Boat that went down in history for being used in the transfer of young people of the Centennial Generation from Isla de Pinos to Batabanó to go there to Havana by train, after 19 months of being incarcerated in the Model Prison.
It begins in 1901 at the shipyards in Philadelphia, United States, when it was decided to build a steel-hulled warship. When it barely reaches its first quarter of a century, it suffers a fire and its owners decide to turn it into a passenger and cargo ship. Its dimensions are 51 m long, 9 m wide, with a prop of 2.25 m, which in total reported 497 tons and its value, at that time was 150,000 pesos and came to have 25 cabins with double berths.
The Isla de Pinos Steamer Company (The Isle of Pines Steamship. Co) approves the purchase and transfers it to that island to use it on the Nueva Gerona-Batabanó route. It was in the month of November 1926, when the first boat used in the territory with oil engines arrived at the Río Las Casas. In the Book of Ships of the Mercantile Registry of Isla de Pinos, on page 12, folio 94, as the first inscription of 1927, this ship appears with the name of Pinero.
Upon Pinero's arrival in the Isle of Pines, the construction of the Model Prison was one year from its most important moment, with more than 250 inmates working every day of the day, as well as dozens of civilian workers and technicians. The entry of construction materials and men was constant, and the ship participated in the transfer of the same. She also had the task of transferring to the prison and from there to Batabanó many of the political prisoners that the dictator Gerardo Machado assigned to them as a prison. El Pinero became the main means of communication between the Isle of Pines and the rest of the country through the port of Batabanó. The arrival or departure of the Pinero from the Nueva Gerona pier was a moment of recreation, a meeting of friends and family, a whole cultural event.
After the arrival of those punished in the Assaults at the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, their family and friends began to use it as the ideal transport to travel to Nueva Gerona. The obligatory presence of this boat, not only in pine history, but in that of the whole of Cuba, was when on May 15, 1955, at 9:00 at night (one hour after the usual one), it set sail for Havana, carrying the Youth of the Centennial upon themselves once the triumph of the political amnesty had been reached, after being locked up for 19 months. Important events happened during the journey, such as Fidel's reunion with his comrades in the fight, after 15 months in isolation and the distribution of the activities that each of them had to do to continue the fight; It was also on this journey where the name of July 26 was approved by these revolutionaries for the new movement that would continue the fight for total independence.