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AT FIRST IT WAS THE MONEY, THEN IT BECAME REVENGE. Summer, 1928, Rusty loses his job as a Lake Erie tugboat deckhand and can no longer afford his charter boat business. Out of work, out of hope and with a family to feed, he desperately turns to hauling grape juice for the mysterious Trapani clan despite his suspicions. After several successful trips, Al Trapani offers him an opportunity to run illegal alcohol from Canada. Rusty reluctantly agrees to try it just once. As Rusty slips into the underground world of rum running, he comes to realize he is losing far more than his principles-he is jeopardizing his marriage and his life. But getting out is not easy. Hunted by a sadistic renegade Coast Guard captain, Rusty soon finds himself in the captain's crosshair, forcing him to challenge not only his principles, but his perception of good and evil. The 1920s roar to life as Rusty's rum running legend grows. "With intense description and characters you'll love (or hate), R. C. Durkee holds readers on course and breezing through this engaging tale of love, wickedness, revenge and morality."-Rick Porrello, author of 'To Kill the Irishman, ' 'Best true-life crime caper since Goodfellas-San Francisco Examiner.' ..".a believable plot based on historical fact...brings history and events to life through Rusty's eyes and experiences. It's all these elements, wound into a satisfying and realistic story line backed by historical fact, that make Rum Run a winning account."-D. Donovan, Senior eBook Reviewer, Midwest Book Review. ..".a hit with boaters, Lyman owners and anyone who loves a good read."-Heidi Langer, Program Manager, LBOA.
Prohibition's Proving Grounds examines the tumultuous dry years in this trans-border region through its thriving motorcar culture. In the 1910s local automobile factories churned out affordable vehicles that put many Toledo-Detroit-Windsor corridor residents on wheels for the first time, just as a wave of prohibitionist sentiment swept the area. State, provincial, and federal dry laws soon took effect in Ontario, Michigan, and Ohio, and native rumrunners fully utilized the area's robust automobile culture to exploit weaknesses in prohibition legislation and enforcement. Ultimately, the noble experiment failed on the TDW corridor. Its failure can be partly attributed to controversial policing practices that angered area motorists suspected of bootlegging. Local sheriffs, troopers, and dry agents could not stem the tide of motorized professional smugglers who increasingly perpetrated brutal crimes in the region's rural roadways and city streets.
“We operated perfectly legally. We considered ourselves philanthropists! We supplied good liquor to poor thirsty Americans ... and brought prosperity back to the Harbour of Vancouver ...”—Captain Charles Hudson At the stroke of one minute past midnight, January 17, 1920, the National Prohibition Act was officially declared in effect in the United States. From 1920 to 1933 the manufacture, sale, importation and transportation of alcohol and, of course, the imbibing of such products, was illegal. Prohibition was already a bust in Canada and it wasn’t long before fleets of vessels, from weather-beaten old fish boats to large ocean-going steamers, began filling their holds with liquor to deliver their much-valued cargo to their thirsty neighbours to the south. Contrary to popular perception, rum-running along the Pacific coast wasn’t dominated by violent encounters like those portrayed in the movies. Instead, it was usually carried out in a relatively civilized manner, with an oh-so-Canadian politeness on the British Columbian side. Most operated within the law. But there were indeed shootouts, hijackings and even a particularly gruesome murder associated with the business. Using first-hand accounts of old-time rum-runners, extensive research using primary and secondary documentation, and the often-sensational newspaper coverage of the day, Don’t Never Tell Nobody Nothin’ No How sets out to explain what really went down along the West Coast during the American “Noble Experiment.”
The purpose of this book is to set forth the history of the U.S. Coast Guard in its battle with the rum runners.Probably no other era in American history has been more controversial than the prohibition period, extending from the middle 1920's through the early 1930's. As one of the law enforcement agencies charged with the suppression of the illegal liquor traffic, the United States Coast Guard was deeply involved in what has come to be known as "The Rum War." It was a hard, unremitting war with few of the rewards normally accompanying performance of such duty. Under the law, the Coast Guard had no alternative but to conduct it with zeal and dedication, utilizing all the resources at its command. The story of the "Noble Experiment" is in large part a Coast Guard story. In this carefully researched, well documented history, students of this turbulent chapter of American history will find rewarding reading.
The first book in the Stories of Our Past series, Rum-Running is an intriguing look at one of the most fascinating aspects of Atlantic Canada's past. Journalist and author Allison Lawlor chronicles the history of this furtive trade and recounts the exploits and escapades of the East Coast's most infamous liquor smugglers. Complete with enthralling first-person accounts, fact-filled sidebars, and over 60 photos, and written in an easy-to-read, accessible style, Rum-Running is the rollicking story of one of the most captivating, and controversial, chapters of Canadian history.
Originally published: New York: Exposition Press, c1964.
A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing. Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent’s dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever. Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax. Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite intoxicants. Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the incredible—if long-forgotten—federal official Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who throughout the twenties was the most powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of all is Okrent’s account of Joseph P. Kennedy’s legendary, and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.) It’s a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrent’s narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever; California vineyards busily producing “sacramental” wine; New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology. Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrent’s rank as a major American writer.
A rousing tale of American nautical lore and skullduggery, The Black Ships reveals a little-known, intriguing episode of American history. One of the nation's best-kept secrets, rum-running during Prohibition provided fast bucks for adventurous boatmen along the Atlantic Coast. The Black Ships unfolds the saga of the smuggling fleet that, at great risk, illegally imported liquor to America's shores. Drawing on interviews with rumrunners and their kin, government reports, and some of his own boyhood memories, Everett S. Allen reveals how the Coast Guard bravely tried to stem the flow of liquor, and how, in boats too fast to catch, the rumrunners circumnavigated the law.
Uses previously unstudied Coast Guard records for New York City and environs to examine the development of Rum Row and smuggling in New York City during Prohibition. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, “drying up” New York City promised to be the greatest triumph of the proponents of Prohibition. Instead, the city remained the nation’s greatest liquor market. Smugglers, Bootleggers, and Scofflaws focuses on liquor smuggling to tell the story of Prohibition in New York City. Using previously unstudied Coast Guard records from 1920 to 1933 for New York City and environs, Ellen NicKenzie Lawson examines the development of Rum Row and smuggling via the coasts of Long Island, the Long Island Sound, the Jersey shore, and along the Hudson and East Rivers. Lawson demonstrates how smuggling syndicates on the Lower East Side, the West Side, and Little Italy contributed to the emergence of the Broadway Mob. She also explores New York City’s scofflaw population—patrons of thirty thousand speakeasies and five hundred nightclubs—as well as how politicians Fiorello La Guardia, James “Jimmy” Walker, Nicholas Murray Butler, Pauline Morton Sabin, and Al Smith articulated their views on Prohibition to the nation. Lawson argues that in their assertion of the freedom to drink alcohol for enjoyment, New York’s smugglers, bootleggers, and scofflaws belong in the American tradition of defending liberty. The result was the historically unprecedented step of repeal of a constitutional amendment with passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.
On October 1, 1917, prohibition came into effect in the province of British Columbia. Washington and Oregon had gone dry the previous year. The ban on liquor sales led to deadly conflict and legal chaos in the Pacific Northwest, and the legacy of those “booze battles” continues into the 21st century. Rich Mole introduced readers to West Coast prohibition’s pioneer years in Scoundrels and Saloons: Whisky Wars of the Pacific Northwest, 1840–1917. In Rum-runners and Renegades, he recounts the wild and wacky—and sometimes tragic—results of later prohibition laws through the exploits of both prohibitionists and prohibition-busters, among them Jonathan Rogers, a wealthy Vancouver builder and prohibition leader; the Billingsley brothers, a quartet of handsome bootleggers from Seattle; and enterprising Johnny Schnarr, Victoria’s number-one rum-runner. From vicious marine hijackers and bedeviled police to corrupt politicians and frustrated drinkers on both sides of the border, this is an action-filled account of liquor and lawlessness on the West Coast.