The Wigeon: Rum Running

Rays Grandfather told us stories of just about anything that came to mind. This recollection of Rum Running Times is from his own memories. How true or not I just am repeating things as he remembered them. It was in the late 1920s early 1930s quote at times boats would appear at any one of the east end shipyards with damage from not so friendly fire from the Coast Guard boats. Usually from machine gun fire sometimes a larger caliber would require more major work….. There was no shortage of work at that time. There were even some modified boats (speed boats} that were being built in Greenport and surrounding areas if you wanted to work there was no unemployment in Greenport.

Some of these boats were not made to get away from the Coast Guard boats however. Some speedboats were just made to be decoys; they would just hang out in a preset area when the Coast Guard got close enough. They even had dummy loads in the back of these boats. From a distance they seemed real enough to get the Guard interested they would follow these dummy boats meanwhile the real boot legers got away. By the time The Coast guard realized that the boat they were chasing was a dummy boat. It was a dangerous job but somebody had to do it. In the beginning it was kind of fun and there was some easy money to be made.

Of course things like that never last and it gradually became more dangerous. As for the coast guard there job was becoming more dangerous as many Rumrunners boats were getting more powerful motors, better armed and could shoot back. The Rum Runners had to find places to hide their boats in the daytime they sandwiched some of their boats between fishing boats moored at docks or some places like fuel terminals or other places having high docks. The runners would hide their boats under the docks during the day. The coast Guard did not have the man-power or enough boats to cover hundreds of hideouts that were readily available and most dock owners were not about to turn in bootleggers most were blind to what was going on, as it sure was no advantage in turning them in. Some of the bootleggers were friends or neighbors and most of the business owners were losing money as long as prohibition goes on. On a somewhat humorous note some of the larger boats would use the Railroad dock as their base of operation on one side of the dock. The Coast Guard on the other hand parked (moored) their Coast Guard boats on the other side of the dock. Why who knows for sure maybe it would have been a to volatile situation in the middle of town, they must have had a truce at the railroad dock. For some of the locals, there were those who liked to go up to the sound at night and watch the tracers from the Coast Guard boats.

There was a speedboat of some kind that was left in Bishops boat yard in the 1930s. Who left it there had added a side to one of the work sheds so in affect it was well hidden why who knows. It was boarded up on all sides no doors or windows.

When Ray and I began to spend a lot of time in his

Grandfather’s shipyard in the late 1940s we had asked about the mystery boat in the shipyard. Mr. Bishop was not to keen on that boat. He talked enough about Boot

Legging and Rum Running in general. But he didn’t budge an inch on talking about it. A couple of years went by, Ray was spending more time painting and other minor repairs that his grandfather couldn’t handle.

One day Ray said “What the heck, lets see if we can make a big enough hole without damaging the building.”

It was a pretty substantial room. All the outside boards were 10 to 12 ft long it were nailed with 4-inch nails. Just to get one board off you would have to damage the board.

Ray had been working on restoring a 1929 Packard in the room next to “the secret boat room”. I had been helping with the Packard; we spent some time searching for parts on weekends when he was home from school.

The boat being so close (within 6 feet) all this time. We somehow convinced our selves to see if we could make a hole in the wall just enough to get a glimpse inside. It was more of a job than we had thought. If we ruined a board it would be years before any one found out about it. Ray had started removing the boards from the inside before I got there and they apparently had covered the wall with another wall. Without taking the entire wall down and that might not be a good idea, Ray got a drill and saw from the shop, I never had that much trouble tearing any thing down .The wall they covered over was standard wood but the wall they covered it with was the old real 2-inch wide stuff 10 to 12 ft long with 4” nails. It was dark enough in the room that we were in. So obviously we needed a flashlight. Of course the time it took to find a light all the old spirits were leaking out of the hole in the wall. That boat had been in the dark for probably 50 years and for what reason we still could not guess. When Ray tried to shine the flashlight beam into the room the light seemed to shine back to us as total darkness. It seemed the blackness in the room sucked the light from the flashlight or even worse the past was not going to allow the boat to show itself in the present. I never experienced a blackness so complete, When our eyes got used to the dark and Ray thought to open the overhead door where he had been working on his 1929 Packard, We got a little more reflected light through the whole in the wall. With out making the hole any bigger Ray could only see part of one side. It did have a mahogany deck and it was of lapstake design. It just seemed to long for the width of the boat by our measurements. It was 21 ft long and possibly 5 ft wide. The boat was put facing the main road so we got only a view of the port side from the stern to about where the windshield was (at one time) the glass and the frame was missing. The Chrome centerpiece was still there. We could not see any further damage without taking more of the wall down. Ray had been working summers and weekends at a Chris raft dealers so he was somewhat familiar with boats and he thought it might be a modified boat or one designed in the late 20s as it looked kind of narrow for the length. Rays father died in the early 1960s Ray was in college and not much was mentioned about the boat. We were not sure when the boat disappeared from the boat yard it was gone before my friend had much to do with it. When Rays Grandfather died there was no great interest in the shipyard and every thing became a little haphazard. It was no longer a viable shipyard after 1960.

Just as point of interest when Grandpa Bishop was still operating the yard although 90% of the yard was defunct. We had free run of the place and Ray, my Sister Nancy, Maloney and I pretty well explored all there was, including the building that had the major shop on the ground floor. The next building attached to that one had a boat building area and above that area about 30 ft by 40 ft was some kind of strange storage area with about 10,000 corks there were barrels of different sizes and maybe several hundred empty bottles. When we wandered around up there we had no idea what they did with all the corks and bottles there were other strange things up there as well. Several ships bells were something I would recognize. All those corks might have something with repackaging alcoholic beverages I doubt you would ever buy corks by the barrel. There were undoubtedly many people who had jobs who didn’t do any rum running. Another little ditty was the people of Orient were catching colds and enjoying it more. Legend has it those special smugglers had a special east run to the Orient Ice Yacht Club. So for a few years the Eastend had off shore a floating kingdom 12 miles from the coast from the harbors of Greenport and Montauk to the bays and other hideaways. It has been said there were still several rumrunner boats plying the waters of Long Island. They survived somehow until 1970 at least I knew of one still there after that date about 1985 it sure looked the part. It was a 65 ft fishing boat with armor plates on bow and sides, it may be still there I don’t know as for the name I can’t say but I have seen this sort of ghost ship back in the days of hunting on L. I. In the 1950s and the name was the same. I am not positive if it’s the same boat I never researched it further.