A’hoy matey, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day! It has its origins in Oregon; in 1995, two friends from Oregon jokingly created the holiday while playing racquetball. It was celebrated amongst their friend group and community for years until columnist Dave Barry became the spokesperson for National Talk Like a Pirate Day in 2002. Since then, it has blossomed into a beloved faux-holiday that encourages the use of the vocabulary popularized by movies like Pirates of the Caribbean as “pirate lingo” to offer a fun opportunity to break out of your daily routine, learn some history, and celebrate a bygone era. So join me, maties on a brief adventure exploring the pirates that skulked about the Florida waters!
The earliest recorded pirate attacks began after China’s Han Dynasty fell in the 2nd century but piracy in Florida was prevalent in the early 1800s. This wave of piracy occurred after The Golden Age of Piracy, a period spanning the late 1600s to the early 1700s, the era that most people think of when the word ‘pirate’ is mentioned: think Black Beard, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tortuga, Anne Bonny, rum, and Calico Jack Rackham. Florida’s age of pirates came around a century after this Golden Age.
This secondary explosion of piracy occurred primarily in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea as a result of increasing American sea trade. In fact, American ships, as well as Spanish and British vessels, were the targets of all manner of pirates, racketeers, and privateers. Pensacola’s first brush with piracy reportedly occurred in 1811 when a U.S. gunboat chased the French pirate ship La Franchise along the northern Gulf. The pirates, unable to outmaneuver the military, ran their ship onto the Pensacola coast, set it on fire, and fled into the woods. Then, in 1817, four years before Florida was relinquished to the US by Spain, notorious New Orleans pirate Jean Lafitte encouraged a group of privateers to raid Pensacola. Nothing came of the plan except a brief panic among Spanish settlers that led them to create a citizen militia.
Things were rather quiet onshore in FL until 1822 when the pirate ship Carmen was brought to court in the recently established U.S. District Court of West Florida in Pensacola. The Carmen was charged with firing on the Louisiana off the coast of Cuba. It’s likely that the pirates on Carmen mistook Louisiana for a merchant ship when it was actually a federal Revenue Cutter Service vessel. The U.S.S. Peacock was present and pursued Carmen. Mike Thomin, a staff member at the Florida Public Archaeology Network, reports that “The Carmen did what most pirate ships did when they saw a naval ship; they tried to run away as fast as possible…pirates did not try to engage a Navy ship. If they did, it was because they mistook it for a merchant ship. As soon as they found out they were dealing with a heavily armed Naval ship; they usually ran away.” (source) The crew was caught, tried, and found not guilty by January of 1823 because of U.S. sympathy for ongoing political struggles across the sea. 
Sadly, most of the dramatic, booty creating piracy in Florida occurred farther down the coast near the Keys. Luckily, you can still spend today having pirate-themed fun regardless of the intensity of Florida’s pirate history. Watch your favorite pirate-themed movie or TV show, read up on interesting figures of pirate culture, make a toast to pirates long-gone with your favorite rum, or make pirate hates with your kids and have a wooden-stick sword fight!