla, spent almost four decades successfully raiding merchant ships in both the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Facing imminent capture by U.S. authorities in 1821, Gaspar supposedly committed suicide by chaining himself to the Gasparilla’s anchor and then jumping overboard. In 1904, residents of Tampa, Florida, established the Gasparilla Parade to celebrate the life and times of Gaspar, and by extension, the Tampa Bay area’s Spanish past and ultimate Americanization. The popularity of the parade only increased over time, and now, early each year, nearly half a million spectators gather in downtown Tampa and nearby Ybor City for the Gasparilla Festival, a Mardi Gras–style festival with a pirate theme.
According to legend, Gaspar was born in 1757 to an aristocratic Spanish family with connections that reached as high as the Spanish royal court. José Gaspar was well educated and well trained in the noble arts. He had become a naval officer and was considered a rising star until he was falsely accused of plotting to steal the crown jewels. Seeing no other recourse but to flee, he rounded up a crew of Spanish, Portuguese, and African sailors, stole a naval ship, and headed for Cuba, a Spanish colony. Spanish authorities continued to pursue him, so in 1783 he and his crew set sail in his stolen ship, now rechristened the Gasparilla, for sparsely populated southwestern Florida, another Spanish possession. There he found safe haven, and there he remained, using the area as a base from which to launch attacks. His greatest success came when he captured a Dutch ship delivering an $11,750,000 debt payment from the U.S. government to Dutch bankers. At his most piratical, he captured a Spanish vessel sixty miles off the Florida Gulf coast, killed the crew, confiscated the valuable cargo, and took hostage a Spanish princess, whom he claimed as his own. He tried to woo her, but when she spurned his advances, he stole her jewelry before decapitating her in a fit of rage.
In 1821, the United States acquired Florida from Spain, and the U.S. Navy began patrolling Florida’s waters to rid them of the pirate menace. In response, Gaspar decided to retire, but a British merchant ship spotted off the coast proved too enticing. Gaspar attacked, only to watch the merchant ship lower its British flag and unmask its guns. It was the USS Enterprise, one of the deadliest ships in the American arsenal. In an attempt to spare the Gasparilla and the lives of his men, Gaspar ran up the white flag of surrender. He then killed himself. A few of his men jumped overboard and escaped, but most were captured, tried for piracy, and hanged. The Gasparilla was scuttled.
Historians have repeatedly tried yet failed to verify stories about José Gaspar, finding no record of him, his men, or the Gasparilla in Spanish, Cuban, or American archives. He is seemingly a myth created by Juan Gomez, a Tampa resident of Portuguese birth who died in 1900, but not before regaling local barroom patrons with stories supposedly stemming from his service on the Gasparilla between 1818 and 1821.
Following the short-lived Spanish-American War of 1898, during which Tampa served as the port of embarkation for U.S. troops on their way to fight for Cuban independence, Tampa residents were looking for a means to celebrate the area’s Spanish past and Americanization while at the same time attracting tourists to the area. Gomez’s stories nicely served their purposes, so they began holding a parade in his honor. It was not long before the parade, which grew to include a 165-foot replica pirate ship and krewes of pirates throwing plastic beads and doubloons to spectators, gained in popularity, securing Gaspar’s reputation not only as a historical figure but as the city’s most famous adopted son. In 1976, Tampa even named its professional football team the Buccaneers largely in his honor.
Gregory Jason Bell
See also Bellamy, Samuel “Black Sam”; Hornigold, Benjamin; Kidd, Captain William; Lafitte, Jean; Rackham, John “Calico Jack”; Thatch, Edward “Blackbeard”
Further Reading
d’Ans, André-Marcel. 1980. “The Legend of Gasparilla: Myth and History on Florida’s West Coast.” Tampa Bay History Journal 2 (2): 5–29. Available online at http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3512&context=flstud_pub.
Jahoda, Gloria. 1973. River of the Golden Ibis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Lamme, Corinne White. n.d. “The Story of Juan Gomez.” Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/mss/wpalh1/12/1204/12040514/12040514.pdf. Accessed November 4, 2015.
Mormino, Gary R., and Anthony P. Pizzo. 1983. Tampa: The Treasure City. Tulsa, OK: Continental Heritage Press.