Keeping the Tap open during Volstead

You can't hear the term "Jazz Age" without thinking about Prohibition. Or the Volstead Act, as its officially known. It's the law against the sale of alcohol within the borders and territorial waters of the United States from 1920 to 1933. The Prohibition era seems to have been on the minds of writers, directors, and TV executives lately; authors Daniel Okrent and Dennis Lehane wrote Last Call and Live by Night, respectively, there was a "Great Gatsby" remake with Leonardo DiCaprio, and HBO's  "Boardwalk Empire" is wrapping up its fifth and final season. With legal access to booze curtailed except for "medical" purposes, where did New England get its alcohol from?

Truth be told, residents didn't seem to mind the Volstead Act all that much. With easy access to both the Canadian border and the Atlantic Ocean, the region proved a challenge for Federal agents trying to catch bootleggers. Alcohol kept flowing pretty much the way it always had.

New Hampshire's Nashua Telegraph for January 14, 1921 claimed that in the year since Prohibition had taken effect, $10 millions worth of alcohol had been seized by the government in New England and New York state alone. In the same span of time, 10,000 bootleggers had been arrested.

One gang of bootleggers consistently evaded the government's grasp. In 1923, a two-masted schooner was constructed in the Nova Scotian town of Lunenberg and christened the I'm Alone. Designed as a rum-runner, she smuggled liquor up and down the New England coast until 1928, in the process earning approximately $3 million for her owners and acquiring a notorious reputation with the US Coast Guard.

In 1929 the I'm Alone left her comfort zone and sailed for the Gulf of Mexico. In March, the schooner was approached off the coast of Louisiana by the USCG cutter Wolcott. The Wolcott demanded the surrender of the I'm Alone, claiming that the Canadian ship was within US waters. The captain of the I'm Alone refused, insisting that they were actually within international waters. When the I'm Alone headed out to sea, the Wolcott gave chase, and the rum-runner was eventually sunk 220 miles off the American coast. You can read more about the incident here.