National Affairs: Armed Against 'Leggers

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The Rum Fleet, numbering some 15 vessels, lies seven or eight miles off the Jersey Coast and waits for bootlegger launches to come and carry its liquor to New York or Jersey. The crews of the rum ships do not trust the bootleggers; they are armed with .45 caliber automatics. The reason for this state of continual naval preparedness was divulged by the skipper of the Tuscarora, as trim a whiskey-running schooner as ever dumped her weekly 2,000 cases in a bootleg lighter. In a press interview the skipper pointed out that bootleggers, angry at the high prices charged for Scotch and rye, sometimes turn pirate, board a small ship and steal the alcoholic cargo. A raid or two like this and the Rum Fleet decided that a bootlegger's motorboat was no more to be trusted than a revenue cutter. Hence the display of guns.