"Old Put" the patriot

by Frederick A. Ober

Quickly, then, the Captain-General assembled the "Junta of Defense," composed of men most eminent in military affairs in Havana, and placed before them the situation.[1] They resolved upon a spirited defense, even though their soldiers were insufficiently armed and they had no defensive works save the Morro, then about a hundred years old, and its companion fortress called the Punta, between which two forts lay the deep and narrow entrance to the harbor. This harbor was blocked by some big war-ships, and a chain was stretched across the mouth, but the English did not even essay an entrance, having landed their troops to the east, and first marching upon the Morro from Cogimar and the town of Guanabacao, which they took quite easily, and then sweeping over the Cabañas hills, where the Spaniards later built the vast fortifications which they should have constructed sooner for the defense of their capital city.

[1] From Nociones de Historia de Cuba, by Dr. Vidal Morales; Havana, 1904.

The Provincials arrived the last of July, and landed to the west of Havana, where stands a small fort known as the Torreon of Chorrera, which was defended with much valor, but compelled to surrender. Afterward, however, they were transported to the Cabañas hills, and there, on the site of the fortifications (above which, in 1904, the American flag last waved in token of possession in Cuba), Israel Putnam and his Provincials joined the British troops. And they were welcome, beyond a doubt, for nearly half the British army was incapacitated through fevers, and many men had died.

Fort near Havana where the Colonials landed.

The arrival of the sturdy Colonials gave the besiegers of the Morro new strength, and fresh courage, and within a few days they were called upon to assist at carrying the castle by storm. The English had been a long time sapping toward the fortress walls, and a breach having been opened near the bastion, the combined assailants poured through in an invincible flood. The Duke of Albermarle, who commanded the British forces, had informed the comandante of the castle that he had mined the bastion and demanded a capitulation. But the heroic commander, Don Luis de Velasco, spurned the proffer, and as a consequence the castle was stormed, and he was included among the five hundred slain on that occasion. A tablet to his memory may be seen affixed against the seaward wall of the Morro, and from the parapet may be traced the British and Provincial line of approach.

The bastion they breached was afterward repaired; but nothing could repair the terrible losses sustained by both armies through sickness caused by exposure and bad water. More than one-third of the Colonials died of disease; but nothing seemed to trouble sturdy Old Put, who was everywhere among his men, with comfort and consolation, carrying water to the wounded, supporting the dying. The chaplain of the Connecticut troops one day recorded in his diary: "Col. Putman and Lt. Parks went off into ye country to buy fresh provisions." Two days later he noted the death of Putnam's companion in this trip into the country; and that was in October, only a few days before orders were given for the Colonials to embark for New York.

Havana capitulated soon after its only real defense, Morro Castle, was taken, and the English entered into possession. But imagine the feelings of the surviving soldiers who had gone so far and been exposed to so great peril, when they learned, less than a year later, that the city and fortress that had cost so dear had been given up, in exchange for Florida and other Spanish territory east of the Mississippi.

In Havana, where he was one day roaming about unarmed, Colonel Putnam met with an adventure which nearly cost him his life and made him the involuntary owner of a negro slave. Seeing a Spaniard beating a black man with a bamboo cane, he darted in with his old time impetuosity, and seizing the stick, wrenched it away from its owner, who, joined by other exasperated Cubans, turned upon the American and compelled him to flee to a vessel for safety. Here he was followed by the negro, who so successfully appealed to the soldier's tender sensibilities that he allowed him to accompany him home to Connecticut. There he served him faithfully, and when his master died he bequeathed to "Old Dick"—as he was called—the "Havana cane," of which the colored Cuban exile was inordinately proud.