Historical Text Archive: Electronic History Resources, online since 1990

Smuggling certainly was not a new activity in the Caribbean. The early history of the Caribbean basin recalls seventeenth-century buccaneers, the slave trade, and the presence of European navies. Rum played an important role in one of the triangular trades--with molasses and slaves--that flourished between the Caribbean, New England, and Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century, the Caribbean again served as an illicit distribution hub for distilled spirits and narcotics.[1]

Much of the Caribbean fell under U.S. economic domination by the early twentieth century. The economies of Mexico, Cuba, and Central America subsequently came to depend on U.S. markets to help fuel local business growth and development. In several instances, the U.S. decision to invoke national prohibition jarred the economies of rum exporting areas in the Caribbean. For centuries, Cubans had diverted some of the island's enormous sugar production to the manufacture of alcohol from molasses. Until prohibition, Cuban rum production served as one of the principal industries of the island.[2] Milling and grinding one ton of sugar became forty gallons of molasses, from which sixteen gallons of alcohol could be distilled. Between 1912-16, Cuban alcohol exports from molasses distillations increased dramatically from $52,000 annually to $1.8 million. In 1919, Cuba's sugar crop totaled around four million tons, which farmers and producers sought to market in the United States.[3]

Whiskey served as another Caribbean export prior to the enactment of prohibition. The whiskey trade from Mexico numbered 610,687 gallons from 1904-20, or 38,167 gallons annually; collective exports from the Central American republics totaled 164,767 aggregate gallons, or about 10,300 gallons annually; Cuba, meanwhile, shipped 342,239 gallons of whiskey northward, including 324,581 gallons in 1920 alone.[4] As expected, upon enactment of prohibition these exports fell to virtually zero. Thus, with perhaps their largest market blocked by legislation, Caribbean sugar producers and distillers could not resist the financial lure of moving their alcoholic production into the smuggling networks.

By December 1922, U.S. Customs identified numerous Caribbean ports from where distilled alcohol moved to the Gulf Coast, particularly near New Orleans. Customs officials believed that they seized only ten percent of the liquor entering the United States illegally. Not surprisingly, the huge volume that escaped the Customs' drag net encouraged more participants to enter the smuggling business.[5]

Underworld characters in New Orleans, New York and Chicago orchestrated much of the U.S.-Caribbean smuggling trade and used strategic points along the Gulf Coast to land and subsequently move contraband inland. The loading and transportation of distilled spirits was also highly organized. In many instances, trades commenced only after the parties exchanged coded greetings or correspondence. Once a schooner or steamship dispensed its cargo, the vessel headed back to its Caribbean port.[6]

In some cases, resupplying a rumrunner did not necessarily involve a voyage back to port. A second vessel, sometimes a steamship, might clear a Latin American port "in ballast," or without any trading cargo, destined for a Gulf Coast port. The steamship, meanwhile, picked up liquor at another foreign port and resupplied the rum ship anchored off the Gulf Coast before proceeding into New Orleans or some other port--again with only stabilizing ballast as cargo and proved by the ship's papers.[7]

Between 1920-25, Cuban and Bahamian ports meted out a sizable share of the illicit liquor volume in the Gulf of Mexico. By 1923, scores of boats plied routes between Havana and the mouth of the Mississippi River. Once liquor was loaded the unit price increased from $2 per quart--the price a rumrunner paid in Havana--to $3 a quart.[8] Whenever possible Coast Guard cutters shadowed the rumrunners along the U.S. southern coastline. Alcohol trafficking, however, continued mostly unabated in the Gulf of Mexico, which eventually sparked U.S. government calls for smuggling agreements with its Caribbean neighbors and demands for a new Coast Guard base at New Orleans to bolster existing bases at Mobile and Galveston.[9]

Up until the mid-twenties, the Cuban-Florida-Gulf of Mexico region served as a haven for alcohol traffickers and eventually drew U.S. attention toward its friendly neighbor. U.S. officials convened a series of meetings with Cuban authorities in Havana to blunt liquor and alien smuggling emanating from the island. The two countries signed a preventive smuggling accord in April 1926, in which Cuba agreed to grant U.S. inspectors authority to board any private vessel flying the Cuban flag outside U.S. territorial waters if U.S. authorities suspected contraband trafficking.[10] Similar to the Anglo-American treaty of 1924, the U.S. government agreed to respect Cuba's foreign liquor trade, which included allowing sealed-liquor to pass through U.S. waters and ports provided the cargo was destined for a non-U.S. port.[11]

The U.S.-Cuban pact represented one of only a few anti-smuggling agreements that produced positive results, according to U.S. officials. In fact, prohibition authorities contended the Cuban treaty worked so well that, combined with beefed-up U.S. forces in the Gulf of Mexico, "practically no smuggling" from Cuba occurred by fiscal year 1930.[12] A key element was Cuba's success in ferreting out unauthorized radio users and equipment from within its borders. The crackdown played a significant role in disrupting communications between the Cuban-U.S. liquor rings.[13] Still, the Cuban-American syndicates exhibited creative--and in one instance a macabre--talent for smuggling liquor. One case involved a group of American smugglers operating out of Cuba who used the bones of animals shipped as containers for contraband liquor. Smugglers sanitized the hollow parts of bone cavities and filled the marrow spaces with liquor and drugs. This practice was quite successful until some of the liquor leaked from the bones and Customs officials discovered the scheme.[14]

U.S. diplomats and enforcers of prohibition had more than Cuba to handle. The Bahamas, Belize[15], Honduras, Panama, Puerto Rico and Mexico also held key roles in the maritime-border alcohol and narcotic smuggling trade. Most governments, at least officially, attempted to cooperate with U.S. authorities to curb smuggling from their own nations into the United States. For instance, Panamanian, Honduran, Mexican and Puerto Rican leaders instigated restrictive anti-alcohol legislation, but achieved only nominal successes in checking liquor smuggling operations within their borders. U.S. officials, meanwhile, applied diplomatic pressure to blunt alcohol manufacturing in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and the Canal Zone in Panama. U.S. officials sought legislation that mirrored the Volstead law, and in Panama invoked an absolute ban on alcohol consumption and production within the Canal Zone. Although alcohol still held legal status in Panama, the Panamanian government prohibited retail sales of high alcohol content liquor for businesses that did not import or sell the products wholesale.[16] Many U.S. citizens living in the Canal Zone disregarded alcohol proscription, much like the mainland residents back home. Since liquor was available outside the Canal Zone, residents purchased distilled spirits outside the Canal Zone and simply smuggled them back.[17]

Similarly, Puerto Rico enacted dry legislation, but other surrounding islands remained wet, and the U.S. mainland--not its territory--absorbed most of the enforcement resources. In fact, Washington did not send its first patrol boat into the Caribbean until 1925, and only in response to overwhelming rum trafficking in the Gulf of Mexico originating in Puerto Rico.[18]

Mexico posed additional problems for prohibition enforcers and diplomats. Not only did the United States and Mexico share common waters, but U.S. authorities held the added burden of policing a large narcotics trade and illegal immigration along a common land border. Unfortunately for the federal border agents, separate groups generally trafficked in aliens and in alcohol. The nature of alcohol and narcotic smuggling mostly excluded human trafficking because people were not easily concealed and their presence jeopardized potential profits on liquor and narcotic investments. In fact, Mexican liquor smuggling became so profitable that in many cases traffickers resorted to violence more quickly than those who smuggled aliens. Gunfire and death became frequent as liquor smugglers and U.S. authorities fought over booming smuggling operations, particularly along the border cities of El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico.[19] In several instances, liquor trafficking stimulated economic growth along the Mexican border towns and profits financed local political leaders who used smuggling income to remain autonomous from Mexico City and its presidents.[20]

Not all contraband trafficking along the Mexican border was so turbulent. One case was particularly creative. Prohibition agents along the Rio Grande discovered a smuggling operation with unmanned donkeys swimming down the Rio Grande. Texas and Mexican bootleggers capitalized on the burros' natural homing instinct. They loaded donkeys from Texas with kegs of tequila in Mexico, then allowed the animals to find their way back across the border unattended. Instinct drove the animals back to their Texas homes along various trails and paths. More significantly, the asses swam part of the way in the Rio Grande to elude panthers and other predators, which also caused them to escape the notice of prohibition agents. Since each bottle of tequila commanded between $4-$5 a quart in San Antonio or Dallas, this particular scheme earned someone approximately $240-$300 profit from each burro, since each animal could carry as much as sixty quarts.[21]

Despite the burgeoning border smuggling trade, Mexican leaders in Mexico City generally supported U.S. prohibition. A well-defined movement to make Mexico City dry commenced as early as 1921, partly out the concern that heavy alcohol consumption induced disorder.[22] During the provisional presidency of Adolfo de la Huerta, the Mexican leader invoked several prohibition measures that were later rescinded because of violent protests by liquor vendors and pro-wet advocates. Mexican presidents Alvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles, and Emiliano Portes Gil also made strong anti-alcohol appeals during the twenties, but none produced any tangible long-lasting results that satisfied U.S. authorities.[23]

The State Department solicited and subsequently negotiated an anti-smuggling agreement with Mexico with hope of easing alcohol trafficking along the southern border. Federal officials anticipated that an anti-alcohol agreement with Mexico would permit a shift of federal manpower from the South to the Canadian border where a less favorable agreement existed.[24] The U.S.-Mexican Treaty of 1925 predated the U.S.-Cuban accord, but unlike the Cuban pact, State Department officials quickly soured on the Mexican agreement. U.S. officials asserted that they had increased the presence of border inspectors along the southern border with Mexico to stem rampant smuggling, which they felt impeached the value of the accord.[25] State Department officials, however, were in fact more upset that Mexico's political leadership ran afoul of U.S. corporate interests in other areas such as access to Mexico's lucrative petroleum fields. U.S. officials thereby linked two very different issues--prohibition and oil--into their diplomatic reasoning toward dissolving the anti-alcohol accord with Mexico.[26]

The post-revolutionary Mexican presidents indeed came under extreme pressure to mollify the United States in the wake of Mexico's land reform edicts associated with the Mexican Constitution of 1917. The United States viewed the new constitution as hostile to American interests in an emerging Mexican oil industry.[27] Mexican leaders, meanwhile, craved U.S. capital to finance Mexico's internal growth. While Mexican leaders supported alcohol temperance, their enthusiasm might also have been politically motivated as a pragmatic tool to assuage U.S.-Mexican tensions involved in other, certainly more economically significant, issues. President Alvaro Obregón, whose government in 1923 desperately sought U.S. recognition and investment, in many cases co-mingled his anti-liquor proclamations with Mexico's need for capital. In one instance, Obregón hoped to appease U.S. concerns over Mexican oil and land reforms by moving to establish a "dry-zone" fifty-miles wide along Mexico's northern border and establishing an aviation field at Juarez to serve as a base for surveillance flights along the border.[28] U.S. and Mexican diplomatic tensions, however, continued to mount over the petroleum issue; and it eventually came to a head during the presidency of Plutarco Calles. The Mexican petroleum and land reforms called for greater land redistribution and tighter restrictions over U.S. corporate access to Mexican oil fields. Not surprisingly, vehement protests by U.S. oil companies resulted in Washington's not renewing the U.S.-Mexican smuggling treaty the following year. The U.S. decision also placed President Calles on notice that Washington was upset about perceived mistreatment of American citizens and their Mexican properties. In effect, U.S. officials used the smuggling treaty to prod Calles into acquiescing to U.S. interests on the petroleum issue.[29]

The U.S. government officials, however, held even more cynical motives for abrogating the treaty. Under terms of the agreement, the U.S. government embargoed the movement of military arms into Mexico in return for Mexican cooperation toward stemming border and marine smuggling. U.S. officials believed that any lifting of the arms embargo would topple Calles's government. The official U.S. defense for termination, of course, declared that the treaty proved of no significance and was unworkable. According to the New York Times, the State Department actually wanted to abrogate the treaty to pry a new commercial treaty out of Mexico specifically for safe-guarding American commerce against discrimination.[30] The U.S. decision to abrogate the treaty did produce the desired effect and destabilized Calles's administration, although the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately required that American oil companies secure new Mexican oil concessions.[31]

A leading Mexican newspaper, meanwhile, labeled U.S. actions toward Mexico as "Mysterious Dollar Diplomacy," and criticized U.S. policy by drawing a parallel between the Eighteenth Amendment and Mexico's new oil regulations. The Mexican editorial maintained that U.S. prohibition legislation was similarly retroactive and confiscatory by its failing to compensate investors who had invested millions in the liquor business. The Mexican law, by contrast, did not deprive oil companies of wealth because the new legislation allowed U.S. corporations to obtain new, fifty-year concessions on properties they currently held. Moreover, the newspaper charged:

In this instance, the New York Times defended the White House logic claiming that government destruction or confiscation of property did not occur with respect to prohibition; and that the Mexican newspaper's parallel of pouring "Mexican oil on troubled American liquor must seem more academic and amusing than important."[33]

Smugglers and syndicates garnered success and profits by exploiting diplomatic, political and social divisions in Mexico and the Caribbean. Not only did the Caribbean islands serve as ideal sanctuaries for smuggling operations, but unstable social and political climates in these areas proved disruptive to enforcement checks.[34] Moreover, many Caribbean governments could not render much policing aid themselves because local leaders came to depend on U.S. capital, business and manpower as one remedy for quelling local social disorder. The U.S. government quite effectively invoked its economic and military might in Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala during the first two decades of the twentieth-century, which occurred mostly to preserve U.S. business and political interests in the Caribbean basin. The U.S. interventions, however, spawned resentment among many Latin workers who believed U.S. corporations pilfered and exploited local land and labor. The ensuing instability thus provided apt conditions for most anyone who wished to engage in the surreptitious transportation of alcoholic spirits into the United States during the prohibition era.

Likewise, the British colony of Belize (British Honduras) along with independent Honduras featured hordes of rumrunners and ports from which liquor was sold to buyers along the Gulf Coast. The Honduran-registered schooner Jo Ann was a notorious rumrunner that cruised along the Louisiana coastline. In one case, Coast Guard authorities acted on information that the Jo Ann embarked from Belize along with an oyster lugger with a shipment of distilled spirits destined for a New Orleans smuggling ring. The Coast Guard sent its patrol boats Forward and Eleanora based at Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Grand Isle, Louisiana, to interdict. The Eleanora, formerly a rumrunning vessel, halted the oyster boat near the Jo Ann's course with its cargo of about 1,000 gallons of assorted liquors. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard cutter Forward overtook the Jo Ann in the Southwest Pass (See Mississippi Delta Region map after Navy vessels earlier chased the rumrunner out of the Gulf of Mexico.[35]

According to the ship's log, the Jo Ann cleared port under a Belize flag for a trip to Bermuda. The Coast Guard eventually captured it with 19,860 gallons of rum aboard in January 1929.[36] Total value of her cargo amounted to $175,000, not accounting for more than 600 cases listed by port authorities as missing cargo that had been logged on the ship's manifest. U.S. authorities assumed the missing cargo already made its way onto the Louisiana coast.[37] More significantly, the Coast Guard seizures linked both Honduran and Belizean ports to organized crime syndicates within the United States. The follow-up investigation supplied insight into the activity levels of rumrunning ships that operated in southern waters, especially those based in Caribbean ports.[38]

The Jo Ann incident was not unique. The Honduran vessel Aurora, an old and barely seaworthy rumrunner, had also long operated in the Gulf of Mexico. In March 1933, the Forward pursued the Aurora off Pass a Loutre at the mouth of the Mississippi River (see the Mississippi Delta Region map on page 56). The Forward eventually overtook the Aurora outside the twelve-mile limit. According to authorities, the liquor-laden vessel had sailed from Belize and, according to the ship papers, headed to Nassau. The Coast Guard took the vessel in tow, which created a dangerous situation for the federal seaman because the Aurora was taking on water. Rough water conditions disrupted towing and touched off a collision between the two vessels. The accident caused the Aurora to leak even more profusely. The Forward crew, however, managed to transfer the Aurora's liquor cargo and crew before the vessel sank about twenty-five miles south of Mobile Bay.[39]

The court case resulting from the capture of the Aurora proved bitter for Coast Guard authorities. The court found that federal police produced no evidence showing the Aurora sailed inside the legal twelve-mile limit when first sighted by the Coast Guard cutters. The seizure was ruled illegal because no authority, by law or treaty, existed to justify confiscating the vessel's cargo beyond the twelve-mile limit. The court returned the salvaged cargo to the claimants; the released prisoners returned to Honduras.[40]

One of the more notable conflicts in southern waters between a foreign-registered vessel and the Coast Guard occurred when the Coast Guard sank the Canadian schooner I'm Alone off the Louisiana coast. This 1929 incident touched off a six-year conflict between Canada and the United States that not only illustrated the weaknesses of the Anglo-American Treaty of 1924, but also fully revealed the major role that liquor smuggling held in Southern waters and its relationship to the national market. Meanwhile, the United States and Canadian government authorities wrangled but could not reconcile their disagreements over the sinking of the I'm Alone. The debate even reached Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who also attempted to mitigate the feud. The case eventually appeared before an international arbitration panel comprised of one justice each from Canada and the United States. Long before the incident reached arbitration, however, the components of the I'm Alone operation became a web of fraudulent claims, murder, and underworld conspiracies.[41]

Most of the basic facts were clear. The Canadian schooner I'm Alone operated as a rumrunner off the Louisiana coast until March 1929 when it was sunk by a Coast Guard cutter. The Coast Guard vessel Dexter engaged, chased and subsequently sank the rumrunning ship approximately 200 miles off the Louisiana coastline. The ensuing testimony in connection with ownership of the I'm Alone, however, involved details cloaked in international intrigue, which featured a cast of underworld characters that quashed any hope of an easy resolution.[42]

The I'm Alone first sailed as a two-masted schooner built in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia in 1924. Twin 100-horsepower auxiliary motors could move the vessel about nine knots and the boat featured a spacious interior, enough to hold about 2,800 cases of liquor. The I'm Alone initially transported liquor along the eastern seaboard before being sold and moved to the Gulf of Mexico in 1928. The schooner's captain, John T. Randell, kept the vessel mostly in international waters where the vessel was protected from seizure by U.S. authorities.[43]

The Coast Guard knew about the I'm Alone's smuggling activities and often shadowed the vessel around the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.[44] The I'm Alone skipper, however was an experienced seaman and also a decorated former World War I craft commander in the Royal Navy.[45] In his memoirs, Randell said he took the job for the money, and the assurance that his role as captain would not include piloting the ship within the twelve-mile treaty limit.[46] Around mid-March 1929, the Coast Guard cutter Wolcott spotted the I'm Alone off the passes of the Mississippi River and tailed the schooner for two days, harrying the rumrunner's attempt to make contact with a shore boat.See Map 2) The following evening, Randell recorded that he shook off the U.S. cutter with the aid of darkness, but continued to hold the

I'm Alone off the Louisiana shoreline in hope of making contact with the individuals who were to take the ship's liquor-laden cargo ashore. Specifically, the captain waited for a man who possessed the other halves of fifteen American dollar bills, which were included in Randell's sailing orders given to him earlier in Cuba.[47] The I'm Alone captain eventually linked up with his contact, who took the distilled spirits that Randell had ferried from Belize.[48]

On March 20, 1929, the I'm Alone again dropped anchor off the Louisiana coast and soon thereafter the Coast Guard cutter Wolcott reappeared. The exact location of the I'm Alone prior to being challenged by the U.S. vessel eventually plunged the U.S. and Canadian governments into contested negotiations over the validity of the Anglo-American Treaty of 1924. The Wolcott, meanwhile, tailed the I'm Alone southward and in several instances ordered Captain Randell to stop or be fired upon.[49] The I'm Alone captain, who believed that he had been accosted by the U.S. ship in international waters, refused to yield his ship to the U.S. cutter. The Wolcott continued to tail the I'm Alone, and two days later the Coast Guard vessel Dexter joined the pursuit. Randell later testified that the Dexter began firing four-pound explosive shells, coupled with machine-gun and rifle rounds from ranges of less than two hundred yards. Eventually the shells found their way through the hull of the I'm Alone. The crew jumped into the rough seas, and the I'm Alone quickly sank. One of the I'm Alone's crew, a Frenchman and a decorated World I veteran, died from his injuries. Meanwhile, the Dexter and Wolcott gathered up the I'm Alone's seven crewman, and headed North to New Orleans where police shackled Randell and his crew and jailed them at the U.S. Custom's House.[50]

The Coast Guard sinking of the I'm Alone, however, created international complications that perhaps no one foresaw. As Canadian incidents of liquor smuggling escalated throughout the twenties, the United States looked toward Britain for support, which created triangular diplomatic quandaries regarding enforcement.[51] In this case, British, Canadian and Washington diplomats began quarreling over the circumstances of the

I'm Alone sinking. Also, because the dead crew member was of French decent, French officials jumped into the fray. The critical issue was never the actual sinking, rather at what point exactly did U.S. authorities begin their pursuit. Coast Guardsmen testified that the I'm Alone had been anchored ten- to eleven-miles off shore, therefore legally subject to a search under the terms of the Anglo-American Treaty, which the Canadians agreed to abide by in 1924. The I'm Alone captain, however, claimed he was fourteen- to fifteen-miles off the coast when first hailed by the U.S. cutter Wolcott. The Dexter's role further complicated matters since it delivered the fatal ordnance to the I'm Alone despite not being the initial pursuer--a circumstance that brought the Coast Guard into conflict with the terms for engagement outlined by the treaty.[52]

Although the I'm Alone incident never seriously damaged diplomatic relations between the United States, Britain or Canada, it provided one of the high points of prohibition enforcement drama.[53] The ensuing testimony in this case set the stage for a foreign relations showdown relating to the validity of anti-liquor marine agreements. Aggregating past incidents, the Canadian government believed that the sinking of the

I'm Alone finally created a serious enough incident to use as leverage to bring up the anti-liquor smuggling agreement up for formal renegotiation.[54]

It soon became clear that the Canadians sought mostly to clarify the terms of the treaty rather than determining guilt or innocence. The 1924 treaty bestowed certain reciprocal rights on Great Britain for British cooperation against rum smuggling. The Anglo-American agreement, however, proved of little value to the Canadians since the marine trade dynamics differed between Canadian and European nations. Common borders and waters shared by the United States and Canada precipitated many shipping conflicts between the two nations, which posed huge hassles for legal Canadian shippers who might be carrying distilled spirits bound for a foreign destination along with other cargo bound for a U.S. port. International boundary tributaries such as the Great Lakes, the Yukon River or land routes became constant sites of conflict between U.S. and Canadian authorities.[55] In the meantime, the sinking of the I'm Alone revealed treaty ambiguities that Canadian diplomats exploited--namely the one-hour pursuit clause. "Hot-pursuit" was not to last more than one-hour upon sighting a potential rumrunner, Canadian officials said. Moreover, the Canadians balked that the I'm Alone sank as a result of the guns from a U.S. vessel that did not the initiate the chase.[56] The diplomatic negotiations over the I'm Alone circumstances, coupled with disputed treaty terms, thus began fanning out in many different directions.

The Canadian government demanded remuneration and an apology from the United States for sinking the I'm Alone. On April 9, 1929, Canadian Minister Vincent Massey and U.S. Secretary of State Stimson exchanged views on the incident. The meeting between the two high government officials yielded nothing, and by mid-April, the I'm Alone case moved toward arbitration under the terms of the Anglo-American Treaty. Curiously, on the same day that Stimson and Massey met, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the release of the I'm Alone crew for lack of evidence. The U.S. government, however, did not admit any guilt in connection with the sinking. In fact, the U.S. government contended that the treaty indeed justified the Coast Guard actions.[57]

A significant piece of evidence in connection with the case came to light in the fall of 1929. New information revealed that American, not Canadians, owned the I'm Alone, although the vessel sailed under Canadian registry. This evidence put the Canadian government in the peculiar position of seeking to collect compensation for an American. More significantly, the probe to establish ownership turned up a vast collection of company names that suggested that an intricate rumrunning syndicate in fact possessed the I'm Alone. In December 1929, federal authorities in New York announced that Daniel Halpan, alias Daniel Hogan, a U.S. citizen, owned the I'm Alone. U.S. authorities apparently knew about Hogan and began searching for him soon after the sinking, but they kept his arrest a secret. Hogan joined a conspiracy that included the smuggling of liquor from St. Pierre, Halifax, Montreal and Belize from January 1, 1927 to April 1, 1929. Cable telegrams from Belize first alerted authorities to the conspiracy and pinpointed Hogan's location in New York City.[58] According to the subsequent indictment, the

I'm Alone sailed for Louisiana after taking on a load of liquor and transferred the cargo to more than a half-dozen small boats. Portions of these shipments moved through Abbeville, Louisiana, where railroad connections were made. The smugglers disguised the liquor cargo as rice shipments in railroad freight cars, then sent the contraband on its way to New York, Chicago, or other areas where the syndicate dominated the liquor markets. Hogan was later convicted of violating the National Prohibition Act on May 13, 1930 in the Western District of Louisiana Court at Lake Charles for conspiracy to smuggle liquor in a companion case to the I'm Alone. Three years later, Hogan and two others stood trial again in Opelousas, Louisiana, this time for the I'm Alone indictment. During the trial, however, the judge instructed the jury not to convict Hogan on the conspiracy charge since the judge believed Hogan's previous conspiracy conviction applied to the I'm Alone case. Hogan later served jail time in Shreveport, Louisiana; a federal penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia and the Northeastern Penitentiary in Lewisberg, Pennsylvania.[59]

Several years later, the American-Canadian Judicial Commission, which arbitrated the case, learned that the I'm Alone operated in fact as only one vehicle linked to a large and extensive New York rumrunning syndicate that used the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts as entry points into the U.S. market. Canada, meanwhile, continued to demand damages totaling $386,000 and an apology to settle the case. The Canadians argued that records placed the vessel under the charge of the Eugene Creaser Shipping Company Ltd., a Canadian company that could prove ownership at the time the I'm Alone sank. The Americans protested, claiming that the Canadian shareholders acted merely as dummies; the real owners were all American citizens.[60] Meanwhile, a witness who identified Hogan as the principal owner of the I'm Alone was slain shortly after giving his deposition to federal authorities, presumably in retaliation for revealing the underworld information.[61] Serving as arbiters in the I'm Alone hearings were Willis Vandevanter, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Sir Lyman Poore Duff, Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court. Captain Randell testified before the commission that he never knew the ship's actual owner. The

I'm Alone had flown a British flag and was legally under Canadian registry--a fact that solidified Canada's claim for damages.

In January 1935, nearly six years after the sinking, the arbitration panel--without commenting on any of the treaty disputes--found that the Coast Guard sinking of the I'm Alone indeed was illegal. The judicial panel directed the U.S. government to pay damages totaling $50,666--a figure far below the $386,000 sought. The justices awarded nothing for the vessel or cargo, but declared Captain Randell and crew as only simple employees and innocent of any conspiracy to smuggle liquor. The panel charged the United States to pay the crew damages for the "wrongful act" of the Coast Guard and their subsequent imprisonment. The widow of the drowned sailor received $10,000, and the commissioners recommend that the U.S. government apologize for the results of its Coast Guard. The U.S. protested, but only mildly and made the apology.[62]

The pervasive smuggling trade in the South indeed created quandaries for the State Department along several diplomatic fronts. Officials contended with organized criminal activity within the Caribbean basin, which served as supply ports to U.S. markets. Rumrunners and their vessels, in many cases, hauled illicit cargo in foreign-registered vessels, which attracted a flurry of inquiries, or protests, from foreign governments upon seizure by U.S. authorities. Also, the anti-smuggling agreements the U.S. received from its Caribbean neighbors did not contain enough power in any significant sense to force smuggling declines. Many Latin governments pledged its support, but lacked the practical resources to help in anti-smuggling efforts, or other diplomatic conflicts erupted that soured cooperation.

Some State Department moves designed to quell southern trafficking caused hard feelings among some Latin neighbors, especially after U.S. leaders linked anti-alcohol cooperation to unrelated trade issues, as with Mexico. U.S. diplomatic intimidation, coupled with numerous insurrectional movements that occurred frequently in the Caribbean basin, heightened tensions and contributed to conditions enabling smuggling activity to flourish.[63] Moreover, foreign countries which exported distilled spirits prior to prohibition--Bermuda, Canada, Central America, Cuba and England--often found themselves in diplomatic entanglements with American authorities because of their nationals' roles in the illicit alcohol trade. State Department officials, meanwhile, struggled in bureaucratic fights to control liquor diplomacy. The desire of the State Department to resolve prohibition disputes through diplomacy and the determination of other executive departments to champion incompatible domestic interests resulted in inertia, inaction and confusion.[64]

Foreign and domestic hurdles relative to checking alcohol activity placed diplomatic officials in untenable roles. Caribbean locales served as willing vendors of distilled liquor; the U.S. Gulf Coast shoreline proved too geographically accommodating and socially accepting for smugglers to ignore. The highly Catholic natives of the Caribbean held more or less indifferent views to alcohol consumption, and moved distilled spirits into Gulf Coast areas that were much the same. As in the Caribbean, the lure of profits subsequently fueled a domestic cast of receivers, transporters and consumers of alcoholic beverages that further weakened the federal government's will to preserve the integrity of its Eighteenth Amendment.

[1]Times Picayune, December 25, 1922, December 29, 1923, July 30, 1924; The bulk of the narcotics smuggled into the United States during the prohibition era originated in Europe and Asia and was smuggled along with the illegal alcohol traffic onto U.S. shores; refer to the narcotics reports in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Prohibition, fiscal years 1927-30, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office).

[2]Union of American Republics, Bulletin of the Pan American Union, (January 1919), 697-98.

[3]Ibid.; also see Peter Foster, Family Spirits: The Bacardi Saga, (Toronto: MacFarlane, Walter and Ross, 1990), 7.

[4]Statistics Concerning Intoxicating Liquors, December 1933, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office), 52.

[5]Times Picayune, December 25, 1922.

[6]Ibid., December 25, 1922, April 19, 1923, December 29, 1923, July 30, 1924, June 6, 1925.

[7]Ibid., June 14, 1925.

[8]Ibid., April 23, 1923.

[9]Ibid., April 22, 1923, May 26, 1923, and December 6, 1924.

[10]New York Times, December 24, 1925; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1926, vol. 2, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office), 18-27; Malcom F. Willoughby, Rum War at Sea, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1964), 117.

[11]Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1926, vol. 2, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office), 18-27.

[12]Annual Report of the Commissioner of Prohibition for Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1930, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office), 6.

[13]Ibid.

[14]New York Times, April 17, 1929.

[15]Belize, a British protectorate, was officially known as British Honduras until its independence from Britain in September 1981.

[16]Union of American Republics, Bulletin of the Pan American Union, vol. 53 (July-December, 1921), 412; New York Times, June 19, 1929; Times Picayune, January 27, 1929.

[17]New York Times, June 19, 1929; Times Picayune, January 27, 1929.

[18]New York Times, March 16, 1925.

[19]New York Times, May 10, 1925 and July 16, 1925.

[20]New York Times, May 10, 1925 and July 16, 1925; Colin M MacLachlan and William H. Beezley, El Gran Pueblo, A History of Greater Mexico, (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1994), 288.

[21]New York Times, November 8, 1925.

[22]New York Times, September 9, 1920, September 13, 1920, August 22, 1921.

[23]New York Times, February 21, 1923, August 22, 1921, January 11, 1923; Times Picayune, August 23, 1923 and June 7, 1925.

[24]New York Times, April 20, 1925 and December 24, 1925.

[25]Times Picayune, June 14, 1925 and August 2, 1925; also see the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations A.J. Pani's correspondence to the American Charge' (Summerlin), June 5, 1923 in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1923, vol. 1, (Washington D.C: Government Printing Office, 1923), 147-9.

[26]New York Times, March 23, 1927.

[27]Joan Hoff Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920-1933, (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1971), 187 and 199.

[28]New York Times, August 22, 1921, January 11, 1923, February 21, 1923; Times Picayune, August 23, 1923 and June 7, 1925.

[29]New York Times, March 23, 1927.

[30]Ibid.

[31]Ibid.; Michael Meyer and William L. Sherman, The Course of Mexican History, 2d. ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 586-7.

[32]Excelsior comments reprinted in the New York Times, February 6, 1927.

[33]New York Times, February 7, 1927.

[34]A. Hyatt Verill, Smugglers and Smuggling, (New York: Duffield and Company, 1924), 7.

[35]Times Picayune, January 25, 1929.

[36]Times Picayune, January 25, 1929.

[37]Ibid., January 26-8, 1929 and February 2, 1929.

[38]Ibid., January 25, 1929.

[39]Ibid.

[40]New York Times, March 13, 1933; Willoughby, Rum War at Sea, 125.

[41]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, Arbitration Series No. 2 vol. 6 (Washington D.C: Government Printing Office, 1935), 3-111.

[42]Ibid.

[43]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 4, 58, and 23-32; Captain John Randell as told to Meigs O. Frost, I'm Alone, (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1930), 266; Willoughby, Rum War at Sea, 128.

[44]The I'm Alone first smuggled liquor along the eastern seaboard before being sold and moved to the Gulf of Mexico in 1928; see U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol.4, 21; Willoughby, Rum War at Sea, 128.

[45]New York Times, December 30, 1934.

[46]It should be noted that Randell's association with the I'm Alone and the vessel being directed into Southern waters occurred contemporaneously; Randell, I'm Alone, 255-65.

[47]Affidavit by Marvin J. Clark, U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 6, 103-11; Randell, I'm Alone, 266 and 269.

[48]Ibid., 270-76. Randell recorded in his memoirs that he knew his contact by reputation as one of the big bootleggers in New York; also see Willoughby, Rum War at Sea, 128.

[49]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 1, 1-36; Randell, I'm Alone, 294-5.

[50]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 4, 58-66; Randell, I'm Alone, 311; New York Times, April 10, 1929.

[51]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 3, 1-11; Lawrence Spinelli, Dry Diplomacy: the United States, Great Britain and Prohibition, (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1993), 127-8.

[52]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 4, 18-9; New York Times, March 26, 1929; also see Willoughby, Rum War at Sea, 129.

[53]Spinelli, Dry Diplomacy, 128.

[54]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol 4, 73-113; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1924, vol. 1, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939), 157-97; also see New York Times, April 5, 1929.

[55]Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1923, vol. 1, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938), 228.

[56]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol 4, 23-32;

New York Times, April 5, 1929.

[57]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol 1, 37-9;

New York Times, April 10, 1929.

[58]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol 6, 113-202

New York Times, April 27, 1929.

[59]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 6, 199-202;

New York Times, April 27, 1929 and December 29, 1934.

[60]U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 6, 9-15 and 81-5; New York Times, December 30, 1934.

[61]Deposition of Marvin J. Clark, U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 6, 103-11; New York Times, December 29, 1934 identified Marvin J. (Big Jim) Clark as the individual murdered following his giving a deposition to federal authorities that named Daniel Halpin, alias Daniel Hogan, as principal owner of the I'm Alone.

[62]New York Times, January 10, 1935 and January 22, 1935; U.S. State Department, I'm Alone Case, vol. 7, 1-6.

[63]A. Hyatt Verill, Smugglers and Smuggling, 7.

[64]Spinelli, Dry Diplomacy, 156.

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