Curious Facts About Ships & Maritime Commerce to Habana

Here are a few miscellaneous interesting facts that we ran across while doing the transcription of passenger names from the Diario de la Marina:

Snow and Ice to Havana

In the mid-1800s there were many shipments of snow and ice (moslty from Boston) to Havana. According to Wikipedia, Frederic Tudor (1783-1864) was known as Boston's "Ice King" and made a fortune shipping ice to the Caribbean, Europe and even as far away as India. His Tudor Ice Company harvested ice in a number of New England ponds for distribution throughout the Caribbean, Europe and India from 1826 to 1892.

Here are some of the shipments of snow and ice to Havana that we have found while transcribing passengers lists:

* destined for the Tudor Ice Company in Havana.

Performers

Ocassionally, the arrival of Stage performers and entertainers to Habana was recorded on the passenger lists. Here are some we have found:

José Martí

The great Cuban patriot and revolutionary philosopher, Jose Marti, was born in 28 Jan 1853. On 21 Oct 1869, at the age of 16, he was arrested by the spanish authorities, accused of disloyalty for having written a letter to a companion of studies where he refered to the individual as an apostate for having joined the spanish army to combat the pro-independence cubans. On 4 Mar 1870 he was sentenced to 6 years in prison, but this was later commuted to exile in the Isle of Pines on 5 Sep 1870. On 15 Jan 1871, in response to family solicitations, the place of exile was changed to Spain so he could continue his studies. We have an entry on the data base dated 17 Jan 1871 recording his leaving for Cadiz on the ship Guipuzcoa.

We found another entry for Jose Marti arriving in Habana from Cadiz on the ship Puerto Rico on 20 Jan 1874. It is conceivable that this one might have been a return to Cuba unrecorded in the history books.

From 2 Jan to 24 Feb 1877 history books state that he returned incognito to Habana, using his middle name and maternal surname, Julian Perez1.

In our data base, we found two entries for a Julian Perez, one from Cadiz & Puerto Rico on 5 May 1868 and the other from La Coruña on 27 May 1852. Both these dates precede the date of his exile to Spain so they probably correspond to someone else with the same name.

Of course some of these may be simple name coincidences, since we have also found an entry of a Spanish Captain Jose Marti on 8 Dec 1852 from Cadiz and another entry of Jose Marti on 23 Dec 1852 from Mallorca. Both dates precede the birth date of our apostol.

1. Diccionario Enciclopedico de Historia Militar de Cuba, Tomo I, Biografias, Centro de Estudios Militares, Ediciones Verde Olivo, Habana, 2001. ISBN: 959-224-130-9.

Famous or Important Personages

Among the important personages visiting Cuba were the following:

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