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Days
of Old when Rum was Gold... Prohibition - when the country was legally "dry" - is long behind us, and even the very thought of it is archaic to many people under 40. Yet one of the most interesting legacies of Westport is its history as a center during prohibition for booze-trafficking, or rum-running.
One of Westport's most industrious rum-runners turned 80 on August 11,
and last week sat down to reminisce about it. William F. Healy, Sr. better known as Fred, spent nine years running hot booze into Westport. Although he moved his last load in 1933, his memories remain fresh. He speaks as it he dodged his last Coast Guard patrol boat yesterday. Healy remembers ducking 250 rounds of machine gun fire from the Coast Guard and then blowing the boat up so he wouldn't get caught with the goods. He remembers having Christmas dinner on a boat loaded with several hundred cases of liquor after bringing it down from Nova Scotia, when he'd been since Thanksgiving. And he remembers his disappointment when President Franklin D. Roosevelt put him out of business in 1933 with the repeal of prohibition. "I didn't like him," Healy says. "He put me out of the dough. "Westport, with its harbor, rivers and many inlets, was the best coastal landing place in the area. Liquor from Westport when all over the region, Healy says, to as far as Buffalo, New York, on the shores of Lake Erie. The rum, whiskey, scotch and other types of liquor were landed in dories or brought to Cherry and Webb Lane, the Point dock, Westport Harbor or Gooseberry Neck. Some of it went up the river to be stored. It was brought to farmhouses, barns, garages or anywhere else to be stashed, then taken away and disbursed in smaller shipments. Model T. Fords and other cares were fitted with compartments alongside the driveshaft and could hold the contents of as many as 30 or 40 12 quart cases. Healy got his start in 1924 when he was living in Central Village. His brother, who had been running rum alone, asked Fred to come along because it was a job for at least two men. He offered him $25 for a night's work. "At that time, $25 was good money," Healy says. "I got in at one o'clock that night and my wife was fit to be tied. She was never in favor of it." The money did offer some consolation. For example, Healy says he earned $15,000 in 1931. A good month would bring in $1,600. "There was no withholding tax on that money, either," he says. He worked either for a set fee per trip-such as $400 to $500-or for $1 a case. The boats he piloted often carried between 500 and 1,000 cases. Healy says the rum-running was controlled by a number of New York and Providence based syndicates or "combines." "It was a regular system," he says. "That's where some of your damn gangsters come from today-when the country went wet, they had to transfer to something else." Asked how much of Westport was involved in the rum-running, Healy laughed and answered "105 per cent." "There was people involved and there was people who would have liked to get involved. You'd have been surprised at some of the people. Pillers of the Church, higher-ups. I'm not going to tell names. "But it was a big organization. There was police, judges, everybody had a finger in the pie. Eighty-five to ninety percent of the people was against the country doing dry but the WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union) slipped it in while a lot of those guys were on the other side during the war. "There was a lot of graft and crooked stuff. Life the Coast Guard, they got some money to be blind sometimes, they couldn't see in the dark." "But I'll tell you if I'd have thought I was bringing in dope I'd have blown the boat up. I'm not, never did, and never will have anything to do with it. It's the ruination of this Country." Healy was arrested once but never convicted he says. He was driving through the Point one night when "one of them teetotalers, I think" tipped off Constable Everett Coggeshall that Healy had 65 cases with him. Coggeshall arrested him and Healy was taken to Superior Court in Fall River where he was freed after paying a $100 fine. "That was all fixed up," he says. While a rum-runner, Healy's cover was that of a lobster fisherman. The "Mary Louise," his 46 foot lobster boat named after his two daughters, was equipped with 150 to 200 pots. But the bulk of his income came from moving booze. The Mary Louise could only hold 400 cases, so he usually used a bigger boat to run rum. Surprisingly, Healy says he only once was forced to pitch cases of liquor overboard, and not because he was ditching the evidence but because a pump was broken and the crew needed room to work. Sixty-five cases were dumped. Rum-running was not without excitement, though, Healy, who worked as a skipper and a pilot, said his ship lost about 100 cases of liquor, in addition to a boat. A Coast Guard vessel one night opened fire just outside of Westport on the "Black Dove," with Healy and two other men aboard. After an initial burst of machine gun fire totaling 250 rounds, the government ship circled the "Black Dove." After the Coast Guard went "shooting by," Healy said, he told the engineer-owner to blow the ship up. The owner went down to the engine room and lit a match to a couple of 300 gallon gas tanks. They climbed aboard the Coast Guard ship with burnt hands and faces. The boat, on its first trip around here, had just been purchased by John Lemos of New Bedford after being seized in Boston. A leaky exhaust system had been a problem earlier in the night, as a man in the engine room was rendered unconscious with carbon monoxide poisoning. He was revived, however, after being dragged on deck were all you could see was the "whites of his eyes." Healy said. Another time Healy was standing on deck in a boat about a quarter-mile off Gooseberry Neck when he saw the chief of police's car approaching with its lights out. After "the cops fired 2 or 3 times," Healy said, a guy on the beach who had just unloaded a dory began running. He ran about a quarter of a mile with the oars under his arm. He reached a nearby house and was asked what's wrong. "There's a knockoff down there," he said. "What are you doing with the oars?" he was asked. "I didn't know I had 'em, he said. "In all the excitement," said Healy, "he ran with 'em underneath his arms. What the hell, was he gonna row on land?" In the early days of rum-running, Healy said the local boats made their pickups close to shore. Later, as the Coast Guard beefed up its fleet with "75's"-75 foot boats which moved at a maximum of about 14 knots-traffic was moved out deeper, 30 or 40 miles offshore. Until the 75's appeared, "the line of schooners around Block Island looked like a city." With government patrols bolstered, signaling systems between the boats were established offshore. "You had to navigate then," Healy says.
The liquor was brought by steamers from Scotland to an island north of
Newfoundland, where several schooners would each pick up 3,000 to 4,000
cases. The schooners then distributed to the smaller local boats in lots
of 800 to 1,000 cases, Healy said. In addition to the stuff from Scotland,
from the south came cane alcohol from Cuba. Healy, whose right leg was
amputated just below the knee in 1969 to avoid further complications with
it following a fall, says there is a distinction between a bootlegger
and a rum-runner. The bootlegger sold out of his hip pocket, he said,
while the rum-runner "moved hundreds of cases." Always thinking, Healy
says there is still good money in running duty-free liquor from the Bahamas
to Florida. Two hundred cases crammed into a 35 to 40 foot boat will net
about $1,500 a trip. |
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