Rumrunners Run Around LI

By Bill Bleyer | Staff Writer

Hijacking on the high seas, gun battles on the highways, federal agents pouring evidence into funnels in their vest pockets, public officials on the take, gangsters torturing innocent victims with red-hot potato mashers. Dutch Schultz. Izzy and Moe. The real McCoy.

All that was happening on and around Long Island during the tumultuous time called Prohibition. A nickname for the Atlantic waters bordering the Island summed it all up: Rum Row.

For the 13 years that America was supposed to be dry after the Volstead Act went into effect in 1920, Long Island was the right place at the right time for rumrunners. It was close to New York City and had 1,180 miles of coastline with lots of out-of-the-way creeks and deserted beaches. It also featured both cops and Coast Guardsmen perfectly willing to accept bribes or even unload cargoes.

The booze came from Canada or the Bahamas on schooners or freighters that hovered just outside American waters with prices posted in the rigging. The most famous occupant of Rum Row was captain William McCoy, who bought a schooner named the Arethusa and turned it into a floating liquor store with free samples and a machine gun on the deck. While many suppliers offered watered-down liquor, McCoy developed a reputation for selling high quality stuff at fair prices. Buyers would seek out the Arethusa to get ``the real McCoy,'' giving birth to the expression.

The first rumrunners who brought the booze ashore were enterprising fishermen in their own boats. Soon they were joined by other entrepreneurs in faster boats. The Freeport Point Boatyard built more than 30 rumrunning boats, and it also built 15 Coast Guard vessels designed to catch them.

``They knew the Coast Guard boats were going about 26 miles an hour so they made the rumrunning boats to go near 30 loaded,'' said Fred Scopinich Jr., 71, whose father and uncle ran the boatyard. ``They were making rumrunners for everybody'' -- from cops and elected officials to gangster Dutch Schultz, who set up shop in Patchogue. It was no secret what the boats would be used for, especially when a boat like the Maureen was equipped with three surplus aircraft engines and a bulletproof pilothouse.

Most of the booze was unloaded at a dock or beach and trucked to speakeasies on the Island or in New York City. Occasionally it was brought ashore by seaplanes or carried away on LIRR freight trains.

The bottles were often removed from the case and transported wrapped in straw inside burlap bags for easier handling. Some rumrunners put salt and cork in the bag. If they were being intercepted, they threw the bags overboard. When the salt dissolved, the bags resurfaced for retrieval.

No Long Island community thumbed its nose at Prohibition more than Long Beach. City historian Roberta Fiore said that one police commissioner, Moe Grossman, organized all rumrunning in the city. Municipal employees reportedly used the light in the clock tower of the old City Hall to signal rumrunners when it was safe to land. In 1930, five Long Beach police officers were charged with offering a bribe to a Coast Guard officer to allow liquor ashore.

``You could tell the Volstead Act was not being enforced,'' said Greenport village historian Jerome McCarthy. ``There were several rumrunning boats tied up at the railroad dock, and the Coast Guard boats would be tied up on the other side of the dock and the crews would talk to each other.'' In Freeport, rumrunners and government agents gathered every afternoon at Otto St. George's restaurant to make small talk and drink illegal booze. Coast Guard Capt. Frank Stuart was accused of taking $2,000, the equivalent of a year's pay, to let fishing boats land liquor in Montauk. And in 1932 the Coast Guard officer in charge of the Georgica Station in the Hamptons was sentenced to a year in jail for aiding rumrunners.

Not everyone was on the take. Roland Baker, a 92-year-old retired Patchogue police officer, remembers that ``there were a lot of bootleggers around here. They would offer police officers $25 when they were off-duty to come at night and help unload liquor down at a creek, but I didn't get involved in that.''

In 1923 famous Prohibition agents Izzy and Moe raided the Nassau Hotel in Long Beach and arrested three men for bootlegging. Postal clerk Isidor Einstein and cigar store owner Moe Smith were hired by the federal government even though they looked nothing like Elliot Ness, but they had great imagination and a gift for impersonation. Once Izzy talked his way into a speakeasy by ``portraying'' himself. ``I'm a Prohibiton agent,'' he proclaimed. ``I just got appointed.'' Everybody laughed until he busted them. The two boys from Brooklyn collected evidence by pouring booze into a funnel in Izzy's vest pocket that was connected via a rubber tube to a flat bottle hidden in the lining.

For honest enforcement personnel like Izzy and Moe, it was a dangerous profession. Gun battles between agents and tommy gun-toting gangsters were common. ``Coast Guard Shot In Rum Seizure,'' reads the headline in the Center Moriches Record of May 12, 1932.

Dutch Schultz was the most infamous gangster bootlegging on Long Island, but there were lesser lights like Charles (Vannie) Higgins and Larry Fay. Competition was spirited. Sam Grossman of Brooklyn was dumped along a quiet road in Brightwaters with three bullets in his head. The body of Arthur (Happy Whelan) Waring was found by a clammer in the same area, trussed to a lawnmower.

Gangs whose hooch was hijacked took a sober attitude. In 1931, Thomas Farrell Jr. and Jacob Antilety, both 21, were walking in Southampton when they were kidnaped by mobsters who accused them of stealing booze. They were tortured all night with a heated potato masher applied to their feet before being released.

Booze that wasn't seized by the law made its way to speakeasies, which weren't very hard to find. Long Island's most famous speakeasies included Frank Friede's in Smithtown, Texas Guinan's in Lynbrook and the Canoe Place Inn in Hampton Bays, where bootleggers could rub elbows with not ables including New York Gov. Al Smith. There were no peepholes or secret passwords as depicted in the movies.

``It was all very open,'' Jack Greaney of Massapequa, whose father owned speakeasies, said recently. ``Prohibition wasn't a very popular law.''