The Rum Patrol was an operation of the
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and Admiralty law, law enforcement military branch, service branch of the armed forces of the United States. It is one of the country's eight Uniformed services ...
to interdict liquor smuggling vessels, known as "rum runners" in order to enforce
prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...
in American waters. On 18 December 1917, the 18th Amendment to the
Constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
was submitted to the states by
Congress. On 16 January 1919, the amendment was ratified and the
Liquor Prohibition Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, or exportation of intoxicating liquors, came into effect on 16 January 1920.
History
Origin
The establishment of prohibition gave rise to smuggling of illicit liquor into the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
overland from Canada and from ships moored just outside the
three-mile limit along the Atlantic seaboard. By 1921, "Rum Row" existed off New York City and the New Jersey shore as well as near Boston, and the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. The Florida coast and New Orleans were also points of entry used by rum runners. Smaller boats were used to transfer the cargos from the
mother ships on Rum Row under cover of darkness to the shore. In February 1922, the
Commandant of the Coast Guard, Rear Admiral
William E. Reynolds, informed the
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury,
Roy Asa Haynes that although the Coast Guard was tasked with the enforcement of prohibition, Congress had not included any funding for the additional maintenance and operation of vessels. Since there was no funding, enforcement by Coast Guard vessels was in connection with other enforcement duties. The first important seizure was the British-registered
schooner ''Henry L. Marshall'' by in 1921.
[Johnson, p 80]
Funding problems
Since the Coast Guard was tasked with prohibiting the importation of liquor through U.S. waters and it didn't have the resources to do so, Commandant Reynolds submitted a plan to
Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon that called for 20 new cutters, 200 coastal patrol cutters and 90 fast picket boats. He also asked for 20 million dollars to fund new construction and an additional 3,500 personnel to man the new vessels.
[Thiessen, p 44]
Congress acts
To deal with this problem, twenty-five
destroyers were transferred by the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
to the
Treasury Department for service with the Coast Guard. Some began to show signs of wear and tear after the often arduous pace of operations on the Rum Patrol and required replacement. Accordingly, six of the newer flush deck destroyers were transferred to the Treasury Department in 1930–1932.
It was thought that adapting these older vessels for Coast Guard service would be less costly than building new ships. In the end, however, the rehabilitation of the vessels was costly because of the exceedingly poor condition of many of these war-weary ships. In many instances, it took nearly a year to bring the vessels up to seaworthiness. Additionally, these were by far the largest and most sophisticated vessels ever operated by the service, and trained personnel were nearly nonexistent. As a result, Congress authorized hundreds of new enlistees. These inexperienced men generally made up the destroyer crews.
Some of the destroyers were pre-World War I 742-ton "flivvers", capable of over – an advantage in the rum-chasing business. They were, however, easily outmaneuvered by smaller vessels. The destroyers’ mission, therefore, was to picket the larger
mother ships and prevent them from off-loading their cargo onto the smaller, speedier contact boats that ran the liquor into shore.
On 20 February 1933, the
21st Amendment to the Constitution, the repeal of Amendment 18, was proposed by Congress and ratification was completed on 5 December 1933. This eliminated prohibition, and therefore the need for the Rum Patrol. The remaining destroyers were returned to the Navy and sold for scrap.
Ships of the patrol
References
Citations
Sources
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{{prohibition
History of the United States Coast Guard
Rum
Prohibition in the United States