The Bluenose and Havana 

In 1942 the Bluenose was purchased for $20,000. by two Americans, Jessie Spalding lll,  and Tom Higgins. They formed the West Indies Trading Company, and moved the Bluenose to Cuba as home base for their business, establishing offices above the Bank of Nova Scotia on O’Reilly Street in Havana.

 On her first voyage from Halifax to Havana, the Bluenose carried a cargo of codfish.  In Havana, word spread of the arrival of the Bluenose, and as she sailed past El Moro Fortress to enter the harbour, crowds of waving people lined the shore. After receiving payment of $7000. for the fish which represented a huge profit, Jessie Spalding went downstairs and proudly opened an account in the Bank of Nova Scotia. (This report by Jessie Spalding is included in the book titled World War Two Adventures of Canada's Bluenose.)

  The Bluenose spent four years based in Havana from '42 to '46 and was involved in regular trading back and forth to the USA and other Caribbean islands including carrying war munitions, aircraft fuel, and dynamite for the War Shipping Administration to help build additional airports throughout the Caribbean to combat the U boat menace. 

 She had at least one encounter with a German U boat in the Straits of Florida and was spared being torpedoed by the German captain when the submarine surfaced and in perfect Oxford English the U boat captain hailed the Bluenose telling the skipper to leave these waters or next time she would be sunk in spite of his admiration of the Bluenose.

In 1946 the Bluenose floundered on a reef off Haiti and was lost.

Today the Friends of Santísima Trinidad wish to support plans to include a fitting tribute to Canada's Bluenose by including a Bluenose exhibit within the new maritime museum of the Office of the Historian at La Fuerza Fortress in Havana.