|
Article: Rum-War-The-U-S--Coast-Guard---Prohibition-part-II
1920 to 1925: From skirmishes to a major campaign
The history of the Coast Guard’s efforts to enforce Prohibition can be roughly divided in two, with the year 1925 as the chronological divider. Before this date, the service remained at nearly the same force level as 1920, despite the patently obvious deluge of illicit alcohol coming ashore.
After 1925, the majority of a quantum leap in equipment, ships, and men became operational, resulting in significantly more aggressive tactics in the rum war. By 1925 the United States entered into agreements with important maritime nation’s whereby those nations would recognize seizures made as far out as one hour steaming distance under certain circumstances. This significantly aided a more aggressive policy against the rumrunners. This marked the decline of the easy motorboat jaunt by the amateur boater, and replaced it with dangerous runs beyond sheltered waters.
Probably the most visible symptom of the early Prohibition era was Rum Row. These lines of smugglers and liquor-mongers appeared off major and minor markets in 1921, and became magnets for literally hundreds of "contact boats" which swarmed out carrying ravenous purchasers. As early as 1922 Roy Haynes, Prohibition Commissioner, declared that "hundreds" of these mother ships were anchored off Atlantic shores, with over 60 off Jersey alone.
Lurid tales quickly grew up to satisfy the scandal-minded tabloid readers: the former 17,000 ton German passenger liner Freidrich Der Grosse was "fifteen miles off Fire Island", a floating "bar and cabaret which is the playground of the rich and fast." complete with on-board movies and a "Negro jazz orchestra." This story was later revealed as a romantic hoax, as were the German submarines "of a commercial type" flooding the shores with good Teutonic Ale.
The reality was less colorful. The mother ships would anchor and remain until their cargo was sold, then make their run north to the Canadian provinces or south to the Bahamas. While on "station" they made a great game of it advertising their wares with splashy signs and competing in price and "added attractions" like call girls and gala parties were not uncommon. The Coast Guard, officially hamstrung outside the legal U.S. boundary, continued to patrol for contact boats and occasional unedifying verbal battles. This also included at least one potato fight between would-be enforcers and defiant drinkers.
Enormous profits were to be made, with stories of 700 percent or more in profits for the more popular scotch or Cognac, $8 per case at port of origin, $65 sale price on the Row. The exact amounts no doubt will never be told: the rumrunners boasted and exaggerated not only the profits, but the payroll supposedly needed to stay out of the hands of the authorities. Furthermore the percentage of "undoctored" alcohol was criminally small. Standard practice was to cut it three times before sale, and cheap rot-gut was not uncommonly palmed off as ‘good stuff’ by the expedients of appropriate bottles and counterfeit labels.
Whatever the profits, there was sufficient demand for expansion, with breaks only when winter storms scattered the rum ships. Probably the only reliable clue to the extent of the trade were the statistics on liquor passing through Nassau en route to the U.S.: 50,000 quarts in 1917 to 10,000,000 in 1922.
There is general agreement that the early years of the Coast Guard’s interdiction and law enforcement efforts were marked by only scattered successes. Some say that no more than five percent of the U.S.-bound liquor was stopped in these years. The sheer magnitude of the job, compared to the size of the enforcement forces, can account for this. Other factors were at work, further hindering the Coast Guard’s efforts.
From the service’s point of view, enforcement of Prohibition was not necessarily top priority in the early months and every effort was made to maintain the vital life-saving mission despite increasing pressure from the ‘drys.’ Secondly as the profits mounted, the bootleggers became more and more associated with criminal elements and syndicates. This brought more sophisticated methods, both of importation and circumvention, which may have helped in the offensive against the trade because it created an easy target for payoffs and gangster-style intimidation.
Finally, the unpopularity of the law brought about innumerable cases where the courts refused to administer sufficient penalties to discourage the miscreants and thus support the actions of the Coast Guard. Miniscule technicalities landed the bootleggers back on the street in record times. Impounded rummy boats were auctioned for paltry sums and sometimes to their original owners and brazenly reappeared making their habitual rounds.
Despite the odds, the Coast Guard managed notable individual captures, even early in the fray In August, 1921, the Henry L. Marshall, owned by the reputed "founder" of Rum Row, Captain Bill McCoy, was seized by the cutter Seneca, under Cdr. Aaron Gamble, with 1500 cases on board. Her British registry raised a thorny international incident, but eventually the charges stuck. Some two years later McCoy himself was taken on a second of his rum-running schooners.
Through a growing chain of informants in the supply ports such as Nassau, significant captures were facilitated, such as that of the Grace & Ruby off Salem, Massachusetts. A tip had alerted Prohibition forces that a schooner-load was en route from Nassau. Customs officers stationed themselves on shore and found seven cars and two trucks with drivers equally anxious for the arrival of the boat. The welcoming party lost their enthusiasm when the agents arrived and had the intelligence to depart as the motorboat Wilkin II, signaling confidently to her "customers", came up the harbor.
The motorboat crew, save one, eluded the lawmen, but over 7,000 bottles of American bonded whiskey were taken. The supply ship was identified as the Grace & Ruby, out of Nassau. Next day, the cutter Tampa, a nearly new 240-footer spotted a suspicious schooner with tarpaulins obscuring her name and hailed her for detention. After an escape attempt thwarted by solid shot, she submitted to boarding and was found holding $150,000 worth of whiskey and gin. She was outside the 3-mile limit, but a court held that she had landed "merchandise" illegally, and the seizure was upheld.
In several instances, the life-saving and prohibition missions of the Coast Guard went hand in hand. The Krazy Kat II ran aground off Long Island in heavy weather, sent distress rockets up, and both the crew and $10,000 in liquor were saved.
A December 1922 northeaster brought at least three rum schooners to ruin: Jennie Bell, Madonna V, and Annie L. Spindler. The crew of the first escaped from their grounded vessel, the crew of the second was rescued and captured, as was the crew of the third schooner. As Spindler was breaking up in the surf near Cape Cod, a substantial crowd gathered hoping to share in the salvage of her cargo, an unknown quantity of contraband whiskey
The story of the former yacht Yankton illustrates another factor which in this case operated to the advantage of the Coast Guard: piracy. She was, in happier days, a luxurious British-built yacht; a 217-footer with teak fittings and all the trappings of the rich. She had even participated as a naval auxiliary from the Spanish-American War through World War I. However, by 1923 she was bumming as a liquor runner from Nassau with 8,000 cases of grain alcohol and a motley crew.
The first contingent of "pirates" showed "credentials" of the correct bootlegging syndicate and offloaded 2,000 cases, none of which reached the supposed buyers. Later, a second band of less devious pirates boarded her and made off with the remaining cargo, or thought they had. She remained on the Row for another month, finally selling the dregs and at the same time draining the last of her provisions and coal. The crew, by then cold, hungry and desperate, took her into New York, chopping up her decks and fittings for fuel. The master turned her in and the papers on board proved valuable as intelligence sources for the authorities.
In 1923, another tactic was tried by the Coast Guard and eventually was upheld by the courts, starving out the mother ships on rum row. Alex Clark had been seized in May while carrying provisions to a British liquor ship. The court ruled that such activity constituted foreign trade and was illegal as she was only licensed and enrolled for coastwise trade to and from American ports only.
Despite some such legal victories, other instances pointed up the legal barriers sometimes faced by the Coast Guard. The steamer Underwriter, for instance, was seized four times in one year, three times by the same vessel. Each time, she was auctioned off immediately and resumed running liquor.
Another, Sagatind, a Norwegian steamer, was boarded and found with 43,000 cases on board, along with $26,000 in cash and cases piled on deck. The Coast Guard boarders met no resistance, the crew had been ‘sampling’ the merchandise and was collectively stupefied. Taken by Seneca, she was the largest rum ship seized up to that time (1924). Libels against the ship were dismissed, however, for the government’s failure to prove she was importing, instead of merely transporting the contraband.
|
|
|
|
