Rum Running on Cape Cod
Looking through our Archive to bring some interesting stories for the summer, we came across a time still remembered by some of our members: Rum Running. Share your own stories below!
In the years of Prohibition between 1921 and 1933, Cape Cod was a center for rum-running on the east coast. The Cape’s small harbors, accessibility for the eastern market, and the relative calmness of Nantucket Sound attracted rum-runners. For a few years, many fishermen of New Bedford, Provincetown, and Chatham earned handsome profits carrying rum to shore. Their supplier was Rum Row, a flotilla of over 100 ships carrying rum from the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, and Canada, which lived in international waters out of the Coast Guard’s reach.
By 1926, the underworld used bribery, extortion, and murder to take control of the rum-running business, and experienced, organized city smugglers from the cities replaced local rum-runners. These new, professional smugglers used trucks on isolated roads to meet larger boats on empty beaches. Some locals risked hijacking these trucks, but their daring efforts resulted in several deaths, including those of the entire crew of a small freighter which still lies at the bottom of Nantucket Sound.
According to Ellen NicKenzie Lawson, PH.D, who has conducted extensive research into rum-running on Cape Cod and the east coast, several fascinating smuggling episodes occurred in Cotuit itself. Two Cotuit residents were arrested by the Coast Guard for rum running. The men were waiting outside the harbor in a small boat to pick up rum from a Boston rum runner and mistook the Coast Guard’s ship for their contact. The Coast Guard soon arrested the crew of the Boston ship as well, and the entire crew of smugglers was photographed on the Cotuit Dock.
-Alicia Pollard
For more information on rum-running on the east coast, see Lawson’s website: http://smugglersbootleggersandscofflaws.com/
Sources
Higgins, Reid. “Running Rum and the Roaring Twenties: Cape Cod During the Prohibition Era.” Life and Times of Cotuit. Ed. Stephen Hemberger. Cotuit: Historical Society of Cotuit, 2012. Print.
Lawson, Ellen NicKenzie. “Rum Runners.” Cape Cod Life December 2002: 40-44. Print.
In the years of Prohibition between 1921 and 1933, Cape Cod was a center for rum-running on the east coast. The Cape’s small harbors, accessibility for the eastern market, and the relative calmness of Nantucket Sound attracted rum-runners. For a few years, many fishermen of New Bedford, Provincetown, and Chatham earned handsome profits carrying rum to shore. Their supplier was Rum Row, a flotilla of over 100 ships carrying rum from the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, and Canada, which lived in international waters out of the Coast Guard’s reach.
By 1926, the underworld used bribery, extortion, and murder to take control of the rum-running business, and experienced, organized city smugglers from the cities replaced local rum-runners. These new, professional smugglers used trucks on isolated roads to meet larger boats on empty beaches. Some locals risked hijacking these trucks, but their daring efforts resulted in several deaths, including those of the entire crew of a small freighter which still lies at the bottom of Nantucket Sound.
According to Ellen NicKenzie Lawson, PH.D, who has conducted extensive research into rum-running on Cape Cod and the east coast, several fascinating smuggling episodes occurred in Cotuit itself. Two Cotuit residents were arrested by the Coast Guard for rum running. The men were waiting outside the harbor in a small boat to pick up rum from a Boston rum runner and mistook the Coast Guard’s ship for their contact. The Coast Guard soon arrested the crew of the Boston ship as well, and the entire crew of smugglers was photographed on the Cotuit Dock.
-Alicia Pollard
For more information on rum-running on the east coast, see Lawson’s website: http://smugglersbootleggersandscofflaws.com/
Sources
Higgins, Reid. “Running Rum and the Roaring Twenties: Cape Cod During the Prohibition Era.” Life and Times of Cotuit. Ed. Stephen Hemberger. Cotuit: Historical Society of Cotuit, 2012. Print.
Lawson, Ellen NicKenzie. “Rum Runners.” Cape Cod Life December 2002: 40-44. Print.
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