Born to Rum: Bill McCoy

human name. Okay, I get it, Sary the cat, it's a it's a type. I know. I'm just saying. So you guys have intimate relationship with your pets. And that's what I was just saying, setting the ground rules. So he and Lewis were sitting there and Lewis had been eyeballing his bag of mushrooms that he kept in his fridge. And these are magic mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, right, these aren't allows exactly, So Cage tells Letterman the cat he ate them voraciously. It was like cat and nip to him.

So I thought, what the heck? I better do it with him. So he then gets down low, because you know he's Nicholas Cage. He's like, I'm gonna do some shrooms with my cat. So he says hendy quod after he eats like a couple of handfuls. I remember lying in my bed for hours and Lewis was on the desk across from the bed for hours, just staring at each other, not moving, but he would stare at me. And then Nicholas Cage comes to conclusion. I had no

doubt that he was my brother. So he and his cat at a moment, and I'm just like, dude, this is like today an irresponsible pet. Nicholas Cage. You're making your MoMA sound like she got some splaining to do. Yes, Anyway, there you go, Nicholas Cage doing shrooms with this cat and Lewis. It's ridiculous. Do you know what else it is ridiculous? No, but I bet you're gonna tell me firing on the US military over some rum. Wait, what this is ridiculous crime? A podcast about absurd and outrageous

capers highest cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and ridiculous, right, Zarin, Yes, have you ever been in a conversation with other humans and used the phrase the real McCoy or are you not a member of the Greatest Generation? I am not a member the Greatest generation, but I sample them heavy. So you've called something the real McCoy stood there looking at a product me. You know what, guys, this is the real McCoy one hundred percent.

And not only have I said it, but I've encouraged others to say it, like small children, I'm like, you should, hey, tell your friends, this is the real McCourt giving old tiny phrases to little ki. I am trying to get my nephew to say good grief more like, because right now he'll pop out with the III when something goes wrong, and I don't know where that came from, but I like it. So now I'm trying to get him into the good grief. You got any other old sayings you like? Like?

I like also like trying to begin him to say what in tarnation? You know, I've been actually, whenever I've seen your nephew, I've been trying to get him to say red sky at night, Sailor's delight, red sky in morning. Yeah, you know, maybe family yeah, exactly grew up with that, so, um, the real McCoy. Yes. There are a lot of theories on where that phrase comes from. Gank the Smuggler, right, no, no, no, Some say it's from the Scots, the real McKay and um,

but I don't know what the real McKay was. Well, others say it had to do with Elijah McCoy, uh, inventor of the ironing board, and it was something with people wanting like his authentic items and not other companies versions. So it's like, if this was like the singer song Machine, this is the real singer, the real singer. There was also a boxer named Norman Shelby, Norman Selby, pardon me,

who boxed under the name Kid McCoy. Okay, And there's this legend that he was like boozing it up at a bar one night and another patron was told, hey, you know that's a famous boxer. That's Kid McCoy, and the drunk patrons like, no, you're not, and like, you know, pushes him and you know, makes a face out of him. I don't know how many art frights start. And then he was like Nanny poops and then Norman decked him. The guy falls down, and then he's like, guess what,

I'm the real McCoy. That's a that's a that's a great legend. Yeah, that's that's a mic dropper, and you're standard over somebody going guess what, I'm the real McCoy. Exactly, I'm the real Zarin. Not not quite the great covering, you know, it doesn't. Uh So. The most agreed upon origin though, is the Scots. There was a brand of whiskey from Glasgow in the mid eighteen hundreds called Messrs A and M McKay, and the slogan that they used was the Real McKay to differentiate it from the various

other McKay people products. Okay, I'm just tried to like, yeah, I guess, and so then people are on this side of the ocean misheard it as McCoy speaking of alcohol. There is another potential source, okay, yes, so there's this famous rum runner, one who never watered down his hooch exactly, that's the story. Yes, his name William Bill McCoy. Okay, that's why I want to talk to you about today. So I have to say I do love good prohibition

smuggling stories. Dude, my father told these like a bedtime story. Great, I don't. I don't currently drink, but I have in the past, and I know that alcohol it can be a terrible destroyer of lives, both for the drinker and

ones who love and care about the drinker. But for those with a healthy relationship with alcoholic can be a lot of fun, very enjoyable to It's like the toxicologists say, it's the dose makes the poison, exactly, And we know that prohibition it didn't save the lives of alcoholic No, so it wasn't beneficial alcoholics they have an illness, they'll get booze. However they can do. That's what bathtub gin

comes in exactly. So prohibition made getting the alcohol, you know, costly as well as the alcohol itself getting it, and it's the alcohol itself even more dangerous. Oh yeah, people are going blind. Yeah, so it was a stupid idea. Prohibition was stupid. If you want to alcohol, Naron, I'm going on record, Wow, you really Prohibition was stupid. Wow, we're going to take that stance. I'm going to I'm going to issue a proclamation stupid. But I love the

idea of people getting around a stupid idea. So there's this also with like this, this kind of like rum running. There's the excitement of sailing in the secret code or like careening down country roads. We've talked about you know those people before. So this is a prohibition story. Okay. Bill McCoy he was born in eighteen seventy seven in Syracuse, New York. He went to the Pennsylvania Nautical School and when he was there, he was on the he was

on a ship. He like, you know, trained, graduated first in his class in eighteen ninety five. Eighteen ninety eight. What happened that year in maritime historyes Aaron eighteen ninety eight, Um, sinking of the Main? I knew, you know it? Yes, main, the main explodes in Havanah. Yes, McCoy was there, Oh damn. Yeah. He was a mate and quartermaster on the piano steamer Olivet, which was also docked in Havannah at the time. So here we have the real McCoy witness to history. Yeah,

he's just there. He's the beginning of the Spash American War. Yeah, exactly right there. So he's like he's a little hard boiled at this point. Yes, I bet nineteen hundred, his family moves to Hollyhill, Florida. All right, and so McCoy and his older brother Ben and Florida. McCoy and his older brother Ben, they had this motor boat service and like a boatyard, um, out of both Holly Hill and then Jacksonville. Okay they're okay the North Yeah, me neither.

By nineteen eighteen, Bill he's known. He's like a really skilled yacht builder. Um. He built vessels for people like Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie however you want to say it, and the Vanderbilts. So he's like building these high end yachts. There's these captains of industry that keeps sneaking into our stories. Right.

So cars, though, are starting to spread across the country like a cancer and ever expanding chaotic new In order to keep up with this, Florida starts building highways up and down the coast, and the roads they were traveled by cars and buses. They're bringing tourists to all the sunny spots on the water. He was like their old shell roads. Right. Yeah, you'd think that this would be

a boon for the McCoy brothers. Right, No, no, zeron, No people wanted to be able to drive from place to place, and not a lot of people wanted to get on their boats to go from like scenic spot to scenic spot. And same with freight, like they were hauling stuff up and down the coast, but now it's like, oh, we can just put it in these big trucks. Makes it easier. Enter prohibition, So while the US was enacting prohibition,

Canada and the Caribbean they repealed their ambition policies. So the US looked to Canada for whiskey and the Caribbean for rum. Let's say that you have a robust boat business, the knowledge that comes with that, you have a robust boat business, and the knowledge that comes with that you're a skilled cap Let's say I thought you're doing together after me. You're you're a skilled captain. You can pilot in like shallow waters and large cargo san bars, you

know the area like the back of your hands. Yeah. Um, legitimate business is drying up, and you're not too far from a significant source of quality rum. So of course rum running is a viable option. For it's a career path. I'm considering it really is. So the majority of the ships that were illegally transporting alcohol would fly British flags because the Bahamas were still British colonies. However, the ships were actually registered in Canada and were owned by Canadians

with ties to American syndicates. Interesting, so it's Canadian registry, but you got you're under the British flag. Yeah. Um. The free t trade policy of the British kind of backed this Scotch whiskey and top shelf brands of champagne and other European alcoholic beverages. They were brought exported one hundred percent legally from Britain to be stockpiled in the Bahamas. And then the profit margin huge, right, So a four dollars case of rum purchased in Cuba would sell for

a hundred dollars in Florida. Wow, there's a lot of money to be made. So even you're like, you're like this patriotic, you know, guy, you've got this business, but it's like when you're faced without your business is dying and you have this opportunity, of course you're going to take it. So the McCoy brothers they sold off their businesses and they moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts, Okay, and it was there that they bought a ninety foot fishing schooner,

the Henry ELM Marshall, and they had. Now they had the Henry L. Marshall, they start building their new enterprise smuggling whiskey from the Bahamas Islands of Nassau and Bimini into the US. Nice. So they had to go up to New England to get like a suitable fishing real boat. I mean, yeah, my family's Neariccloucester. That you got real shipbuilds, right, Henry L. Marshall's all right, I guess you know. But Bill McCoy he wanted something bigger, he wanted power, he

wanted it to be faster, something he'll like. So he tries out a bunch of different boats and he finally finds his love. She's a butte and she was named the Aristhusa. Is that all one word? Yeah? Aristhusa a r E t h u s a arethusa. Don't no idea. I think it's Greek. Yeah, one hundred and twenty seven foot fishing schooner. It was designed in nineteen o seven by Thomas McManus and built in Essex, Massachusetts by James and tar in nineteen o nine. Does that mean anything

to you? Necessarily? It didn't mean anything to me either. So McCoy's sailboat, though, that could outrun steamers. It was a beast, so he souped it up even more. Yes, and soon it was one of the fastest commercial sailing vessels on the Atlantic coast. He's just got the big boy out there. So the USA, ARETHUSA. I keep putting extra syllables in this. That's fun his boat rights, ARETHUSA. Please don't send messages telling me how to say it, because quite frankly, oh um so the boat it could

carry up to six thousand cases of booze. Okay, And so while it's generally bad luck to rename a boat, McCoy did just that. Thank good. He decides to call it the Tamoca t O m o Ka Okay. This is like a Tagi Cherokee name. It's the name of the river that ran through his adopted hometown of Hollyhill, Florida, So it probably was yeah. So changing changing the name though, let him reregister the vessel, oh okay, which is why

he did it. So this time he did so under British flags, and that put him even further out of reach. From American authorities. So, as I'm mentioned earlier, McCoy he refused to lower the standards of his smuggled product. So there were a lot of bootleggers, rum runners. They cut their hall with water or sometimes even turpentine to make it go further and to kill more people. Not Bill. He'd never cut it. He never switched labels. He only sold the real McCoy. That's what my pap used to

tell me. It was known because you could count on it, because it was the only one that wasn't cut it cut boots, didn't mess around with any of the bottles, the packaging. That's what his customers would say, Hey, this is the real McCoy. He became like a prestige, luxury luxury brand because of it. His rum was renowned as the gold standard, and that let him set his price

at top dollar. Hell yeah, So outside of American ports at the time, just pass the maritime limit and I'll get to that whole issue in a second, there would be these lines of ships filled with illegal booze waiting to offload their cargo and sneak it to shore. They're called rum rows, yeah, and ones all up and down the Florida coast. They're also outside of the East Coast, supports New Orleans, San Francisco in the rum row frequented

by McCoy. His pricing was set as the official price of booze coming in, and so his status in the booze criming community it rose, and he expanded his business to include five boats. He had dozens of men. They made trips monthly between the Bahamas and Florida. He transported approximately two million bottles of alcohol during his career, two million. His brother Ben would meet Tomoca in a rowboat and he'd bring them fresh water, meat, vegetable, all this food, newspapers,

the public. He wanted to see the newspapers because the public is fascinated by bootleggers, moonshiners, speakeasies. Yeah, and McCoy more than happy to provide stories. Right. So he claimed that hit to find inspiration in John Hancock of pre revolutionary Boston. That was his role model. I like it. He called himself a quote honest lawbreaker. He can also

take a stock and Sam Adams. Yeah. So McCoy. He took pride in the fact that he quote never paid a cent to law enforcement, politicians or organized crime families for protection, and he was known. He had never carried a debt. He always paid his debts. Um, when we come back, I'll tell you about McCoy and his dance with the Coast Guard. All right, all right, we're back. Oh look at us. That's good. Um. When we left off, Bill McCoy flouting the laws of the land, smuggling rum

into the US from the Bahamas. I told you about the rum row boats anchored just outside the marri Yeah, it was Bill McCoy who figured out how to exploit that technicality. Oh so he's like to Mickey Cohen from California, It's like, oh, we stod out here. Ain't nothing they can do. Exactly, So, the Coastguard they could only legally operate within the three mile maritime boundary the coast. Beyond

that all bets are off. McCoy. He would drop anchor just beyond the boundary, offload his goods onto smaller, faster boats that could then outpace any of the Coastguard cutters. And since the deals were going down in international waters, he's technically not breaking the world completely. He's clean. Here's something to note, though. Prohibition ratified January sixteenth, nineteen nineteen.

At that time, the maritime limit was three miles. On April twenty first, nineteen twenty four, it was changed to twelve miles. I was wondering when it got to twelve So, what's the significance of this April nineteen twenty four. Heads, Well, it was about a week after the Anti Heroin Act of nineteen twenty four was introduced to Congress, and that prohibited the importer possession of opium for the chemical synthesis of heroin. Sure, So that passed the Senate May twenty seventh,

nineteen twenty four, signed into law June seventh. So it looks like the extension of the maritime limit was actually not so much for the war on the drink, but more on the early days of the war on the drugs. Huh. So they wanted to be able to push those boats out further and then give them a chance to catch him because ye okay, yeah. So either way, McCoy's plan sitting just outside the line worked perfectly. So we had these main transport vessels waiting the contact boats would come up.

They were captained by local fishermen who were experts at knowing all the little hidden landing points inlets, and all Florida got plenty of those totally. After they exchange of money and alcohols complete, the smaller boat sped away, meets up with the truck the speed boat and the truck vanished into the night. There it is so the knowledge of his like rum running hack to create a rum row spread quickly, and soon there's like rows of boats all over the place. So he invented the rum row.

This is what Florida historian Jean Burnett no relation, I don't think, had to say the way people quote. The US Coastguard was sorely undermanned in the early years, effective by day and aid of a spotter plane, but hard pressed at night. Often the rum fleets, mostly speedy motor boats, would slowly move out of the mouseholds at Biminy, cat

Key or gun Key and wait for sunset. Then they would spread out fan fashion, picking up speed, and scoot like so many water bugs, often cutting between two Coastguard cutters to avoid the staccato rain of machine gun fire. Right they were firing, they were firing on them. So the Coastguard was given twenty American Navy destroyers in order to fight rum runners. What are they going to do with destroyers? Go out to the row and be like yeah, so like but here's the rum runners. Weren't just fighting

the Coastguard. They also fighting they're smugglers, right, so they've commonedoer boats. They trossed the crew overboard. Back to McCoy and Tomocus. Yeah, you got to worry that sometimes if you were getting pulled over up by a boat, that it may be one of your rivals pretending to be the coast exactly exactly. So um transit papers made it look like Tomoca was transporting alcohol legally from the Bahamas to Halifax, Nova Scotia. So they they're like, look, we

were allowed to have this on there. What happens in between? I don't know. So regardless of whether or not Tomoca ever dropped anchor in Halifax, there were no laws that prevented him from selling his booze in international waters. Like I said, so as long as he did his business there, he's within his legal rights. He had strict rules in place. He had only let two customers on board at a time, and so it's like going into or jewelry shop. A gunner kept a swivel machine gun trained on any nearby

vessels to make sure there's no trouble. So like while you got the two people on you, you're under the gun. McCoy took things a step further. He established a land base on the island of Saint Pierre. And he's getting into like bond Villain levels now, right, So he's outside of US law. He's in a French colony. There's no competitors nearby. His He transformed the economy of this of this island. Under his guidance, it becomes a commercial merchant port.

Oh yeah, pretty much because of him. Will you see that? Like in um the peaky blinders up north, they one because they're bringing in all their Irish whiskey exactly, and that's the lifeblood. So McCoy he has this crew of eight guys. They'd sell cases of liquor bottles. They'd stack them and then wrap them in burlap packages labeled as like hams or sometimes they'd just write sacks like this is a sack. Don't worry about what's inside. What's He

invented this thing called the burlock. Burlock I never heard of that. It's six bottles wrapped in straw and then stacked pyramid style, three on the bottom, two on top, one on top of that, and then all of it is sewed up really tightly in burlap, and so it's really compact and easy to stow. And some of them they would line with salt, so when they'd toss them overboard, the sacks would sink, but then the salt would dissolve and then the sacks would float back to the top. Wow,

that is Zaren level science. You can see my fight. My face light up. So Rumroe had major party vibes. Feel like it was rude dude central out there. There's basically it's a debauched pirate convention. Jazz bands performed on board like for tourists. Crewmen taunted and heckled the coastguard the like mean orner um. There's gambling. As you said, there were prostitutes. They'd make twice as much money by

sea as they did on shore. Okay, because kind of like with the gold camps where it's like you're gonna make a bottle more because there's no women out there exactly now. McCoy he was a teetotaler. He never indulged in any of the vices associated with the illicit rum running trade. Wow, that is dranked and gamble. Yeah. He did have a weakness though. Oh beauty, oh yeah, so for him, that beauty went by the name Gertrude Cleo Lithgo, Gertrude Cleo, Ligo British. Well, I don't know, so Lithgo.

She was given the name Cleo because she was considered to be as beautiful as Queen Cleopatra herself. She was called the Queen of the Bahamas. Her nickname. Yeah, okay, Gertrude was her So I mean I would go with Cleo over Girtrud. No offense to any Gertrude's So people called her the Queen of the Bahamas. She had all these suitors, she never married, and she ran a full empire all by herself. The one man she did give

attention to, at least professionally, Captain McCoy. So this is what McCoy had to say about Cleo to Robert Wrigley, who was a journalist. Quote, she was a tall, slender girl with black hair, a brain as steady as her own, dark eyes, and a history that was nobody's business. She came to Nassau as an agent for Haig and mctavish's Scotch whiskey. No one knew from where. She made no secret of her background, but she told an entirely different tale to everyone who asked. She was born in California,

she'd been born in India. She was a Gypsy, She'd been raised in the Middle West. You could take your choice members of the rum mob who drew their own conclusions concerning her and then tried to operate accordingly, probably will recall the breathtaking fury she could show, and one or two must remember the pistol jammed into their ribs. By way of making things clear, Nassau was not the

best place in those days for attractive, unprotected women. But though she was the former, she certainly was not the latter. An able, thoroughly competent girl, was she No twittery Jane in whom one could make passes with impunity. She expected others to mind their own business as she attended to hers. She worked at that overtime, and in its course she nearly ran me ragged. Dan, she sounds amazing. This isn't

Nassa on the Bahamas. Yeah, so it's like we're totally reminded me of like the pirate cove of the black sales and yeah, yeah, this is dope. And so Robert Wrigley, that journalist, he had a big thing for Cleo like her. I think a lot of men were sweet on her. This is how he described her, quote, truly a wonderful personality, a woman of cultivated taste, who can talk on books, and who travels with the best music in her trunks

and shows such artistic taste and dress. She stands alone and fearless, a woman who would grace any London drawing room. She has commanded the respect and homage of this motley and dubious throng, and is known in the trade as the Queen of the Bahamas. Oh yeah, that's a love letter. Yeah right, that's like please read this seriously. So McCoy, he mentors Lythgo, and she followed his example of never watering her own products. She saw the genius in that.

This was a point of pride for Lythgo. And then when word got back to her that arrival was spreading a lie that she sold compromise goods, she tracked this guy down. This is what Wrigley wrote about this, that, as Cleo told him, quote, everyone knows that my liquor is the very best, she said, But for some reason or another, this man thought he would criticize it to

other people. And he also said something unpleasant about me. Well, I found him in a barber's shop with his face lathered, and I just walked right in, and I told him I wanted to talk to him. I fetched him along to my office, and there I just warned him. I told him I'd put a bullet through him. As sure as he sat there. He went away mighty quick, because she just like whips him out of the barber's share, come with me. Just like, face still full of lather,

sitting there is dripping it on his jacket. She has all this legend about where she's from and all her story. She was actually born to keep that thing her. Oh yeah, she's actually born in Bowling Green, Ohio, and was the youngest of ten children. Her mom died when she was really young, but she was able to then like reunite with her father later with the help of an aunt. Like it was just like this scattered family. She moves

to New York. She gets a job as a stenographer, and then she becomes a junior accounts clerk for British Scotch whiskey wholesaler Haig and mc tavish. That's her entry. So prohibition comes, she convinces her employer like, why don't we import alcohol from the Bahamas? Like, let's just do it there. So this time she moves down to Nassau to help them. She opens a wholesale liquor store in

the Lucerne Hotel and that's where she also lived. She became the first woman to possess a wholesale liquor license. Now the Lucerne Hotel that was like bootlegger's headquarters. The only thing is that it had more of booze was cash, like there was just so much money on people to hold down paper. This is what Jim Leggett of Whiskey Magazine put put it. So Whiskey Magazine like, do you subscriber?

Oh yeah, I've been a lifetime subscriber. Thing quote. Bar tabs were paid in thousand dollar bills and every barman could give change, So whiskey became a favorite down there. Nineteen nineteen, over nine hundred gallons were exported from Scottish distilleries and in nineteen twenty, the year after prohibition hit. The shipment's totaled three hundred eighty six thousand gallons, So litgo though Cleo, she's the middleman. She makes trips smuggling

rum directly into New Jersey with mccoya. At one point she found herself caught kind of um. She got arrested and was taken into the federal courts in New Orleans. She was charged revenuers. She got charged with smuggling a thousand barrels of whiskey and rum into New Orleans. Here's the problem for the authorities, not for her. Um. While it was she who arranged the shipment, the man she put in charge of making the delivery betrayed her and he tried to sell the goods on his own. He's

the one captured by the coast Guard. And then that gave her the proof that looked I was nowhere near this he had the shipment, So they let her go. She gets out. Now this close brush made her a little nervous, okay, So she decides to quit while she's ahead, leave rum, run rumming for a more peaceful hobby. A favorite among good criminals. Memoir writing. I picked the wrong road to publish it before as you could do that, though, she had one more matter to attend to. What's that,

Captain McCoy. Yeah. Yeah, when we get back from this break, I'm going to let you know what happened to this love affair? All right, Zaron yah yap okay. When we left off, Bill McCoy ruling the waves, smuggling illegal alcohol alongside the love of his life, Cleo lithgo dirty. Cleo wants out of a life. Yeah. Um, she wants to write her memoir take it Easy, but she knew that

McCoy wasn't ready for that. Oh really. Yeah, she you know, she'd gotten through the whole New Orleans case and everything, but she also after that, she's positive that she's jinxed, and she's also positive she's going to be murdered. She just has this feeling. So she's like, I gotta get out of this. But then she also has to tell McCoy then it's over, like spiritualism probably, I don't know,

it's curious. This is how so she has to tell she has to break it to Bill McCoy, like we can't do this, like we can't both be one in one out. Yeah, So this is what she said. Quote believe me. It's a tremendous temptation. But I still have some unfinished business tails ends which must have my attention. It is urgent that I return. There have been so many interruptions as it is. Besides, I hardly think it would be proper for me to stay aboard with three captains.

With that, he jumped up and grabbed me in his arms, saying, I won't let you go. For once. I did not resist his caresses. If you must go back, promise me that you will get the slate cleared of whatever you have to do as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I'll finish the overhauling of the ships here and the one in Virginia. We'll meet in Miami, then go on a long cruise to the seas and just jog along as we please.

I won't let you go until you do. Promise. It was with reluctance that I compelled myself to wake from those wonderful moments. As I said goodbye with my arms around his neck, I kissed him all right, Bill, I promise. Oh, Cleo never saw him again. I knew it that. Yeah, it's a heartbreaker. So The Fairmountain News of Indiana I'm

pulling for those I don't work it out well. They like this is what they said about her in this fair Fairmount News of Indiana, that her work as a smuggler, quote brought her Paris gowns and jewels as big as Hen's eggs, and the respect of the hardest boiled bootleggers

on the Atlantic seaboard. But she thinks her lucky star has set a jinx has tracked her down from her whiskey throne in Nassau, through the most luxurious hotels of European capitals, through glamorous newspaper publicity, through hectic romances, to the loneliness of a New York hotel suite where she can hide from the world world and recover her lost nerve and her health. So she's just like feeling pursued by this, and she goes all over the globe trying to find peace. So she spent the rest of her

life living in hotels. You know, she goes to Miami. Then she lived in a hotel in Detroit for twenty five years, the Teller, the Tuller Hotel on Grand Circus Part I don't know, but she spent her last year's writing her memoirs, The Bahama Queen, The Autobiography of Gertrude Cleo Lithgow, published in nineteen sixty five. She passed away at the age of eighty six in nineteen seventy four in Los Angeles. So interesting life, right, so Cleo, she

stepped away from the life McCoy leaned into it. Zaren, yes, close your eyes, yes, picture it. It's early morning on Sunday, November twenty fifth, nineteen twenty three. You're part of a crew of the Tomaco or Tomoco, Tomoca whatever, sailing off the coast of Seabright, New Jersey. Just you're far enough offshore to be in international waters. You hear a boat approaching you from starboard. It's the Coastguard cutter Seneca. They've been given orders to bring in the Tomoca or Sinka.

You don't know that, though. You hear a short sound from the Seneca's horn, and then a voice coming over the ship's tannoi. It's the lieutenant in charge of the Seneca. He orders Captain McCoy to doc Tomoka at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. He says that there's something amiss with McCoy's papers. You look at McCoy. He looks at you, well, Captain, You stand in the door of the cabin, holding the mouthpiece to the ship's speaker out to McCoy, what's he

going to tell him? McCoy waves off your offer and instead calls out slip the stern line while he steers the ship away from the coastguard full speed ahead. The chases on Zi. Yeah sama. You head below deck to secure the cargo of rum you've got while McCoy careens up and down the coast of aiding the Seneca. He makes a hard turn and you realize that you're heading out into the open ocean. Now. The coastline and its speckled dabs a morning light from the little fishing cabins.

They disappear from view. Suddenly you hear a frightful sound. Bang. The Seneca has fired a shell across your bow. McCoy's at the helm, steady at the wheel. You and your crewmates scatter to the wooden cases along the deck and reach in for your tools to trade machine guns. Yeah, give me that, Tommy, guy to the forward deck yells McCoy. You and the other deck hands return fire. You're firing on the United States Coastguard, damn right. So the Seneca

responds one, two, three, four, shells fly at you. They're getting so close now that they're splashing seawater onto the deck. McCoy realizes he's no match for their firepower, so he lowers the jib. The men from the Coastguard they come and they board the ship. McCoy's gone below deck at this point. So there he is sitting with four hundred cases of whiskey and sixty thousand dollars in cash. That's just over a million in today's money. So million bucks,

four hundred cases a whiskey. So the Coastguard commandeer the ship. They make their way back to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, seventeen some odd miles away. On the way, McCoy, he takes you and all your fellow crewmen belowdeck, pays each of you your wages, and then says really heartfelt goodbyes to his loyal crew. So words spread that the infamous real McCoy had been captured at the station. Reporters asked him what his defense would be at the trial. This is what he said, quote, I have no tale of

woe to tell you. I was outside the three mile limits. Selling whiskey and good whiskey to anyone and everyone who wanted to buy. She's like, look, I shameless. So it took like, look I did what I did. We all know what I did. It took two years to go to trial, all this dragging on. So he's found guilty, sentenced to nine months in prison in March of nineteen

twenty five. But Bill McCoy was a celebrity at this point, you know in the papers, all this other stuff, and we know how celebrity criminals are often treated, so not like criminals at all. Basically we're getting at So the warden let him lead the leave the prison every day as long as he was back by nine pm curfew. He's like, look, I don't care what you do when you're out there, just be back by night after you got interviews to do. Oh yeah, rich people hang out with.

One time he goes out and he sits ringside at a prize fight at Ebbott's Field in Brooklyn. Oh, it's just out, you know, taking it all in. You know, he didn't get the best seats. That's the prison, Elizabeth. Remember how I told you that the government pushed the maritime boundary out in eighty three miles to twelve. The government also invested in faster cutters for the coast Guard. More and more rum runners were arrested and their boats

were confiscated. By the time that prohibition was repealed in nineteen thirty three, what remained of the rum running trade just vanished overnight. Obviously, so in nineteen thirty three, long after retiring from run running, McCoy began selling his own personal brand of whiskey, called the Real McCoy. It had like an illustration of his boat on the label. He went back to Florida with his brother Ben and invested

in real estate. He passed away at the age of seventy one from a heart attack in complications of tomine poisoning. I shouldn't laugh at that December thirtieth, nineteen forty eight in Stuart, Florida. He was out at sea in his private yacht Huh. In twenty thirteen, Bailey Pryor made a documentary about him, with a line of rum to go with it, going to Barbados and teaming up with Richard

Seal of Four Square Distillery. Oh cool whatever, So in honor, though in honor of Captain McCoy's habit of providing only the best rum. They produced three years silver rum that was age, no barrels, with no sugar, no flavor additives, as well as a twelve year super Premium variety. So Zarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway? I wish I liked rum? Right? My dad loves dark rum. He loves light rum, like

though clear white RUMs. So he's all about Myers and Bacardi all those RUMs that I'm just you know, naming some nods. Get him a bottle of the real McCoy for Oh no, he definitely would. But I when I go to see him, he'll pour be a glass of rum. And I'm always like, you know, I hate this molasses liquor? What are you doing to me here? Pop? Can't you get good Irish whiskey? But he doesn't like whiskey and

I do, so we meet it tequila. So what's ridiculous is is this story, no matter how strange it is, reminds me of my father and makes me want tequila. So there you go. That's amazing, it's amazing. What about you, Elizabeth? What's your ridiculous take I did I see how that's how? That's how. That's done. That's how polite people do these things. I see, Um my ridiculous takeaway is again I love a good prohibition smuggler story. Oh yeah, you know, no

one was killed. So and it's also it's given the people what they want, and it's based on like an arbitrary rule. Like you know me, I'm I'm not somebody who's like, oh the like we should just disregard loss. I'm not suggesting that, but I also don't believe we should hold true the laws that are just arbitrary and weird and bizarre and abstract. It just makes no sense. So some laws are, in my opinion, you know, nonsense, and so this one is we both agree it was nonsense.

And so the way he did it, I applaud him. He didn't hurt people, he didn't use violence like a bunch of other people. He wasn't he was selling a good product, he wasn't hurting people. I don't see the problem,

and I applaud him. And I love the little sense of adventure about it, and like, you know, like the like I said, like the little hidden coves that into I mean, you know this, it's like I mean, I'm all about like the traitor vic lifestyle of like, oh yeah, I gotta hide in these little coves and got to meet a guy on a fro a boat and you know, I mean like an evening gets to be close to like I don't know, spit the difference between Travis McGee,

like the amateur detective from Florida and then like the real McCoy rum runner. I'm somewhere in between there and neither of them really have like our law abiders, right, Yea, there you go, Florida. Well that's it. That's what we have today, Florida. You can find us online a Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter for the talking Instagram for the galkin. Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, download the iHeart app everybody. They're not even telling me to

do this. I just really like talkbacks them in. They're so funny. You don't know, you don't know what I do? Uh, tune in next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Captain Dave Kusten of the SS Rude Dude. Research is by Marissa Whiskey Waddler Brown and Andrea Jin Jogger song sharpened here. The theme song is by Thomas Medori, Meander or Lee

and Travis Furnett Frolicker Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Tequila, Trotter Bolin and Noel Bourbon Bounder Brown QUI See It One More Times. Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.