WHO OWNS THE BLACK LEGEND YACHT SERIES
WHO OWNS THE BLACK LEGEND YACHT CRACK

The ring solved the problem of the pirate mast sticking up from behind the tree line of the island’s sub-tropical hammock. There, 9 feet below the surface, the pirate ordered an iron ring to be hammered down into the limestone substrate. The chiseled steps led 9 feet below the channel’s surface.

WHO OWNS THE BLACK LEGEND YACHT SERIES

Understanding the nature of his handicap, Black Caesar ordered a series of steps carved into the coral rock at the edge of the island. For wary captains navigating the pirate-rich Straits of Florida, sailing ships hiding behind an island all but advertised, “Hey, pirates here!” What Black Caesar recognized, as would every Black Caesar who followed in his footsteps, was that the low-lying nature of the island was unable to hide the telltale sign of his mast. The channel was the conduit through which Black Caesar and his crew accessed vulnerable ships attempting to navigate the treacherous Straits of Florida. A natural channel ran between the deeper waters offshore and the pass separating the pirate lair at Elliott Key from the next island along the chain, Old Rhodes Key. He had captives roasted over slow fires for his amusement, and his harem is said to have once contained 100 young women.”įor those individuals intent on acts of piracy, Elliott Key provided excellent access to prime hunting grounds. It is said of Black Caesar when his men had captured a ship carrying a particularly rich cargo, he would order 10 days of feasting and celebration, and personally lead the orgy of drinking and lust. Henry also wrote that Black Caesar “set a record for murder, torture, wanton destruction and thievery that even better-known pirates like Edward Teach, Sir Henry Morgan, Jean LaFitts and Captain Kidd could not equal. Henry wrote in the Miami Daily News article that the pirate led “a colony of pirates and captives who looked up to him as an emperor serving either through admiration or fear.” Instead, the Portuguese leader led his fellow survivors into a life of piracy from their Elliott Key lair. According to the lone account revealing this version of events, the survivors managed to salvage enough materials to create a primitive campsite and a vessel equipped with a mast, rigging and sails. He asserted his leadership and rose to be their leader. One of the survivors who escaped the shackles was described as having “unusual intelligence”. After recovering from their ordeal, they banded together and worked to salvage bits and pieces of the wreck, including wood, sails, rigging and barrels of fresh water. They washed ashore in the Northern Keys – at Elliott Key. A small group, however, lived through all three. Not every person on board survived the hurricane, the shipwreck and, in cases, the shackles of slavery.

WHO OWNS THE BLACK LEGEND YACHT CRACK

As they did, waves pounded the hull and crashed over the decks with white, foamy furor until the wood began to splinter, crack and break into pieces. Hurricane-force winds blew the ship off course and drove it against the stony corals of the reef. Among other commodities on the vessel was human cargo – including the descendant of Castro. The story began in the late 16th Century when a Spanish man-o-war attempted to navigate the Straits of Florida.

It is a doozy.Īccording to Henry, a segment of the local Miami historians believed the pirate was the descendent of the Portuguese naval officer Joao de Castro, who was born in Lisbon on Feb. This one-of-a-kind Black Caesar tale, written by Bruce Henry, a staff writer for the Miami Daily News, appeared in the April 5, 1936, edition of the newspaper. The first known reference to him sees the future pirate arriving on Elliott Key more than 100 years before the African chieftain, who arrived nearly 100 years before the escaped Haitian slave. Other men have been labeled with the Black Caesar moniker.

Usually, he is either an African chieftain who joined Blackbeard’s crew or an escaped Haitian slave who joined up with Southwest Florida’s legendary pirate, Jose Gaspar. What every Black Caesar story has in common, however, is a pirate lair on Elliott Key. Black Caesar’s pirate story spans three centuries.

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