DRY TORTUGAS: Our vessel, the 52-foot Irwin ketch, Northern Light, was propelled along on a broad reach by strengthening winds. At one point, we counted 65 shrimp boats along the horizon, lit up like Christmas trees by their working deck lights. They were trawling for Key West Pinks, harvested from fisheries between the Dry Tortugas and the mainland, so desirable they are referred to as “pink gold.” Later, it was just the constellations lighting up the moonless night sky. Northern Light was screaming like a freight train, so we shortened sail to delay our arrival until civil dawn lit the morning sky. After clearing Iowa Rock’s flashing green, we entered the Tortugas anchorage, deployed the
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hook, and exclaimed “What an incredible ride, and what a remote and beautiful harbor!” We might have been channeling Ponce de Leon, the first European to set foot here in 1513. Then, the islands were originally named Las Tortugas (The Turtles), and later began to appear on navigational charts as the Dry Tortugas to notify mariners that there was no freshwater to be found. But there were plenty of treacherous shoals, so in 1825, a lighthouse was built on Garden Key to warn sailors of the numerous coral reefs scattered throughout the area. Construction of what was to become one of the largest brick structures in the Western hemisphere, called Fort Jefferson, began in 1846.
Designed to fortify the location and control navigation in the Gulf of Mexico, the fort also would protect Atlantic-bound Mississippi River trade. Yet the fort never saw military action — in fact, the 30-year-long construction project was never finished. During the Civil War, it served as a Union military prison for deserters and housed four men implicated in President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, including Dr. Samuel Mudd, imprisoned for providing medical treatment to the assassin. By the 1880s, having outlived its already limited usefulness, the fort was abandoned by the military. The next incarnation of the Dry Tortugas was a precursor of its mission today, when it was named a wildlife refuge in
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Departure was scheduled for sunset from Marco Island’s Capri Pass, for our transit of 94.4 nautical miles. A night arrival at the reef-encircled Dry Tortugas would be foolhardy, so our float plan called for nighttime passage with arrival scheduled shortly after dawn. Darkness fell on the Gulf of Mexico, and we settled into rotating watches of two crew on deck.
