The 1960 Invasion of Great Swan Island

in July 1960 there were stories in to Miami Florida newspapers regarding an almost comic story of an invasion of a tiny Caribbean island that housed a US weather station you know had to do with a little-known territorial dispute between the United States and the Honduras over the tiny only some three kilometers square Swan Islands chain about 95 miles off the coast of Honduras and it would have been easy to miss the story which quoted US Weather Service personnel saying they couldn't understand why anybody would fight over these islands and talked about a weaponless invasion that included an occupation of just some seven hours but at the time the newspapers didn't really have the whole story which was an interesting one of Cold War intrigue that definitely fits in to the truth is stranger than fiction category the early history of the islands is somewhat uncertain although it appears Columbus probably visited there looking for firewood on his fourth voyage but the name came from a pirate because don't all great stories involve pirates in 1683 a group of London merchants fitted out a ship called the Signet which is the name for a young Swan and fittingly named a master mariner named Charles Swan the ship's captain the goal was to establish trade with Peru and Chile but on the trip the Signet was attacked and overcome by pirates who Swan claimed foreseeing the Signet to join them Swann sold the significant rate of the coast of South America but in 1686 having found little luck there as a pirate Swan took his crew across the Pacific in search of Spanish galleons noting in a letter that the ship ran so short on supplies that the crew had considered eating him he escaped cannibalism but was later killed in the Philippines it's not really clear how Charles swans name came to be associated with these islands since he mostly did his raiding in South Americans connection to the islands might be totally one of legend but the islands were said to be the haunt of pirates by 1775 or being referred to on maps as the Swan Islands the uninhabited islands were claimed by John Valentine white of the Atlantic and Pacific guano company in 1858 under the guano Islands act which allowed you a citizen's claim otherwise unclaimed islands that had deposits bird guano used for fertilizer the original guano company apparently went out of business and the islands were claimed by Captain Alonso Adams of Mobile Alabama in 1893 the islands were then leased to the United Fruit Company which planted coconut palms there in 1923 endorsment claim to the islands coming to have inherited the rights based on initial Spanish discoveries in the sixteenth century but by that time the islands were only being used for occasional hurricane monitoring and both countries simply maintained competing claims the u.s. weather bureau first created a station on the largest of the chain great Swan Island in 1938 in 1949 the islands served briefly as a US Department of Agriculture quarantine station for cattle being imported to the United States from Central America the island continued with a small contingent of employees with the US Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration and a few immigrants who raised cattle on the island and competing claims by the u.s. and Honduras the State Department considered the islands to be the property of a Boston family named Smith apparently based on Adams as 1893 claimed in 1955 hurricane Hilda blew over the islands and knocked down the remaining coconut palms that had been planted by the United Fruit Company by 1960 weather station employees on great Swan Island described the island as one long bore with one employee telling the Miami News that there's absolutely nothing to do we can't even get radio stations in the states in 1960 members of the u.s. geodetic survey arrived at the island and conducted a census counting 28 people those represented five US government employees men in the u.s. weather station and an FAA airline beacon and the rest were natives who had emigrated from the grand Caymans or Bahamas we're taking care of a few cattle the report of a population on great Swan then spurred the invasion in July the story of the invasion reported the Miami Herald and the Miami News was reported by a ham radio broadcaster on the island the invasion party consisted of depending upon the story 13 or 17 Hondurans who came to the island to assert Honduran sovereignty a spokesman for the FAA described the group as a bunch of college or high school kids and said apparently they were just students on a Sunday picnic the spokesman went on to say they arrived in a banana boat planted their flag saying national anthem and took some photos of the ceremony the spokesman concluded that they were just out for excitement and they are gone now our operations have not been disturbed in the least and that might be just a humorous anecdote except that there was rather more to it between the census in March and the invasion in July the island population had actually doubled because of something called radio Swan radius Swan was a station with a 50,000 watt transmitter that started broadcasting from Great Swan Island in May the station was owned by the Gibraltar steamship company the radio station acted as a regular commercial broadcaster broadcasting in Spanish throughout the Caribbean the station raises eyebrows give me Islands proximity to Cuba which had in 1959 finally fallen to Fidel Castro the station broadcast news which could be picked up in Cuba and that was critical of the Castro regime almost immediately after radio Swann began broadcasting Castro's double accused the station of being an agent of the US government an article in the Miami Herald on June 24th gave some credence to Castro's claim did your bolter steamship company did not appear to have owned any steam ships and around a decade had no other active assets sight being theoretically under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission as the u.s. claimed sovereignty over the island the station had not obtained a permit and the FCC declined to comment company owners were tight-lipped or unavailable however the station manager applied that he did not believe that Gibraltar steamship was a fronting for a US government agency and the State Department of the CIA claimed to have known almost nothing about the station but of course Swann radio and the Gibraltar steamship company were a front operation for the Central Intelligence Agency and in fact the station had been built as part of a secret operation authorized by Dwight Eisenhower to topple the Castro regime the transmitter use had originally been used by Radio Free Europe had been transferred by US Navy Seabees in the secret operation in March the Seabees also erected two radio towers built an operation facility based on Quonset huts and cleared a small airfield the role the CIA and radio Swann would become obvious in 1961 when the station used coded messages that pretty much everyone in the region recognized as supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion and that of course changed the context of that student vation in July of 1960 because what it first appeared to be simply a friendly encounter between students and Weather Service employees was actually students stumbling on an island that was housing a secret CIA operation to topple the Castro regime which created a potentially unstable situation it also greatly concerned the CIA operatives on the island who are desperately radioing to headquarters and in its 2012 book an air war on Cuba author Daniel Walsh provided a transcript of those cables the city officers on the island cabled asking for instructions and we're told give them plenty of beer and protect the family jewels meaning of course the radio station the station leader cabled the CIA Honduran ship on horizon beer on ice and then talked to students they confabbing have accepted beer the students then began mixing some concrete which they plan to use to make a big sign that says island belongs to Honduras and according to CIA operatives started listening to Eartha Kitt albums and drinking their fifth beer the students then performed the flag raising ceremony that was later described the Miami Herald which the CIA operative on the island described as students have just raised Honduran flag I saluted but then a potential crisis as the operatives had to cable headquarters saying that the beer supplies were running low but the operatives definitely handled the situation reporting that they were now breaking out the rum followed by these kids are great finally they were able to cable that the operation was success and the students had vacated the island none too soon it seems as the operative said that their liquor supplies were exhausted but the family jewels were intact but the situation was rather more dangerous than it sounds the station represented a covert attempt to overthrow the Castro regime and had the students discovered the nature of the facility it could have revealed the planned Bay of Pigs invasion but keeping the students on the beach the CIA had averted what could have been a very dicey situation as US Marines were at the station armed and prepared to defend it regu Swan changed his format after the Bay of Pigs invasion but continued operating along with other stations broadcasting anti-castro messages for the CIA until 1968 when the transmitter was again moved for use in broadcasting CIA propaganda during the Vietnam War the invasion became an annual event with a few students visiting each year sitting on the dock and drinking beer despite a State Department opinion that the US had the better territorial claim on the islands and a federal ruling in their favor in 1971 the u.s. dropped their claims to the islands and in a treaty seated them to Honduras although we did secure permission to continue to operate the weather station facility which operated there into the 1980s in 1989 the Honduran government named the Swan Islands a wildlife refuge although a group called fantasy International says that they are planning some eco-friendly tourism development on the islands today the only permanent residents of the Swan Islands are a small hundred naval detachment on great Swan Island if you enjoyed this history guy short then feel free to click that like button and subscribe to our Channel and check us out on patreon Twitter integrate Facebook and our merchandise on teespring com [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 239,991

Rating: 4.9784961 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, honduras, cold war, swan islands, us history, cia

Id: OqYLY9qf_SI

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Drakar13]

Interesante historia. Siempre me llamaron la atención esas islas porque están relativamente lejos, nadie parece estar haciendo nada con ellas y la mayoría de la población parece no saber que existen.