Rum-runners and Renegades by Rich Mole

Author:Rich Mole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Canada / General, HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Pacific Northwest (OR, WA), HISTORY / Social History
ISBN: 9781927527269
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2013-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

8

The Men of Rum Row

SOME 12 MILES EAST FROM Johnny Schnarr and his fellow shoreboat skippers, the heavily laden ships of the Pacific’s Rum Row rolled placidly at anchor in international waters off northern California and Mexico, waiting for the customers to venture out to them. Washington, Oregon and California bootleggers—and, occasionally, members of the shore-hugging fireboat fleet—arrived to load up their contraband cargo from a motley armada of engine-augmented two- or three-masted schooners, steam freighters, former ore carriers, yachts, fish packers and First World War sub-chasers. The stationary fleet grew quickly, from just 4 ships in 1922 to 25 vessels at the height of activity a decade later. Rum Row represented the smaller of the two fleets, but in terms of income, it vastly outweighed its shoreboat counterpart. Rum Row meant huge profits for men who seldom—if ever—ventured out beyond the swimming beaches of Vancouver’s English Bay and Oak Bay’s Willows Beach.

The cargo capacity of the vessels varied. Fully loaded, the low-slung, 94-foot sub-chaser Ragna shipped 1,800 cases of liquor; by contrast, the enormous five-masted schooner Malahat had room in her holds for over 80,000 cases. Exporters often had more cases stacked up topside, until the decks barely cleared the waterline. There were thirsty people in Alaska, too, so Malahat sometimes dropped anchor off northern Cape Flattery, allowing the fish-packer Kiltuish to load 10,000 cases. Then Malahat sailed south. Even her mammoth holds soon emptied out. Smaller boats puttered up to resupply the huge schooner and other ships. One was a Prince Rupert halibut schooner, Chief Skugaid. Thanks to US Prohibition, her deckhands were making the richest “catches” of their lives—and no more tossing about in a dory in a heavy chop.

Once a mother ship got into position, the crew simply waited for customers. Yet the larger operation was far from simple. It required dealing with hard-bargaining US customers and bloody-minded skippers, taking delivery of merchandise, loading ships, arranging customs clearances and then getting vessels to designated positions and back again safely. The row itself was just one component of a well-oiled machine fuelled by big money and operated, in the main, by a handful of seasoned liquor men and mariners. Through their distribution companies, agents sought out buyers (bootleggers) and made cash transactions, often arriving back in BC carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, small fortunes in the Roaring Twenties.

The Victoria facility supplying Johnny Schnarr was actually a branch operation. Headquartered in Vancouver at a Hamilton Street warehouse that held thousands of cases of liquor, Consolidated Exporters was created by a group of Canadian brewers and hotelmen determined to cash in on US Prohibition. It wasn’t hard to source the best product; by US Prohibition’s start, Ottawa had rescinded the wartime ban on liquor transportation. Boxcars full of Corby’s and Wiser’s were continually rolling west from Ontario. While other Wharf Street operations such as Rithet Consolidated (exporting King George IV Scotch whisky) and Pither and Leiser (warehousing Teacher’s Scotch whisky in what is now the Dogwood

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