Taylor brothers ran railcar ferries to Cuba

In 1946, the four Taylor brothers, who hailed from Sea Level, N.C. – Dan, William, Alfred and Leslie – seized an opportunity to become major players in the arena of international trade. 

After World War II, the Taylors’ West India Fruit and Steamship Company (WIF&SS Co.) expanded its operations by adding a railcar ferry service between Palm Beach, Fla., and Havana, Cuba. 

Railroad historian David Moat said: “The main advantage of the railcar ferry service was that railcars were directly transferred between Cuban and North American points without the need to load and unload freight at port facilities, thereby avoiding the attendant problems of lost time, repackaging, pilferage and damage.” 

Essentially, the Taylor brothers were following in the footsteps of the legendary Henry M. Flagler. He was the industrialist who established Standard Oil Corporation along with John D. Rockefeller in 1870…and accumulated great wealth in the process.

 Henry Flagler

Flager chose to make Florida his permanent home in 1885, investing in the hospitality and transportation industries. One of his early projects was to buy a little railroad company and then extend its rail line west from the Florida mainland about 90 miles “out to sea” to reach Key West.

 

The feat was an “engineering marvel,” which was finally accomplished in 1912…and cost “a pretty penny.” 

The next undertaking for Flagler’s new Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) was to connect it to Havana, Cuba.

 

“Flagler ordered three ships from Cramp Shipyard in Philadelphia, based on the design of the Great Lakes rail ferries,” wrote Capt. James McNamara, chair of the Maritime Industry Museum at Fort Schuyler in New York City.

Capt. McNamara 

“Each ship could carry 30 large railcars on four sets of parallel tracks on the main deck,” McNamara said. The first run occurred in January 1915.

Things were going well for FEC…until Mother Nature intervened. 

The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 (Category 5) smashed dead-on into the middle keys and destroyed the entire railroad in that section. FEC did not have sufficient funds to rebuild.

With rail service to Key West now totally obliterated, the rail ferries were relocated, first to Fort Lauderdale and later to West Palm Beach. Operations resumed and continued until 1940, when the U.S. Navy began preparing all commercial vessels for potential wartime service. 

“After serving gallantly during World War II, the railcar-ferrying ships were released by the U.S. government in 1946,” McNamara said. 

However, FEC decided to exit the railcar ferry business. This is when the Taylor brothers stepped in to pick up the pieces and run the railcar ferries from West Palm Beach to Havana. 

WIF&SS Co. was quite successful early on, and by the mid-1950s, business was brisk, with “ladings reaching more than half a million tons,” according to Moat. 

The U.S.-Cuba trading partnership was ultimately affected by the Cuban Revolution, which was a multi-year undertaking that began in 1953. Cuban rebels under the leadership of Fidel Castro eventually ousted military dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year’s Day 1959.

 

From then on, it became more and more apparent that “business as usual” between the United States and Cuba was not an option. 

Fidel Castro immediately launched his agenda to resist U.S. imperialism by sidling up to the communist regime in the Soviet Union.

 

Journalist Max Fisher said President Dwight D. Eisenhower “was not happy about having a Soviet military proxy 90 miles from Florida.” Relations between the United States and Cuba began to unravel rather quickly. 

Dr. Charles McKelvey, a retired history professor from Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., an authority on Cuban affairs, said that Castro acted on Aug. 6, 1960, to nationalize U.S telephone and electricity companies as well as the Texaco, Esso/Standard and Sinclair oil companies and 36 American sugar mills. 

In September, Castro nationalized the three U.S. banks that were doing business in Cuba – National City Bank of New York, Chase National Bank and the Bank of Boston. He tightened his grip yet again in October, nationalizing 166 more U.S. companies, including those involved in the chemical, mining and metals, insurance, machinery and hospitality industries. 

All this activity triggered implementation of a strategic exit plan for the Taylor brothers and the WIF&SS Co. 

According to several sources, “WIF&SS Co. had about 1,000 railcars stranded throughout the 3,100 miles of Cuban trackage.” The Taylor brothers deftly managed to get all but 100 of their railcars out of Cuba before the company ceased operations on Aug. 7, 1961. 

Diplomatically, the Taylor brothers communicated publicly “that trade had dwindled to the vanishing point.” Its ships were up for sale. 

Capt. McNamara said that the U.S. State Department employed WIF&SS Co. “to evacuate American personnel onboard the railcar ferries, including the U.S. ambassador (Philip Wilson Bonsal), NASA personnel and other governmental employees.” 

“The ships were only certified for 12 passengers, but they carried out hundreds of people at a time,” McNamara wrote.