Gasparilla Adventures

José Gaspar, also known by his nickname Gasparilla , is an apocryphal Spanish pirate, the Last of the Buccaneers, who is claimed to have roamed and plundered across the Gulf of Mexico and the Spanish Main from his base in southwest Florida. Details about his early life, motivations, and piratical exploits differ in different tellings. However, the various stories state that he was active during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the years coinciding almost exactly with Florida's second Spanish period . Though the pirate Gaspar is a popular figure in Florida folklore, he probably did not exist. No contemporaneous mention of his life or exploits have been found in Spanish or American ships logs, court records, 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 written mention of José Gaspar was in a 1900 promotional brochure for the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railroad Company, part of Henry B. Plant's railroad system that ran to Plant's Boca Grande Hotel at Charlotte Harbor, near Gasparilla Island. Subsequent retellings of the legend are based upon this first fanciful account, including the accidental inclusion of Gaspar in a 1923 book on historical 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.
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