A semi-enclosed sea
The Gulf of Mexico is bordered by Mexico, the United States and Cuba, and is connected to the Atlantic through the Straits of Florida and to the Caribbean through the Yucatan Channel. A strong current, the Loop Current, enters through the Yucatan Channel and feeds into the Gulf Stream, which carried returning Spanish ships north and east. The shallow shelf along the northern and western coasts, the delta of the Mississippi and the frequent summer and autumn hurricanes all shaped how people used its waters.
Indigenous seafarers
Before Europeans arrived, coastal peoples used dugout canoes for fishing and travel along the Gulf and up the rivers. The Maya of the Yucatan peninsula are recorded as trading by sea in large canoes along the coasts of the Yucatan and the Caribbean in the early sixteenth century. Archaeology also shows shell middens and fishing settlements along the northern Gulf, though the boats themselves rarely survive.
Spanish exploration
Spanish expeditions entered the Gulf in the early sixteenth century. Juan Ponce de Leon reached Florida in 1513, and in 1519 Alonso Alvarez de Pineda is credited with charting much of the northern Gulf coast, producing one of the first maps showing its shape. Hernan Cortes’s expedition landed on the Mexican coast in 1519, founding Veracruz, which became the principal Spanish port on the Gulf.
Not all of these ventures went well. The Narvaez expedition of 1528 ended in shipwreck on the Texas coast, and a handful of survivors, including Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, later made their way overland. Hernando de Soto’s expedition (1539 to 1543) crossed the southeast and, after his death, the survivors built boats on the Mississippi and floated down to the Gulf. French efforts followed: in 1682 Robert de La Salle reached the river’s mouth, and his later colonizing voyage of 1684 ended in disaster when the ship La Belle sank in Matagorda Bay, Texas. Its wreck was found in 1995 and has become a well-known example of maritime archaeology.
Veracruz was a hub of the Spanish fleet system, and the treasure fleet galleons of the New Spain flota gathered there before sailing to Havana. The Gulf was dangerous for them: hurricanes struck sporadically, and several Spanish fleets were wrecked off Florida and the Gulf coast.
The Mississippi outlet
The river is the Gulf’s greatest maritime feature. France founded New Orleans in 1718, on a bend of the Mississippi well upriver of the mouth, which gave it a protected port reached by ships navigating the winding delta. Spain governed Louisiana from 1763 to 1800, and France briefly regained it before selling it to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
By then, farmers upriver were sending produce downstream on flatboats and keelboats, selling cargoes in New Orleans and often breaking up their boats. The keelboat river freight trade and the later arrival of steamboats changed the system. The steamboat New Orleans reached the city from Pittsburgh in 1811, and by mid-century steam packets carried cotton, sugar and grain to the port. Sailing ships and then steamers moved those goods onward to the Atlantic world. Navigation at the river’s mouth was difficult because silt built up in the passes; engineering works, most famously those of James Eads in the 1870s, were designed to keep channels open.
Galveston, Mobile, Pensacola and Tampa grew as other ports, while Cuban ports such as Havana remained linked to the Gulf’s trade.
Hurricanes and the sea
Hurricanes are a constant in the Gulf’s history. Perhaps the worst in the United States was the hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas, in September 1900, killing thousands of people (estimates commonly cited run to between 6,000 and 12,000). After it, the city raised its grade and built a seawall. Later forecasting and warning systems improved safety, but major storms such as Katrina in 2005 have continued to disrupt ports and shipping.
Fishing, oysters and shrimp
Coastal fishing has long been central. Oystering, shrimping and fishing for snapper and menhaden supported many communities. In the early twentieth century, small sail luggers were replaced by motor-powered shrimp trawlers, many built in Louisiana and Texas yards. Vietnamese-American fishers later joined the industry from the 1970s. Sailing and motor workboats such as the Lafitte skiff and the pirogue developed for the marshes and bayous.
The oil era
The Gulf also transformed in the twentieth century because of petroleum. The Spindletop discovery near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901 launched a major oil boom, and the Gulf coast became a centre for refineries and oil tankers. Offshore drilling began in shallow water in the 1930s and 1940s, with a notable platform out of sight of land installed off Louisiana in 1947. Supply vessels, crew boats, pipelaying barges and later deepwater drilling rigs now form a large fleet. In 2010 the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill off Louisiana caused loss of life and widespread environmental damage and brought new scrutiny to offshore operations.
Gulf Coast shipping today is centred on Houston, New Orleans and other ports that handle a very large share of United States bulk cargo, and canals and the Intracoastal Waterway link the coast for barge traffic.