page_title: Maritime history of Florida
section_title: 18th and 19th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Maritime history of Florida / 18th and 19th centuries
caption_attribution_description: English: Underwater artefact with sea life
context_page_description: The maritime history of Florida describes significant past events relating to the U.S. state of Florida in areas concerning shipping, shipwrecks, and military installations and lighthouses constructed to protect or aid navigation and development of the Florida peninsula.
  A long and flat peninsula surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Straits and the Atlantic Ocean, Florida has a long and rich maritime history. The size and shape of Florida, along with its natural features like reefs, shoals, water depth, currents, locations of rivers and inlets and the weather, have affected where people lived and where vessels wrecked. Florida has some of the best natural harbors in the country, resulting in the state becoming an international maritime crossroads.
  Humans have inhabited Florida for at least twelve thousand years, and perhaps more. The earliest inhabitants would not recognize their home today, because the sea level is twenty to fifty fathoms higher and has covered nearly half of the Florida peninsula.
context_section_description: Spain ceded Florida to the United States as part of the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, and Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821. Coastal trade with other markets continued to expand and towns like Jacksonville, Pensacola and Tampa became important ports. After becoming a U.S. territory, the federal government began building a series of lighthouses as aids to navigation along the coasts of Florida to mark dangerous headlands, shoals, bars and reefs.
  Florida's first coastal navigational aid was a 1586 Spanish watchtower at St. Augustine, but the first true lighthouse was a seventy three-foot harbor light built there in 1824. Masonry towers proved vulnerable to storms and erosion—the lighthouse built in Key West in 1825 and the lighthouse built in 1827 on Sand Key, near Key West, both collapsed in an 1846 hurricane, killing a total of twenty people who had sought refuge in the two towers. Other Florida lighthouses had to be abandoned or moved when the sand around their foundations washed away. Information about historic lighthouses in Florida has been recorded by the National Park Service in its Inventory of Historic Light Stations and by the United States Coast Guard (see List of the 1733 Spanish Plate Fleet Shipwrecks). As large parts of the Florida coast remained unprotected by lighthouses until late in the 19th century, ships frequently wrecked along coast, particularly along the Florida Keys, where for a while wrecking made Key West the largest and richest city in Florida.
  The U.S. Navy has played a prominent role in Florida's maritime history. In the 1820s, the U.S. Navy was called upon to protect ships off Florida's coasts from pirates that plagued merchant ships in the Caribbean. One of the patrol ships was USS Alligator, lost near Islamorada while escorting a merchant convoy.
  In 1826, construction began on the Pensacola Navy Yard and four forts to defend it. What remains of Fort Pickens, Fort Barrancas and Fort McRee, which were built overlooking Pensacola Bay in the vicinity of the earlier British and Spanish forts, is preserved today within Gulf Islands National Seashore.
  Near the end of the 19th century, and as a result of the Spanish–American War, Tampa and other Florida ports became staging areas for tens of thousands of U.S. troops and supplies headed to Cuba. With the advent of manned controlled flight and the building of aircraft carriers and seaplanes, an aviation training station was established by the U.S. Navy at Pensacola in 1913 and another in Jacksonville in 1940.
  Following statehood in 1845, Florida's economy became stronger and the principal ports shipped vast quantities of citrus, cotton, lumber and other products to the Atlantic states, the Caribbean and Europe. The Federal government began construction of coastal forts including Fort Taylor in Key West and Fort Jefferson on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas to better control navigation through the Florida Straits. Although Fort Jefferson was never finished, construction continued for 30 years, and vast quantities of bricks were shipped to the key in flat-bottomed steamboats like that found at the Bird Key wreck, which was lost while transporting bricks.
  Florida seceded from the Union in 1861 and joined the Confederacy. During the Civil War, Florida's ports were blockaded by the Union and blockade runners delivered supplies needed by the Confederacy in exchange for Florida products. Although there were some vessel casualties on both sides, the major naval battles took place in states north of Florida. One unfortunate casualty in Florida waters was the Union transport ship Maple Leaf that struck a Confederate mine.
  After the Civil War, tenant farmers and sharecroppers took over plantation lands, and agriculture, cattle ranching, lumber, manufacturing and extractive industries like phosphate mining became important, prompting improvements in transportation. Railroads expanded across the state connecting the ports and the interior, and steamboats like City of Hawkinsville, SS Tarpon and SS Copenhagen began providing regular passenger and freight service
caption: Underwater artifact with sea life off the coast of Florida
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