A pirate ship once lost in the mangroves and swamps of the Florida Everglades. It was cursed by the crew it created to walk the plank, and now the Ghost Ship Everglades is doomed to sail its murky waters forever.
Everglades National Park, with its mysterious maze of bald cypresses, shady hammock forests, and winding rivers, takes on an eerie feel after the sun sets below the horizon.
Centuries ago, pirates plagued the seas from the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean. They attacked merchant ships to steal goods, which could be a very profitable business. Pirates sometimes landed on the coast of Florida.
In 1901, one such story was printed in the national newspaper New York Daily People and Chicago Tribune. It described a 300-year-old curse involving a ghost pirate ship that was forced to sail the narrow rivers of the Everglades forever.
Ghost Pirate Ship
The story goes that a merchant ship sailed the waters near Cape Florida in the 1700s, just outside Miami. Pirate legends in Florida originally originated in the Florida Keys area after Spanish ships arrived and many pirates took over the St. Augustine area. But did they ever reach the swampy waters of the Everglades?
According to the story, seizing the opportunity for lucrative loot, the pirate ship gave chase. However, the resourceful crew aboard the merchant ship, well acquainted with the treacherous waters, devised a plan to evade their pursuers by navigating through the intricate channels of the Everglades.
The pirate ship eventually caught up with the merchant ship and plundered the merchant ship's goods. The pirate captain was furious that the chase had taken so long that he ordered the entire crew to walk a plank and made the captain's wife watch before she had to walk a plank herself and land in the muddy water.
The wife prayed to God to curse the pirates, which he did, driving them deep into the Everglades. Making them haunt them for all eternity, a place they would never escape.
The tidal wave brought in pirates who were stranded in the swamp, causing them to die one by one from hunger and fever.
Ghost Ship of the Everglades of the Cursed Pirates
The Ghost Ship Everglades has haunted the southern coast of Florida since the days of pirate marauders. The ghost ship's crew is cursed to sail the seas for eternity after it chases a merchant ship and becomes lost in the twisting channels of the swamplands of the Everglades.
According to a 1901 story, the natives who remained in the swamps, as well as hunters who spent a lot of time sailing the same rivers, returned with stories of seeing the Everglades Ghost Ship with its rotting masts and hill. The crew are now skeletons, still trying to find a way out of the Everglades.
Was it ever a pirate ship sailing the freshwater seas of the Everglades? While we don’t have much documentation, we do have a long tradition of stories. And perhaps the dim lights of a skeleton crew working since the golden age of piracy speak for themselves as it glides through a river of mangroves and alligators.
Bibliography:
Scary Stories from the Everglades
Ghost Ship Everglades Story Chicago Tribune, 1901 – Newspapers.com™
https://www.timotis.com/news-1/the-history-of-pirates-in-florida
Image Source: Pixabay.com
