Rumrunners: Liquor Smugglers on America''s Coasts, 1920-1933

America's Rum War tells the riveting true stories of Prohibition's most notorious rumrunners - the daring men and women who sailed the high seas to defy the Volstead Act: Bill McCoy, the First Rumrunner, Gertrude Lythgoe, the Bahama Queen, James Alderman, the Gulf Stream Pirate, Big Bill Dwyer, the Czar of Rum Row, Rudolph Wylk, the Long Island Kingpin, Edith Stevens, the Rumrunning Mistress, Al Lillien, Boss of the Radio Rum Ring, Joe Parente, California Liquor Lord, and J.H. Madden, the Rumrunning Mayor of Sausalito, California. With cunning, courage, and machineguns, the rumrunners battled the Dry Navy forces led by the U.S. Coast Guard. Liquor freighters carried large cargos of booze from Canada, Tahiti, the Bahamas, and St. Pierre et Miquelon to the USA. To avoid capture, the freighters stayed on Rum Row in international waters. Speedboats, powered with aircraft engines, raced out to Rum Row to pick up liquor. They dashed to shore, outrunning and outmaneuvering the Dry Navy. Rumrunners operated along the entire U.S. coastline, with the greatest activity around New York, New Jersey, Florida, and California. When Prohibition ended, Rum Row faded away. But the rumrunners survived as outlaw legends in American history. See more