'You grew up with secrets': A century later, Nova Scotia's rum-running legacy lives on

For Gary Kent, the heyday ofrum-running in Nova Scotia isn't justhistory from 100 years ago,but part of the cherished memories passed down to him by his father.

Growing up in a rum-running family in Yarmouth, Kent said he was told at a very early age not to talk to anyone about what his father,Oland, did for a living.

"You grew up with secrets, family secrets of our relatives," he said.

According to Kent, his mother kept a stuffed owl in the window of their home. Ifthe owl wasn't there, it warnedhis father that police were around andhe should avoid the house.

Kent drew on his childhood memories and the stories his father shared towrite a fictionalized account of the period in his 2006 book,The Coverunners.

His father was far from alone. In 1924, rum-running was big business in Nova Scotia.

With the province's fishing industry in a slump in the 1920s and 1930s, many chose to put their maritime skills to more profitable use transporting alcoholto the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.

Prohibition came into effect in the U.S. in 1920 and in Nova Scotia in 1921. Butunlike the U.S.,while Canadian law prohibited the consumption and sale of alcoholic beverages within Canada, it did not prohibit their manufacture and export.

Many Nova Scotians took advantage of thisloophole.

"A lot had to do with the cod fishing industryand it was a living but it wasn't great, whereas rum-runningyou can make a few thousand dollars a trip if you were an ordinary seaman, compared to maybe $50for the same amount of time if you were a cod fisherman," Kent said.

"It was very lucrative in comparison."

Nova Scotia an ideal location

Adrian Morrison, curator of the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg, said the province's location made it ideal for the trade.

According to Morrison, most rum-runners in the province would pick up their cargo from the warehouses in Saint Pierre and Miquelon,off Newfoundland.Being part of France, it did not have prohibition.

From there, he said they would make their way down the Eastern Seaboard and position themselves at least 12 miles from shore, in international waters outside of U.S.jurisdiction, in what came to be called rum row.

Smaller vessels would come from the mainland to buy the cargo, often after exchanging secret codes to show they were bona fide buyers, and then smuggle the alcohol back into the United States.

In his 1979 book The Black Ships: Rumrunnersof Prohibition, Massachusetts authorEverett Allen quotes a Nova Scotia schooner crew member who said rum row was "like going to a supermarket."

Morrison said not every community in Nova Scotia participated in rum-running but it was widespread across the province.

"In somewhere like Lunenburg,running would became a critically important part of the economy during those prohibition years early in the 1920s," he said.

"In 1925, for example, the Maritime Merchant reported that approximately half of Lunenburg's fleet was engaged in running."

WATCH | Why Nova Scotia fishermen turned to smuggling booze

Rum Running

12 years ago

Duration 16:04

In the 1920's and 30's - many sailors in Nova Scotia did the unthinkable - they stopped fishing and became international smugglers.

Allensaid a number of Nova Scotia schooners were chartered by Americans for rum-running and crewed by Nova Scotians.

"The money involved in provisioning the vessels and paying the crews has all been spent in the province and has been no small factor in the prosperity of the province," Allensaid.

U.S.Coast Guard cracks down

In the first years of prohibition, doing business on rum row was a fairly safe exercise as the sheer number of rum-running vessels from Nova Scotia proved impossible for the U.S.Coast Guard to tackle.

A 1922 report by theFederal Prohibition Commissionsaid there were hundreds of so-called mother ships off the U.S.coast, including 60 off the Jersey shore alone.

Coast Guard vessels were outnumbered four to one in 1924, according to a 2001 book calledIntelligence in the Rum War at Sea 1920-1933by Eric Ensign, who was a lieutenant with the U.S. Coast Guard.

In response, the U.S.government greatly expanded the coast guard's fleet in 1924, adding 20 refurbished navy destroyers, 223 cabin cruiser-type boats and 100 smaller motorized vessels.

Morrison said rum-runnersin turnbegan to build purpose-built vessels that were faster, lower to the water and painted in drab colours that made them harder to spot and allowed them to better outrun the authorities.

Many also included metal reinforced sections to shield them frombullets.

According to Kent, resourceful rum-runners adapted the latest technology to give them as much speed on the water as possible.

"Some of them took the big Duesenberg 16-cylinder motors, and the big Cadillac 16-cylinders at the time, and my dad was involved in taking twoof those motors and putting them inthe back of a small boat," Kent said.

Kent said a rum-runner in Lunenburgput an airplane engine with a propeller on the back of his boat, noting that what it lacked in stealth it made up for inspeed.

Although the risk of being caught increased after 1924,the usual punishment for rum-runners was a fine or short period of imprisonment, according to Morrison, and the rewards were far greater.

But rum-running could be deadly.

In 1929, I'm Alone, a Lunenburg-registered vessel and one of the most successful rum-runners,sank after being shelled by the U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat Dexterin the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in the death of one crew member.

Prohibition endedin Nova Scotia in 1930 and 1933 in the U.S., bringing a gradual end to the rum-runners.

As Kent put it in his book: "These men were not violent gangsters and mobsters but for the most part, straightforward, well-meaning men who were just trying to make an honest living, albeit in a dishonest way."