SECRETS IN THE SAND
The strange pandemic history beneath Deadman’s Island in Gulf Breeze
PENSACOLA, Fla. – Deadman’s Island doesn’t look like a marvel to the naked eye.
It’s a quiet, 10-acre sandy peninsula, tucked around a corner of Gulf Breeze in the Pensacola Bay. It looks like a salt marsh on one side, a desolate sandbar on the other.
Folded into its marshes are species of endangered migratory birds and mice that thrive in the undisturbed habitats.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, it’s the historical aspects of Deadman’s Island that have been of particular interest lately.
While the peninsula is important for its ecological benefits, a rich history just beneath the top layer of sand sheds light on waves of previous pandemics that circled the globe and were brought into the Pensacola area during the colonial shipping boom of the 1700s and 1800s.
Deadman’s Island was established as one of two “quarantine stations” in Pensacola Bay at the turn of the 20th century, when the yellow fever epidemic was raging.
“A quarantine station was a place on the coast where all ships coming into the harbor had to anchor. It wasn’t in town, and it was a remote and separate location where ships, once they enter, had to go and wait,” said Judy Bense, an archaeologist at the University of West Florida, the university’s former president and one of the leading experts on Pensacola Bay shipwrecks.
“First, everyone on board was monitored for coming down with a disease, like malaria or smallpox or yellow fever. Just like we have to quarantine today for the COVID virus.”
While the sailors were quarantining on Deadman’s Island, the ship would be fumigated with a sulfur gas to rid it of any germs from traveling the world. Pensacola was a booming shipping port for the Gulf of Mexico in the 19th century, and Deadman’s Island was the first stop for thousands of sailors and travuse elers each year – not all of whom, unfortunately, made it off Deadman’s Island alive.
“After a couple of weeks of quarantining, if anybody came down with a disease, they wouldn’t be allowed to enter the city,” Bense said. “There was a hospital there, and if people got sick, they were treated like patients, and if they got better, they went back into society. If they died, they were buried.”
Centuries later, an unknown number of graves containing the remains of yellow fever and other epidemic and pandemic victims are still buried on Deadman’s Island. Six coffins were unearthed after Hurricane Dennis walloped the island in 2005, and Bense examined two of them. They were full of roots and human bones, she said, and gave important insight into the human toll that epidemics like yellow fever took on everyday laborers and travelers.
Ground-penetrating radar studies performed after the coffins were unearthed in 2005 showed even more graves deep within the island’s sandy trenches.
“The sound waves picked up evidence of more coffins and graves under the ground,” said Heather Reed, a marine biologist and project manager of the Deadman’s Island restoration project. “That validated the history that was given by Judy Bense after the coffins were dug up.”
But despite its sinister-sounding name, Deadman’s Island is not named so because of the pandemic victims. A quick walk across the island won’t turn up any human skulls sticking out, and there are no marked graves – although its dark, twisty trees can certainly add a spookiness factor under the right shade of moonlight.
Its name origin is much more simple and has to do with a colloquial marine term called a “deadman” that helps sailors right ships if they’re stuck or careening.
“They would clean a lot of boats here, and when you put the boat on its side and clean the barnacles off, there are these poles that they would take and to help pull the boat back over with,” said Bobby Switzer, a Pensacola businessman who has lived in a home overlooking Deadman’s Island for 30 years. “That’s why they call it Deadman’s Island.”
A ‘time capsule’
The Deadman’s Island of today doesn’t see anywhere near the hustle and bustle that it saw in its Pensacola shipping boom glory days.
“It’s one of the nice little treasures of Gulf Breeze,” said Switzer, idling in his boat along the northern bend of the island. “It’s a nice public water access point. But in one aspect, you don’t want too much access to it, or it’ll tear it all up. But it’s an asset that everybody should have if they can get over here to enjoy it.”
After the grave discovery in 2005, the city of Gulf Breeze launched an initiative to protect and preserve the island. Reed leads the Deadman’s Island Restoration Project and has conducted more than 200 projects on the island since 2007, including historical excavations, wildlife catalogs, erosion control measures and dredging efforts.
“It’s a very unique gem of Pensacola
Bay,” Reed said. “You have salt marshes, people like to kayak in that area, it’s very close to other accesses and to other boat ramps. People just enjoyed coming to Deadman’s because of the solitude. For years, it was a nice little place to walk and get away.”
People like Reed, Switzer and Bense hope that more people knowing and appreciating the history of the island will encourage them to treat it better and to marvel at the history that can be present in such an unassuming place.
“I think one of the most important things that most people realize is Pensacola has such a long history, way back to Tristan de Luna in 1559, so people are sensitive to history here. We have historic forts, like Fort Pickens and Fort Barrancas, and we jostle back and forth with the city of St. Augustine about who was the first city or settlement,” Bense said. “We have been here from the getgo. That’s why the history of Deadman’s Island is so important. It was a big part of the colonial days of Pensacola, and it’s sort of living history. It’s still with us, it’s not gone, and we know a lot about it, so it has real historical significance like no other place does. It’s really quite unique. It’s a time capsule.”