Queen of Rum Row? The five mast­ed aux­il­iary lum­ber schooner Mala­hat
- Oil paint­ing by W. Mc­Mur­ray, 1989
Cour­tesy of Van­cou­ver Mar­itime Mu­se­um col­lec­tion #2004.0105.0001

Don’t Never Tell Nobody
Nothin’ Nohow:
The Real Story of West Coast Rum Running

Cap­tain Charles Hud­son who served as Ma­rine Su­per­in­ten­dent Man­ag­er, or “shore cap­tain,” of Con­sol­i­dat­ed Ex­porters, the big liquor ex­port con­sor­tium work­ing out of Bur­rard In­let, claimed that while pro­hi­bi­tion was un­der­way through­out the U.S., the lo­cal rum run­ning trade proved to be the eco­nom­ic sav­iour of the city of Van­cou­ver. As he told oral his­to­ri­an Im­bert Or­chard, “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 which was in the midst of a real de­pres­sion, with log­ging, fish­ing, min­ing, etc. in the dol­drums. It took rum run­ning to keep in­dus­try go­ing, es­pe­cial­ly on the wa­ter­front. The tremen­dous mon­eys paid out to in­dus­try in Van­cou­ver were nev­er known to the av­er­age cit­i­zen. We spent a fab­u­lous amount of mon­ey build­ing boats; pur­chas­ing and over­haul­ing en­gines; buy­ing food and sup­plies for our ships; us­ing the ship­yards for over­haul and in wages for the crew and fuel.”

And here’s Cap­tain Charles Hud­son to ex­plain how it all worked him­self.

 

Harbour Publishing, Fall 2018 release
70 photographs and maps

The lat­est book by mar­itime his­to­ri­an Rick James was short­list­ed by the U.B.C. Li­brary and Pa­cif­ic Book­world News So­ci­ety for the an­nu­al Basil-Stu­art-Stubbs Prize for Out­stand­ing Schol­ar­ly Book on British Co­lum­bia.

 

Don’t Never Tell Nobody
Nothin’ Nohow:
The Real Story of West Coast Rum Running

At the stroke of one minute past mid­night, Jan­u­ary 17, 1920, the Na­tion­al Pro­hi­bi­tion Act, the Vol­stead Act, was of­fi­cial­ly de­clared in ef­fect through­out the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. From 1920 to 1933 the man­u­fac­ture, sale, im­por­ta­tion and trans­porta­tion of al­co­hol re­mained il­le­gal. Pro­hi­bi­tion had al­ready proved a bust in British Co­lum­bia so it didn’t take 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.

Us­ing first-hand ac­counts of old-time rum-run­ners and ex­ten­sive re­search re­ly­ing on both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary doc­u­men­ta­tion and the of­ten sen­sa­tion­al news­pa­per cov­er­age of the day, Don’t Nev­er Tell No­body Noth­in’ No How ex­plains what re­al­ly went down along the west coast of North Amer­i­ca dur­ing the Yanks “No­ble Ex­per­i­ment.” Con­trary to pop­u­lar per­cep­tion, rum run­ning along the Pa­cif­ic coast wasn’t dom­i­nat­ed by vi­o­lent and sen­sa­tion­al en­coun­ters like those por­trayed on T.V. or in the movies. In­stead, it was gen­er­al­ly car­ried out in a rel­a­tive­ly civ­i­lized man­ner, with an oh-so-Cana­di­an po­lite­ness by British Co­lum­bia based op­er­a­tors. In­deed, most in­volved in the trade op­er­at­ed well with­in the law. But still, there were the odd shootout, hi­jack­ing and even a par­tic­u­lar­ly grue­some mur­der as­so­ci­at­ed with the busi­ness.

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