Pubdate: Sat, 10 Jun 2000
Source: Providence Journal, The (RI)
Copyright: 2000 The Providence Journal Company
Contact:  75 Fountain St., Providence RI 02902
Website: http://www.projo.com/
Author: Robert Whitcomb is the editor of the Journal's editorial pages.

AN EARLIER 'WAR ON DRUGS'

By the end of the 1920s, Prohibition had revealed itself to be a
stunning failure. People in all walks of life were blithely violating
the law. Along the nation's coasts and borders, a huge
alcohol-smuggling industry had arisen. Organized crime controlled much
of this business, and the word "Mafia" was first heard in the land.

The nation was engaged in a giant hypocrisy. Politicians and others
fulminated about the evils of drink -- as they quaffed cocktails
daily. Even the "driest" states, such as Idaho, were awash in booze.
(My paternal grandfather, a Cape Codder, bought his liquor from a
regularly scheduled service provided by a lobster boat owner; my
maternal grandfather, who lived in Duluth, Minn., got his off a truck
driven from Canada that arrived weekly to ensure that cocktail parties
continued throughout Prohibition in that cold city. When he was in
Florida, he got the stuff from the Bahamas.)

Nowhere was this industry more vibrant than in New England. Both along
the Canadian border and off New England's shores, a huge rum-running
industry developed. The legendary "Rum Row" off southern New England
consisted at one point of dozens of boats. Large "mother ships" would
bring the booze from Canada to be unloaded on small boats a couple of
miles offshore. These craft, often fishing or lobster boats, or
"commuter yachts," with souped-up engines, and many no more than 30
feet long, would then be used sneak the contraband onto shore, whence
it would go to serve the residences and speakeasies of the Northeast,
particularly in New York and Boston.

The Coast Guard strove mightily to confront this challenge, in an
endless game of hide and seek. But its personnel were constantly
outmanned and outrun by the speeding rum-runners, and most of these
entrepreneurs made it unmolested to shore, where huge profits were, of
course, made. Some of the rum-runners' boats had been engineered to go
over 55 mph, while the Coast Guard patrol boats struggled to make it
to 20. Many high-speed boats were being made in the '20s, but not for
the Coast Guard!

Still, the Coast Guard had the authority -- and in most situations,
more firepower. So there were violent encounters -- sometimes deadly
ones.

The most famous one involved The Black Duck, a very fast rum-runner
operating out of Narragansett Bay in 1929. In its colorful career, it
brought thousands of bottles of liquor to serve the thriving
speakeasies and lively cocktail parties of the Northeast.

Its criminal career, however, came to a violent end in the very early
morning of Dec. 29, 1929, when a Coast Guard cutter apprehended it
sneaking up the East Passage of Narragansett Bay in the fog. The
skipper of the cutter, spotting The Black Duck speeding up the Bay,
let loose its horn and ordered those on board the rum-runner to bring
it alongside. The Black Duck instead sped away.

The skipper of the Coast Guard boat then ordered that warning shots be
fired from a machine-gun. The plan was to shoot well astern of the
rum-runner as a warning. Unfortunately, as a Coast Guardsman opened
fire, The Black Duck, as part of its evasive course, unexpectedly
turned, permitting the machine-gun to rake the cockpit of The Black
Duck with fatal fire. When it was over, in a matter of seconds, three
of The Black Duck's four-man crew were dead or dying, and a fourth was
wounded.

The Coast Guard then escorted the rum-rummer into Newport.

The incident created a firestorm of protest, with a riot against the
Coast Guard in Boston, physical threats and vandalism against the
family of the skipper of the Coast Guard boat and demands in Congress
for the repeal of Prohibition. Demands were made that the Coast
Guardsmen involved in The Back Duck incident be brought to trial for
murder.

Meanwhile, as if to emphasize how absurd Prohibition had become, some
Coast Guardsmen at New London helped themselves to liquor seized the
night of Dec. 29 from other rum boats and engaged in a drunken orgy,
which became a sensation in papers of the day, and helped fuel demands
for an end to Prohibition and its corrupting influence on
law-enforcement.

The Black Duck incident, though far from the first violent act by
law-enforcement authorities charged with carrying out an increasingly
unpopular law, crystallized the debate over Prohibition as perhaps
nothing else had, and indeed may have been crucial in its repeal.

There was an official inquiry into the incident, and the Coast
Guardmen were cleared. But to many already enraged about how
Prohibition had perverted American life by increasing crime and
violence, corrupting politicians and squandering resources, the case
was an open-and-shut case of officially sanctioned multiple murder.
Some never forgave the Coast Guard, though of course the Coast Guard
was just doing its job.

The furor over the case also raised suspicions about the role of
powerful people in the bootlegging business. These allegedly included
Joseph P. Kennedy and the rest of a cabal of politically-connected
businessmen in Boston who were believed to have been involved in the
activities on Rum Row in general and The Black Duck in particular.

The Black Duck was a pivotal event in American's long and awkward
experiment with Prohibition, and one that presages some of our agonies
over the doomed-to-failure "War on Drugs."
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