Evening star., 1924-08-30
RUM FLEET INVESTS
SHORES Of CANADA
Liquor SmuggIers Reported
Constantly FIocking to
Cape Breton Caves.
By Consolidated Press.

BY Consolidated Press.
LONDON, August so. = Woman s
The whole world knows of the anti-Vol-
stead squadron that lu5ricates New
York by means Of submarines, hydro
planes and high-powered motor boats.
The whole world does not know that
Canada also has an Atlantic rum
fleet.
Many great waves beat on the
rugged coasts of Cape Breton, but
no wild nor'eaSter as wild and law
lessness as the waves of rum The
writer has recently stood on the very
crest of these rum breakers and
watched them foam shoreward into
hundreds of smugglers' coves.
A glance at map will show at
once that Cape Breton is ideally
adapted to pluck bottles from the
sea. 1t is the hand of which the
rest of Nova Scotia is the arm and
the Straits Of Canso the wrist 1t
runs out to sea in innumerable long
headlands like eager beckoning
fingers. Or perhaps it would be bet
ter to say that Cape Breton. Cape
Percy. Point Aconie, Cape Smoky and
Cape North are tongues-quivering
and thirsty tongues.
Vessels on Every HeadIand.
Off every headland is some vessel
of the fleet. 1t needs little magic
to summon spirits from the vast deep.
The rustic of bills at the three-m mile
limit is all that is required TO lure
kegs and cases from the holds of the
rum boats into the holds of the rum
runners.
To serve as barriers against this
tidal wave, the dominion government
has three revenue cutters, the largest
OF which is the Sycamore, command
ed by Capt Peters These watch dogs
Of the customs, If they took their
eyes or their telescopes from the
land, would realize in a moment that
they are not dykes but sieves. The
customs officials cannot watch 50
great an expanse of sea on a coast
as wrinkled as a human brain.
At Its full strength the fleet
amounts to 40 sails, Is off Cape Bre-
ton and the rest off Halifax. Lunen-
burg, and Yarmouth. And they are
really sails" They ride at anchor
with sails up to serve as a sea mark
70 customers and to steady them, the
boats. into the wind. Only a few are
steamers or have auxiliary engines.
Some or them are just one masted,
almost one cask, fishing sloops.
They do not need to be as large as
the vessels in the sea caravan that
serves the great American Sahara.
They supply not half a continent, but
only three small provinces. Being able
70 anchor miles offshore and not -,
they do not need to be so seaworthy.
Their source of supply is st. Pierre
M1quelon. only a hundred miles dis
tant from the extreme north of Capt
Breton, while the home waters" of
the American fleet are in the Bermudas
and the Bahamas.
1t should rejoice the hearts of pro-
tectfon1sts to learn that this Canadian
neet has no truck nor trade with the
fankee fleet. 1t occupies the extreme
tip OF the great marine horn or cornu-
copla which so copiously bedews the
Volstead coast but 1t is not in direct
contact with it. Between Maine and
New Brunswick, where the 12-miIe
limit ends and the 3-mile begins, there
Is gap. One rum fleet is, as It were
I'm the air" But 1t prospers as a
strictly Canadian enterprise, limited to
a Canadian market. 1t was estimated
by Sydney newspaper man that Cape
Breton alone buys in one year $4,000
600 worth of liquor from the sea.
The ships are mostly owned by
Canadians and belong to Canadian
ports. They laugh at American COM
petition and occasionally dump goods
on the American market in spite OF
Republican anti-dumping laws. Many
a Nova Scotian liquor carrier makes a
dash into American waters as though
on Highland foray into the Lowlands
and trades headaches for dollars.
Ships Of the rum fleet, it seems, are
like the whales. In rough weather
they keep well out to avoid being
blown on shore. When the weather
is fine they come in and bask in the
sunshine on tho 3-mile limit. The
rum fleet never does do a brisk busi-
ness where there is brisk breeze