❖ CHASING RUM ON PUGET SOUND ❖

Lucile McDonald (1898-1992) was an amazing journalist/historian/author on the prowl for Washington State history. Let's once more follow her trail through Puget Sound when she was beach-combing for tales of the rum-running days during the Prohibition Era.

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Roy T. Lyle,
Federal prohibition chief, 1 June 1922,
with part of the shipment of "salt fish" liquor 
seized in a Seattle freight shed.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

If one waits long enough, almost any true experience becomes a collector's piece.
      National Prohibition ended in December 1933; it was the following March before Washington's first state liquor stores were in business.
      For nearly 14 years the entire United States had been dry. Washington had suffered thirst four years longer than that because of a Prohibition Law of its own, effective 1 January 1916.
      Sufficient time has elapsed so that minor actors in the drama of the Prohibition Era feel that now their part can be told. One of them volunteered the information that he was hired to work on a farm at Washington Harbor, Clallam County, and discovered its owner was a bootlegger, ostensibly raising turkeys and hay. The main purpose of the hayfield was to conceal a ditch in which liquor was stored.
      Another told how his father had moved from Samish to Sucia Island because farming was not as profitable as repackaging liquor goods. He removed bottles from boxes and repacked them in gunny sacks.
      "Yes, but some other repackaging was done, and not always on the level," another man commented. "You might be paying $120 a case for good liquor. You received it in a straw-stuffed gunny sack with a handle. You opened it and what did you have--three bottles of good liquor and the rest of the bottles filled with tea!"
      One of the men who gave stories to the State had been employed on a railroad. He related that a small-time bootlegger proposed that a train conductor let him store cases of whiskey between the walls of the caboose.
      Space was found for four cases each trip. They had cost $50 apiece in Canada and the bootlegger doubled his money in Bellingham.
      "He made $2,500 a month easily," said the trainman.
      "He paid me $10 a day just to stay in the car so that nobody would hijack his goods."
      The same narrator recalled deliveries made in Bellingham with buttermilk jugs, painted white, filled with moonshine retailing at $8 a gallon. Painted milk bottles also were delivered, customers paying $3 a quart "for that kind of milk."
      The trainman spoke of shingles which were loaded by the carload at a Canadian mill, where a bootlegger would have an arrangement to place some of his wares on board at the same time.
      Shingles would be piled densely in front of the car door and, when customs officers inspected the car at Blaine, the contents looked innocent. Hijackers, however, sometimes received a tip on the number of the car and stole the liquor before it reached its destination.

      

Coast Guard cutter Arcata, 
with a captured "rum runner" vessel.
Stamped with date of 25 August 1924.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Speedboats carrying contraband cargo came directly to Seattle and landed cases on piers or at suburban beaches. Some commonly passed through the Government Locks and put their cases ashore on a county wharf at the foot of Stone Way. A man who worked at a boathouse nearby said that two or three trucks stopped there regularly at night to pick up liquor.

      Shipments for large-scale bootleggers left British Columbia ports on "mother" ships, ostensibly bound for Guatemala and Mexico. They hove to outside the 12-mile limit and discharged into "daughter" ships, which delivered the contraband cargo to the San Juan Islands, where they were met by speedboats. These in turn carried the goods to Seattle or nearby points.
      In 1925, the Coast Guard employed 22 vessels on Puget Sound and in nearby waters to lie in wait for the liquor craft. Frequently a thrilling chase occurred, when the sound of firing brought Whidbey Island residents out in the night to watch the pursuit from the bluffs.
      If a fleeing craft ignored a signal to halt, the Coast Guard fired a shot across the bows. If the fugitive vessel still did not stop, the Coast Guard unlimbered a Lewis machine gun.

Coast Guard with their Lewis gun on deck.
Motoring out of Anacortes, WA.
Photo dated 1931 from the archives of 
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      Sometimes, if badly shot up, a pursued vessel made a crash landing on a beach and the crew disappeared in the bushes. Most bootleg vessels were faster than the patrol craft and could outrun them.
      Liquor commonly was packed 12 bottles to a gunny sack. Sometimes these were towed from the stern, ready to be cut adrift.
      One method of delivery was to place rock salt and cut cork with the bottles in the sacks. They sank when dropped overboard, but a few hours later, after the salt had dissolved, the sacks were floated by the cut cork and retrieved by a watch onshore.
      Liquor frequently was stowed under lumber, logs, and sawdust on barges in tow from Canada, or buried on sand scows. It might be shipped in barrels and kegs, in metal pipes that appeared to be part of engine-room fittings, or in a gasoline tank supposed to contain fuel.
      In the last years of the Prohibition Era, one former Coast Guardsman said, the heavy traffic was in canvas bags fastened underneath log rafts being towed.
      "A tugboat fellow," he related, "told me about a tow of cedar logs from Ladysmith with a queer gimmick. Several hollow logs were filled with cases of liquor and the ends were plugged with sacks of sand."
      The former officer's most unforgettable adventure had to do with a craft that always carried a cargo of scrap metal. The skipper made about three round trips every week into the San Juans ostensibly buying old iron. It always looked the same and the revenue men were suspicious.
      One night in 1925 off Point No Point, the craft went by in the kind of weather that would send most vessels to shelter. The revenue cutter went alongside and hailed the skipper.
      "One of the seamen--he was just a kid--noticed a short piece of rope trailing in the water," the former Coast Guardsman said. "He snagged it with a pike pole, gave a strong pull, and, as it came loose a case of whiskey came with it. The searchlights were turned on and we could see a secret compartment built under the keel. We had tapped that boat all over and it never gave forth an echo, the false bottom was so cleverly built. It had space for 24 cases.

Text above by Lucile McDonald for the Seattle Times 1961.