Tema: The Irish – more Spanish than Celtic?

This is a very interesting article about the Irish Captain Johnny O’Brien, and his great contribution to the Cuba War of Independence. I was aware of those expeditions, but didn’t know that an Irish Captain was in command of the expeditionary ships.

John Dynamite: Marine Mambí [1]

By José Antonio Quintana García

Translated by David Barnwell

As is known, one of the reasons for the failure of Cuba’s Ten Years’ War against the Spanish colonial power (1868-1878) was the small number of expeditions to land on the Cuban coast with military supplies for the Liberation Army. The Cuban revolutionary leadership in exile was aware of this, and from 24 February 1895, the date on which the independence struggle broke out for a second time, it assigned priority to the task of importing supplies for the revolutionary forces. Efforts were concentrated in the United States and came mainly from among the tobacco workers, though other elements of the Cuban émigre population were involved to a lesser extent. To make the enterprise more effective, an Expeditionary Department was created, with a constitution approved on 2 August 1896. Colonel Emilio Núñez was placed at its head.

Link: http://www.irlandeses.org/0711quintana1.htm