July 2011 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 23. Maritime History THE DARK SIDE OF RUN-RUNNING
Jobs were hard to find Downeast, few employers could afford to pay well. The only people with money to spend were the boot- leggers who were buying or selling liquor. There are few secrets in small towns where families have known each other for genera- tions. Prosperity, especially sudden wealth – is always painfully obvious, and creates great interest among the neighbors. Men worthy of the name will take any job to feed and care for their families, and there was little danger of getting caught running rum because law enforcement agencies were under paid and under manned, and could not afford the fast expensive cars and boats used by rum-runners. Young men with growing families had the greatest need for money and were inclined to take great risks for quick profits, sometimes with tragic results. In January of 1923 a small Canadian sloop was wrecked when it went aground near Scituate, Massachusetts. Those who watched from the beach eagerly salvaged the cargo of bottles and the cases of whiskey as they washed ashore; twenty cases were reported saved.
Two of the three-man crew were drowned when the sloop went on the shoals early that Sunday morning. The only survi- vor was a boy nine or ten years old; the youngster said the sloop had grounded on a bar, and he had been sent into the rigging to free the sails, and when he was working, the two men were washed off the deck and drowned, and the sloop was thrown high up on the beach. The boy disappeared later that day, and was said to have headed back to his home somewhere in New Brunswick. Money was scarce, even for some law- yers, during the days of rum-running. A Port- land man, A. R. Worthknot, whose practice was paying poorly, began to make frequent unexplained visits Downeast, but he ran into
trouble and was apparently robbed of a $6,000 rum cargo, nearly losing his life along with his liquor when he was thrown over- board into the chilly waters of Passamaquoddy Bay at Snug Cove, Campobello Island, New Brunswick. Worthknot was saved by Charles Greenlaw and his son Harold of Eastport, who were fishing along the shore when they heard groans coming from a small sloop anchored between Friar’s Head and the Lubec Nar- rows. The elder Greenlaw took their boat in close to the sloop and found a half-conscious man clinging to the sloop’s bow rope, with his feet stretched out under the keel. The man was heavy and with his wet clothes, the Greenlaws had great difficulty hauling him into their boat; the nearby fishermen would not help.
The man remained unconscious in the bottom of the Greenlaw’s boat, while they took him across the Narrows (the Interna- tional Boundary) to the office of the Lubec Seacoast Sardine Packing Company, where a doctor was called. Worthknot appeared con- fused for a time, and first claimed his name was Smith; that seemed odd to the men who searched his pockets for identification and found a bank book with a healthy balance of $20,000. They also found a bunch of keys, and papers that positively identified him. When he fully regained consciousness, Worthknot immediately called a bank in Port- land, and stopped payments on two checks of $3,000 each, and judging by what was said, paid for a lost cargo of rum.
Worthknot’s story was he had bought 150 cases of Scotch at Saint Stephen on Saturday at $40 a case, which had been brought to him at Lubec by schooner. He had been in the hold helping to move his cargo, and when he went on deck he had been hit in the head and thrown overboard by the man
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who had sold him the liquor, the story came out slowly, but was convincing. The men who had been helping Worthknot disap- peared like smoke and so did the liquor. Rum sellers rarely accepted checks in payment, cash was expected in such transac- tions and the unusual method of payment suggested that the dealers had done enough previous business worthknot to have estab- lished a relationship.
The following night, a large and expen-
sive car – an Essex Coach arrived in Lubec with Worthknot’s brother and two men who had come to take him back to Porland. How- ever, the long time he had spent in the cold waters of Passamaquoddy Bay had taken a toll of Worthknot’s health; he was threat- ened with pneumonia and unable to travel. A week later he was still in Lubec being treated by a doctor.
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