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

Shortlisted by the University of British Columbia 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.

Advance Praise