National Affairs: More Rum Fleets

Rum fleets are beginning to be a regular feature of those harbors in the United States which have a dense enough hinterland to make bootlegging and liquor running highly lucrative. Scranton, Philadelphia, and Trenton are supplied by the fleet which lies off Highland, New Jersey. New York is fed from the sea by a fleet anchored off Sandy Hook and in the neighboring waters. San Francisco gets its Mexican, Canadian, and Japanese liquors from the armada plying outside the Golden Gate. Boston and the lesser New England ports are infested with smugglers from the Bahamas and the West Indies.

The latest fleet to arrive is composed of 16 vessels and lies between Block Island, off the Rhode Island coast, and No Man's Land. It supplies New York via Long Island with about 20,000 cases weekly.

More than half of these vessels are said to be part of the international system of two rival New York syndicates. Both of these organizations ship their liquor directly from England and Scotland in tramp steamers to St. Pierre, Miquelon. Here it is transshipped to three-masted Gloucester fishing smacks, carrying 2,000 cases each, which make up the Block Island squadron.

These schooners are each run by a skipper and crew of nine or ten hard-boiled fishermen. They are usually armed with sawed-off shotguns and always with automatic pistols.

This fleet is said to be terrorized by a rum pirate called the Gray Ghost, a big steel trawler, which raids the rum ships and steals their cargoes. Being engaged in illicit trade themselves they are afraid to appeal to the United States or to the British Government, whose flag they usually fly for protection.