At the same time that Lansky was attempting to make gambling professionals out of the youth of Havana, out in the Caribbean Sea a thirty-eight-foot yacht named Granma bobbed in turbulent waters. On board were Fidel Castro, his brother Raúl, Che Guevara, and seventy-nine others representing the vanguard of the 26th of July Movement. They too had a scheme that involved the youth of Cuba, one with a solitary goal: revolution.
Everything about Castro's latest undertaking made it look like another misguided enterprise, though the original plan was solid enough. The seventy-nine men and women had been culled from a highly trained squad of nearly one hundred and fifty rebels in Mexico. The rebels were in constant contact with rebel cells in Cuba, particularly a sizable group in Santiago led by a motivated young revolutionary leader named Frank País. The plan was for Castro and his group to sail ashore and attack military targets in Oriente Province, while at the same time in the capital city of Santiago, País would lead a rebellion. Eventually these two groups would come together, and the 26th of July Movement would control all of Oriente. The plan was then to build a unified rebel army that would work its way across the island, winning the hearts and minds of the people, before swarming Havana and unseating the Batista regime.
Problems began with the choice of boat. The Granma was a weathered vessel that Castro had bought from an American living in Mexico City. The yacht was equipped to hold a maximum of twenty-five people safely. Three years earlier, the boat had sunk during a hurricane, but Castro had had a number of people working on it to make it seaworthy. By late November the Granma still wasn't completely ready, but Fidel was determined to deliver on his promise to launch an attack by the end of the year. On November 25, the rebel contingent left Tuxpan, on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, and headed out to sea singing the Cuban national anthem and the 26th of July march. Before long, they ran into strong winds and rough waters.
There were few experienced sailors on the ship, and almost instantly the rebels became violently ill. Che Guevara, the group’s medic, searched frantically for seasickness pills, but none were to be found. In his Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, Guevara wrote, “The entire boat took on an aspect both ridiculous and tragic: men with anguished faces holding their stomachs, some with their heads in buckets, others lying in the strangest positions, immobile, their clothing soiled with vomit." Another account described crew members “shitting in their pants.”
At one point the boat began to take on water. It appeared as though there was a leak, so despite there being precious little food on board, the crew began throwing rations and supplies into the ocean to lighten the load. It was then discovered that what they had thought was a leak was actually an open plumbing faucet that could easily be closed: the food had been thrown overboard unnecessarily.
[FONT="]The Granma listed off-course. The trip was supposed to take five days, but by the fifth day the boat was still far south of Cuba.
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—Excerpt from Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba . . . and Then Lost It to the Revolution by T. J. English