Gaspar’s Daughter

By

Adora Mitchell Bayles

Cielita sat in the crow’s nest of her ship, the Cielita Linda, knees akimbo, nibbling on a roasted gull breast. With her free hand, she peered through the ornate silver longlass and panned the horizon. The Floridablanca, with all its canvas in repose, dipped and swayed gently with the lazy waves of the Gulf of Mexico. The setting sun splashed a burning light through the sleepy rigging, giving the pirate ship a ghostlike appearance. She observed the old pirate in his stateroom, bent over a map.

Panning the land’s horizon, she could see the breakers splashing onto the beach going into Rio de Paz and knew the tide was going in. Ten of Gasparilla’s most trusted men worked feverishly on the beach loading twenty large treasure chests into a longboat, which was already rigged for sailing. Still, they manned the boat with oars for tacking against river currents.

José Gaspar had been terrorizing ships and ports all along Florida’s coast and Cuba, taking treasures and beautiful women for thirty-eight years. His favorite concubine had given birth aboard ship twenty years ago, and had died soon after. Ceilita had grown up on the Floridablanca, learned to climb, swim and give playful orders to her father’s crew. The men had obliged in fun at first. Later, they had begun to seriously obey some of her childlike commands.

As Cielita blossomed into a woman, the old man had recognized her propensity for giving orders and, when she was barely sixteen, appointed her first mate of the Floridablanca. Taking enormous pride in his daughter’s high spirit, her ability to plunder with the best of them, and to give serious, intelligent orders, he kept an eye out for an ideal little sailing ship he could give her. Finally, in 1815, he celebrated a sizeable victory over twelve Spanish Galleons, one of which had borne the name Pescaro.

“My beloved daughter has been a most capable first mate for two years now. She is a pirate of the finest caliber,” he roared as he shared the spirits he had confiscated from the smaller ship. Smashing a bottle of champagne on the bow of the Pescaro, he shouted, “I, Gasparilla, name thee Cielita Linda!”

The crews of the captured ships had been either taken as new crew members, or killed. The women aboard had been captured and sent off on longboats to Captiva Island to be held for ransom.