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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. Many people lived near springs and sinkholes and along rivers and near the coasts in areas like present-day Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, relying on fresh and saltwater fish and shellfish as important parts of their diet. The archeological remains at some of the earliest places they lived now are underwater and on the bottom of rivers and springs and offshore on the continental shelf. From at least six thousand years ago, the native people of Florida traveled the waterways and coasts by canoe, facilitating communication and trade among the tribes. About three hundred prehistoric canoes have been found in more than two hundred sites in Florida. ==European exploration== In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, looking for a faster way to Asia by sea, European explorers sailed west and ran into the Americas. Seeing new resources to exploit, people to convert and lands to claim, the Spanish, the French and the English sent militaries, missionaries and colonists to establish a foothold and expand their areas of control. The first evidence of a European encounter in Florida is the arrival of Spaniard Juan Ponce de León in the vicinity of present-day St. Augustine in 1513. Ponce de León named the land "La Florida" and attempted to circumnavigate what he thought was an island, sailing south to the Keys, naming a cluster of islands "Las Tortugas" and sailing north to present-day Tampa. Ponce de León was followed by fellow Spaniard Pánfilo de Narváez who landed near Tampa Bay in 1528 and proceeded north to the area now known as Apalachee. Only four members of the Narváez expedition survived, including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who wrote an account of their travels. A fifth member of the expedition, Juan Ortiz lived as a slave in the Tampa Bay area for nearly twelve years before being rescued in 1539 by Hernando de Soto. He landed in Tampa Bay with nine ships and over 600 soldiers. He spent five months around what is today Tallahassee, and his explorations of southern North America are commemorated at De Soto National Memorial. In 1559, Spaniard Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano established a short-lived colony at Pensacola Bay but lost all except three of his supply ships to a hurricane. He sailed away after two years, a broken and beaten man. The Emanuel Point shipwreck site discovered in 1992 by the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research is believed to be one of his lost ships. In 1562, the French sent Jean Ribaut to the New World intending to found a Huguenot colony. His expedition first arrived in Florida, and marked a spot on the St. Johns River for future settlement and then headed north to establish Charlesfort in present-day Parris Island, South Carolina. The colony failed, and in 1564, René Goulaine de Laudonnière led the settlers back to Florida and established Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville. In 1565, Spaniard Pedro Menéndez de Avilés captured Fort Caroline in a brutal fight with the French and established St. Augustine, the first permanent European colony in the continental United States. In 1568, Frenchman Dominique de Gourgues recaptured Fort Caroline. In 1569, the Spanish built a watchtower at Matanzas Inlet to watch the horizon and warn St. Augustine of approaching ships, a strategy that failed them in 1586, when English privateer Sir Francis Drake attacked and looted St. Augustine. The French effort to establish a colony in Florida is memorialized today at Fort Caroline National Memorial. St. Augustine, which had aids-to-navigation (wooden watchtowers which may have been lit at night) established as early as the 1580s, and saw ships come and go on an annual basis through the present day, is considered the nation's oldest port. From the late 16th through the 18th centuries, the Spanish sent annual convoys of merchant and military escort vessels from Cuba to Spain. Referred to as the Spanish plate fleets, the ships carried gold, silver and gemstones from the mines of Mexico and Peru, and porcelains, silks, pearls, spices and other highly sought goods from Asia that reached the Americas via the Spanish Manila Galleon fleet that crossed the Pacific. The homeward bound Spanish plate fleets followed the Gulf Stream through the Straits of Florida and up the coast of North America before heading east for the Azores and Spain. The Spanish built Castillo de San Marcos and other coastal forts and settlements in Florida to provide protection from French and British raiders and pirates, and assist in saving survivors and salvaging cargoes from vessels that wrecked along Florida's shores as a result of hurricanes and mishaps. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Maritime history of Florida」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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