Five years later another publication called
Forest and Stream sent a reporter to visit with
Gomez and his wife. The writer said he found a
vessel to take him to Panther Key and he met
Gomez’ wife who was very excited to see him.
She told him, “Oh, my old man, he's gone
tar-a-pin (meaning tarpon) fishing. He's got
tar-a-pin on the brain, my old man has.”
In 1997 in the Orlando Sentinel a reporter
named Steven Wallace gave his version of
Gaspar’s tale as told by Panther Key John. He
gave John’s location as “near the head of
Fakahatchee Pass in the Ten Thousand Islands.”
“Gomez claimed to have been Gaspar’s
brother-in-law and cabin boy,” Wallace wrote.
“Truth be told, were it not for the Panther Key
storyteller, no one ever would have heard of any
pirate named Gasparilla. Even those who write
of the alleged terrorist admit that they have no
real evidence. It all traces back to John Gomez.”
Wallace ran down the classic tale of the pirate,
but admitted that even the man who wrote the
pamphlet for the railroad (in the story just
prior) seemed to think the pirate’s name
appears to be taken from a 16th century
Franciscan monk who lived in Charlotte Harbor.
Gasparilla (Boca Grande) Pass, in fact, was
originally named Friar Gaspar’s Pass. An explorer
named Bernard Romans, sent by the Spanish
crown to map out the Florida coastline in 1769,
referred to the island as “Boca de Gasparilla,” a
name that originated from an even earlier
Spanish map. That in itself shows cause for the
fact that Gaspar/Gasparilla’s name might have
been taken from that, instead of the other way
around.
Wallace wrote, “There was a U.S. warship in
those days called the USS Enterprise. A
schooner built in Baltimore in 1799, it was
actually the third so-named ship to be
commissioned by the U.S. Navy. It had a storied
and active career and ultimately was assigned to
pirate chasing in the Caribbean and the Gulf of
Mexico. Its end came on July 9, 1823, when it
broke up on Little Curacao Island in the West
Indies.
“The Enterprise was a natural to become part
of the legend, as the victorious ship that finally
brought Gasparilla and his crew to ruin. It has
been written that the Enterprise, disguised as a
simple merchant ship, allowed itself to be overtaken
off Boca Grande in 1822, only to cast off
its cover at the last minute and sink Gaspar with
a number of well-aimed cannon blasts but Navy
records of the time, show the Enterprise was
nowhere near southwest Florida when Gaspar
and his men supposedly met their match.
Lawrence Kearney, then-captain of the
Enterprise, had his ship in New York Harbor for
repairs in early 1821, as he notified the secretary
of the Navy by a letter dated April 10. According
to his biographer, Kearney then spent the rest of
1821 and all of 1822 patrolling off the southwest
coast of Cuba not Florida. Nowhere in Kearney’s
letters or in Navy records of the period does a
pirate named Gaspar appear. A victory over such
a notorious villain would certainly have been reported
by the American naval officers involved in
the event, yet there is no documentation of any
such occurrence in official Navy records. Nor is
Gaspar mentioned in any correspondence of
commanding officers on vessels in the Gulf of
Mexico at the time.”
The final word comes from Chanoce Deal,
who lives in North Carolina and claims to be the
great-great-great-granddaughter of Panther Key
John. She grew up with the knowledge her
ancestor was a famous pirate, well, actually a
famous pirate’s cabin boy.
“We always heard the tales of buried
treasure,” she said. “Our family believes that a
lot of the tales John told were made up so he
wouldn’t get into trouble for doing the things
that the actual pirates had done.”
Her family legend, handed down through
generations, has Panther Key John with several
nicknames, including Juan Gomez, Johnny Gomez,
Panther John Gaspar or Gasparilla, and Panther
Key John.
Chanoce said her family believes John died on
July 13, 1910 at the age of 122, and that two men
named Oliver Parker and John King sat down
with John and transcribed his memories.While
many say he died in 1900, the family legend has it
that John faked his death at that time and quietly
moved to Old Myakka. That, she said, is where
he actually died.
44 GASPARILLA ISLAND September/October 2019
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