Rum runners

[Count Silvio]

Spotted on RumConnection.com

In my last post I was talking about a ship, the M.S. Hurryon, which sank off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1935 while officially carrying herring heading for the United States, but was actually, secretly carrying illicit rum.

The 1930's were the days of 'prohibition' when alcohol consumption was illegal in the United States, Prince Edward Island, and later the rest of Canada. While I was researching the story of the Hurryon and rum running in Nova Scotia, I got to wondering something that I had sort of taken for granted, and that is, "what exactly was prohibition, and was it just in the United States, or was Canada involved. What got me wondering was, where was the booze coming from if it was illegal in Canada as well as the States.

As luck would have it, I completely and accidentally came across some information today that answered those questions, and finally made sense of it for me. One of my questions was, where was the booze made? and if it was illegal in Canada, how did the breweries and booze makers continue to survive?

Read rest of the article here.

Sometimes I think running rum to Finland, the rum sahara, would be a good idea...

[Capn Jimbo]

Interesting link, Count. Turns out this article was posted on yet another conspiracy website, and ends with this somewhat paranoic proposition:

It also speaks of our governments, and conspiracies and so on. What better way to make money, than to make something hard to get, making those who have it, whatever it is, able to command whatever price. Why on earth, if a government was determined to remove booze from the hands of it's citizens, allow it to continue to be manufactured? Because, number one, those same producers were wealthy, powerful Canadians, and there were many others, many prominent, connected people, making huge sums of untaxed money on the profits of rum running.

So...was prohibition and rum running a staged situation, one designed to make money for a certain few? By declaring war on booze, were government's actually creating empires, and were they doing it on purpose? I suppose we will never know...but I for one will always wonder.....

The short answer is no. Keep in mind that the rum trade had already created empires. Rum was to the United States as oil is to the United Arab Emirites and OPEC. That the US (and/or Canada) would scheme (via Prohibition) to destroy their own burgeoning trade so as to slowly rebuild it is, well, just nuts.

The (well researched) origins of prohibition is largely traced to our Puritan ethic in Massachusetts. Wealthy rum producers were put OUT of business. It was not until prohibition ended that bourbon and whiskey empires were built.