The Three Friends and the Cuban War of
Independence of 1895-1898
by Jeff Atwater
Chief Financial Officer
State of Florida
Recently, I was sifting through old photos
and stories of my great-grandfather, Napoleon Broward, and the expeditions he
made to Cuba on his tugboat the Three
Friends. Along with these materials and
stories from authors such as Horatio
Rubens and Samuel Proctor,
our family has preserved a
pocket watch that was given
to Napoleon Broward while he
was still captain of the tugboat. The watch has a Cuban
flag on the outside, and the
inside reads: “General Enrique Collazo and friends to Captain Napoleon B. Broward, March 17, 1896.”
In 1895, Captain Napoleon Broward,
along with his brother, Montcalm Broward, and Mr. George DeCottes built
a tugboat which they named the Three
Friends to transport cargo along the St.
Johns River. Around the same time,
Captain Napoleon B. Broward
Tomas Estrada Palma, head of the Cuban
Junta, organized the Department of
Expeditions, which would be supervised
by General Emilio Nuñez and assisted by
General Joaquin Castillo. The representative for the Department in Jacksonville
was a Cuban patriot named Jose Alejandro Huau. Mr. Huau and his nephew,
Alfonso Fritot, secured the cooperation of
Florida railroad administrators and officials, merchants, and Captain Broward.
In February 1896, Captain Broward and
several members of the Cuban Junta
agreed that the Three Friends would take
General Enrique Collazo and his soldiers
to Cuba. Furthermore, it was agreed that
the schooner Stephen R. Mallory would
tow the arms and ammunition and later
transfer them onto the Three Friends so
as to not violate U.S. law.
On March 11th, the Three Friends dashed
out of the St. Johns River to pick up Gen-
The Three Friends Tugboat
eral Collazo, the Cuban soldiers and the
weapons destined for Matanzas where
they would be met by General Jose Francisco Lacret’s forces. The Three Friends
traveled along the St Johns River with
such speed that it threw the small boats
along the river onto the platforms. It
picked up the last of the Cuban patriots at Elliot Key. As the Three Friends
went into the sea, Captain Broward gave
three long blasts of her whistle and the
men aboard all gave three loud cheers for
“Cuba libre.”
There was a heavy rain as they approached the coast of Cuba. It was
nighttime, and all that could be seen
was the lights of the burning sugarcane
fields. It wasn’t until several of the boats
had gone ashore with men and crates of
ammunition that they noticed that the
pilot, Mr. Santos, had missed the landing
point by two miles and the Three Friends
had anchored only about 100 yards from
a Spanish fort. Captain Broward and
General Collazo agreed to land the men
and the cargo that night and surprise the
Spaniards. Captain Broward ordered his
men to the boats, but they declined to do
so out of fear that the Spaniards would
discover them. Duke Estrada and the
other Cuban soldiers pleaded with Captain Broward that it was too great a risk
to give them the boats because the boats
all bore the name the Three Friends and
the Spaniards could use this as evidence
against him when he returned to Jacksonville. Captain Broward, moved by
these brave men, exclaimed, “I will row
you ashore myself!” Suddenly, the captain’s crew began volunteering.
As the crew was rowing the last boat
ashore, they were discovered by the
lights of a Spanish gunboat. The gunboat began to shoot at the Cubans and at
the Three Friends. Captain Broward ordered his crew to ready their axes in case
the gunboat tried to board onto the Three
Friends. He reminded his men that he
promised to not leave any of his crew behind. “If capture is imminent, I will beach
the boat and we will all fight together,”
said Captain Broward. After the last boat
returned, the Three Friends
and its crew raced for their lives. They
were immediately pursued by a large
Spanish gunboat. As the gunboat approached, Captain Broward ordered his
men to the boats. He saw no other alternative but to ram the Three Friends into
the gunboat. “I will run into him and I
believe both boats will be sunk by the
collision. We will have the advantage of
having our boats overboard and our men
ready. We can beat them back to the Cubans we have just landed.” However, the
Three Friends managed to outmaneuver
the Spanish gunboat and made it back to
Florida. General Lacret’s forces met up
with the Cubans who had landed near
Matanzas and successfully fought off the
Spaniards who suffered many casualties.
General Enrique Collazo
Horatio Rubens, the attorney for the Cuban Junta, later recalled that the Three
Friends holds the record for having made
the most voyages to Cuba during the running of the Spanish blockade.
Tragically, Cuba’s independence was
later lost to another kind of tyrant. Now
105 years after the expeditions of the
Three Friends I am committed to joining
liberty-loving people to advocate for the
freedom of Cuba’s people, for the sanctity
of human rights and for an open, democratic form of government. There are few
things that would please me more than to
take a tugboat to a free Havana one day
and spend time with a free people.