Today Sanibel Island is a lush tropical vacation destination. 300 years ago the island was still lush but home to aggressive blood shedding pirates. One in particular was Black Ceasar.

Black Caesar was an 18th century African pirate. For nearly a decade, he raided shipping from the Florida Keys and later served as one of Captain Blackbeard’s chief lieutenants aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge. He was one of the surviving members of Blackbeard’s crew following his death at the hands of Lieutenant Robert Maynard in 1718. Caesar’s Rock, one of three islands located north of Key Largo, is the present-day site of his original headquarters and named in his honor. (Info from Wikipedia.org)

Black Ceasar’s Buried Treasure

• Another pirate who made his headquarters near Charlotte Harbor was Black Caesar. He was a former slave who escaped to the West Coast of Florida. Soon afterwords he became leader of the pirates and built his base on Sanibel Island. It is said that he captured a Spanish galleon off Cuba, and brought it back to his stronghold. Among other things on the galleon was 26 tons of silver, which he quickly buried. This enormous hoard is supposedly on or near Sanibel Island.

• In 1798, Black Caesar buried a ship load of silver bars on the north end of Key Largo. This treasure had been captured from a Spanish Galleon en-route to Spain from Vera Cruz, Mexico. Black Caesar made the Spaniards dig a massive hole for the silver, then killed them all and buried them in the hole with the treasure.

Sanibel Island is about 20 minutes from me. I’m heading to to the store to get a metal detector right now. Look for RumShopRyan in the headlines soon!

Over and out from somewhere south,
RumShopRyan