The Pirate Anchorage: Fort Lauderdale’s Most Repeated Lie (That Might Be True)

Somewhere in the Atlantic off what is now Fort Lauderdale Beach, the story goes, pirates used to anchor. Not a romantic movie yielding comical pirates who drink rum, walk with peg legs and parrots, but actual armed maritime operators. The privateers, smugglers, and opportunists, using the shallow shoals and inlets of the southern Florida coastline as a staging ground, a hiding place, or a layover between longer hauls across the Florida Straits.