In the summer of 1849, Round Island, three miles south of the Pascagoula River entrance, became the gathering place for an unauthorized expedition organized as part of Narciso Lopez's efforts to win Cuban independence from Spanish rule. Handbills called for volunteers promised money and land for one year of service, and many who came from across the South saw a chance for booty as well as liberation. By August 7, 1849, 800 men had assembled on the island under Col. White of Louisiana to await supplies and orders, but President Zachary Taylor, unwilling to permit an insurgent attack on another sovereign territory, sent federal warships to blockade the island. The blockade stopped rations, supplies, and transportation from reaching the force, and after six weeks of drinking whiskey, playing cards, enduring dwindling rations and mosquitoes, and seeing one man killed in a fight, the would-be mercenaries dispersed and went home. Lopez later made three more attempts to invade and free Cuba before Spanish authorities captured him and publicly garroted him in Havana; these episodes became known as the Cuban filibusters, meaning an unauthorized takeover or insurgency.