Oh, we don’t give a damn for our old Uncle Sam,
Way-o, whiskey and gin!
Lend us a hand when we stand in to land,
Just give us time to run the rum in.
“The Smugglers' Chanty"
It was party time, all the time, in the days of The Great Gatsby, flappers, the Charleston and the Volstead Act. The Roaring Twenties was a time when younger adults seemed to abandon all the rules their parents held so dear.
Speakeasies, where bootleg liquor was served in coffee cups, were the rage and bathtub gin was the drink of choice, made all the more delicious by it being outlawed. The police were kept busy busting the illegal drinking establishments, the feds were kept busy destroying stills, the moonshiners were kept busy running from both, and vast amounts of money was made in the process, often by both sides.
Prohibition brings to mind high-powered cars with built-in tanks filled with illegal booze, racing through the night on back-country roads pursued by police or revenue agents. That scene was very much a part of the era. However, there is another part, and that took place around the Chesapeake Bay and the coastal waters off Virginia. Rumrunners roamed the waters up and down the East Coast. Although most of the illegal alcohol transported along the bay was whiskey and moonshine, the label “rumrunners” was the one that stuck.
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter, Apache, one of several cutters attempting to stop the flow of illegal liquor. Courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard
Geographically, there probably could not have been a better design for smuggling than the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. It worked well for Confederates evading the Union gunboats, and it worked even better for moonshiners. In his book, Chesapeake Rumrunners of the Roaring Twenties, Eric Mills reports there were illegal moonshiners working close to the creeks and rivers which line the shores of the bay. Easy access to fishing boats, both power and sail, made the allure of easy money running booze all the more attractive. For a hard-working waterman, the potential cash return for a boat-hold full of booze far exceeded the return of a day’s catch.
Oystermen were known to hide mason jars of white lighting in bushel baskets of raw oysters. One waterman/rumrunner confided he never ran gin, because it was so cheap for people to make at home, it didn’t pay. Moonshine was the cargo of choice. All sorts of boats, from sailing yachts to fishing boats of every description, were used on the bay to transport moonshine from stills hidden on farms, in the woods, and even in homes. Many watermen fished by day and transported whiskey by night.
The revenue agents, charged with tracking down those whiskey runs, were overwhelmed, as was the U.S. Coast Guard. Some local police had the attitude the Volstead Act was a federal law that needed to be enforced by the feds and not of their concern to enforce. Besides, they too enjoyed moonshine and were not opposed to a sip or two by way of research.
As the word spread of the profits to be made in bootlegging, a new problem arose — deadly poison moonshine. Veteran moonshiners knew that using steel tanks would cause the moonshine to become poisonous. Because they drank much of it themselves, they took pride in turning out a quality product. Those who got into it to make a quick buck ignored the science and made poor-quality moonshine that, in some cases, caused people to die. In many cases, it was determined that the quick-buck bootleggers had used denatured alcohol, which caused blindness and even death.
Consumers of bootleg whiskey demanded the best and were accommodated by syndicates of what turned out, in some cases, to be prominent people. By far the most famous was the steam yacht Istar, also known as the “queen of the rumrunners.” Istar had a big gun mounted on her aft deck, which she was unlikely to fire knowing the U.S. Coast Guard had been ordered to sink her if she fired a single round. She was what amounted to being the “flagship of the rum fleet.” Ironically her cargo was not rum, but 33,000 cases of Scotch whiskey from Glasgow, Scotland. Her million-dollar cargo of the best quality Scotch whiskey was destined for the drinking appetites of tipplers in Virginia and buyers from across the Chesapeake Bay.
Her captain, John Skinner, kept the Istar at sea in Rum Row. Rum Row was an area just beyond the then, three-mile limit of the territorial waters of the United States. It was a place where the U.S. Coast Guard could not legally enforce the laws of the United States, namely the Volstead Act. There the Istar, along with fast ships from Canada, England, France, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cuba and ports in the United States would wait for buyers to race out from hidden spots in the bay and along the coast to buy quality whiskey.
Scotch whiskey, Cutty Sark, was brought from Scotland to just off the three-mile limit in the sailing vessel. Courtesy of Eddington Distillers Ltd.
Cutty Sark Whiskey presently markets a prohibition-edition whiskey, which pays homage to Captain William McCoy, who smuggled Cutty Sark Whiskey into the USA during prohibition. The company says his reputation for dealing with unadulterated liquor (at a time when many bootleggers mixed their spirits with other liquids in order to increase yield), gave rise to Cutty Sark being referred to as the “Real McCoy.”
The buyers arrived at Rum Row in all sorts of vessels, usually fast and usually by night. Once inside the territorial waters of the US, these rumrunners could be boarded and the cargoes seized. If they resisted, they could be fired on by U.S. Coast Guard cutters like the famous Apache. If they did not heave to, they could be blasted out of the water. Often the rumrunner could actually outrun the cutters. In several cases, the rumrunners ran their boats aground on beaches and escaped by jumping off their boats and running to the woods. Ironically, many of the confiscated boats of all description were put into service by the U.S. Coast Guard to catch rumrunners.
When U.S. Coast Guard surveillance of small vessels rendezvousing with ships like the Istar ramped up, the rumrunners came up with another plan. They found another way to get into the bay without going past the waiting Coast Guard vessels. Their fast boats, loaded with whiskey, threaded through Currituck Sound then made their way up the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal to the Elizabeth River and then into the Chesapeake Bay. Once clear of the coast guard patrols expecting them to enter through Cape Charles, they made stops on the way and often went right on up the Potomac River to thirsty buyers in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post reported that Washington, D.C. bootleggers where charging from $85 to $120 a case for whiskey from the Istar.
Millions of dollars were being made by the organizers of the smuggling operations optimized by Istar. The people who organized the operations of black ships like the Istar held prestigious positions, even as high as members of the British Parliament. Eventually, the mystery man behind Istar and the rum-running syndicate was discovered. He was Sir Broderick Cecil Denham Arkwright Hartwell, Fourth Baronet – late a captain in the Leicestershire Regiment, a highly decorated veteran of the Boer War and World War I.
The whiskey business was not without its risks. Aside from the ever-present threat from the U.S. Coast Guard, there were the perils of operating at sea, in the dark and often in fog. In one much heralded case, the 50-ton sloop Glen Beulah was waiting with her cargo of whiskey off the Virginia Cape in a fog-laden darkness. Aboard, there were 1,800 cases of Lewis Hunter rye whiskey. In the fog, a mystery ship rammed her and sent her to the bottom. Luckily for the crew of the Glen Beulah, who had escaped in their pajamas in a rowboat with just one oar, they were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Yamacraw. The crew was arrested and remanded to the Norfolk City jail. The captain claimed that his ship was not a rumrunner and that she had stopped at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay for engine repairs. The Coast Guard claimed she was anchored ten miles southeast of the Cape Charles lighthouse when she was sunk. The Captain of the Glen Beulah claimed his ship was rammed by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mascoutin, which he stated had two masts. In fact, the Mascoutin had only one mast.
In another incident described by Eric Mills, the British steamship Rowan Park was off Diamond Shoals near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay when she was hailed by a schooner showing a distress signal. The Rowan Park went to the aid of the schooner, which her captain identified as the Leader. He claimed she had lost her rudder and was trying to maneuver by sail alone. The captain of the steamer invited the crew of the stricken vessel aboard. Once the Coast Guard was notified, the Rowan Park went on her way. The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Manning, which was on patrol, found the vessel had disappeared from the area. When the Manning arrived on the scene where the stricken vessel had been reported to be, the vessel was not there. As the U.S. Coast Guard headed out, the rumrunning schooner headed in. Her name was not Leader, but rather Julito. There was in fact no problem with her rudder. Two coast guard cutters gave chase as the Julito headed through the Virginia Capes then up the Chesapeake Bay. She made it to the Poquoson River before the U.S. Coast Guard caught up. A coast guard boarding party found food cooking in the galley and a dog running around the deck, but not a soul onboard. The entire crew had abandoned ship.
Chesapeake Bay rumrunners were a hardy, cunning lot, who used all sorts of deceits to get the illegal whiskey past the revenue cutters and the U.S. Coast Guard. They were seasoned watermen who knew the bay from years of harvesting oysters, crabs and fish of every description. The high-stakes game of cat and mouse between rumrunners and the law continued for as long as the Volstead Act remained in effect.
The passage of the 21st Amendment marked the end of prohibition in 1933 and the end of the lucrative rumrunners. Notorious gangster Al Capone, who knew an awful lot about prohibition said, “Prohibition has made nothing but trouble.” The irony of the rumrunners of the Chesapeake Bay is that many remained anonymous. When prohibition ended, their boats were put back in service as watermen. Watermen’s boat-holds that had held cases of illegal whiskey once again held oysters and mackerel. The stories were remembered and became legends.
The fact is they got away with it. They did not speak to strangers in those days. They grew old. The party was truly over. The romance was ended. The happy days were over. Memories warmed their hearts along with perhaps a taste of moonshine on those cold winter nights, when the frigid winds blew in from across the bay where rumrunners once stealthily roamed in dark night.
During Prohibition, Americans were divided between dry and wet lifestyles. Here are two of the era’s popular libations.
THE GIN RICKEY
Gin was among the favorite intoxicating liquors. The Gin Rickey was first made in the 1880s with bourbon at Shoomaker’s Bar in Washington, DC and was named after Democrat lobbyist Colonel Joe Rickey. During Prohibition, bartenders replaced bourbon with gin. While F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, he found inspiration in this crisp cocktail.
• 2 oz. dry gin
• 1/2 fresh lime squeezed and dropped in the glass
• 5 oz. soda water or sparkling mineral water
THE SIDECAR
The Sidecar was named after a WWI army captain who liked to arrive at his local speakeasy in a motorcycle sidecar. Shake this mixture well with cracked ice and strain into a chilled, sugar-rimmed cocktail glass.
• 3 oz. cognac
• 2 oz. Cointreau, Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur
• 1 oz. lemon juice