01/03/2024
Interesting fellow…
In 1920 the yacht building business that Bill McCoy operated with his brother Ben was struggling. So, Bill assessed the situation. He knew that he was a good sailor who knew how to make fast boats. And he knew that Prohibition had created a huge demand for liquor in the American northeast. Recognizing the business opportunity that presented itself, Bill McCoy seized it, becoming the king of the rumrunners, one of America’s most celebrated and notorious bootleggers.
McCoy bought a 127-foot fishing schooner capable of carrying 6,000 cases of alcohol and retrofitted it to make it one of the fastest commercial sailing vessels on the Atlantic coast. He registered his ship in Great Britain and renamed it “Tomoka.” He was in business.
He would load his cargo of spirits in Nassau in the Bahamas, then sail to the Jersey shore, anchoring between Sandy Hook and Atlantic City, just outside the three-mile boundary of international waters. Customers would come out to him in small boats that could evade the Coast Guard, and McCoy would sell them the booze in sacks that held nine bottles each. Ben McCoy would bring out supplies to the Tomoka, so that she never had to port.
McCoy made no effort to hide what he was doing. In fact, he welcomed the publicity. He boasted that he never diluted his product (as many bootleggers did), and that he never paid a dime to organized crime or to bribe law enforcement. And no law prohibited him from selling liquor in international waters. His enterprise was so successful that he soon added four more boats. In a little more than two years he sold an estimated two million bottles.
McCoy’s brazenness and his celebrity status infuriated government authorities, however, and they were determined to shut him down. In 1923, after first getting the tacit consent of British authorities, the Coast Guard was ordered to arrest McCoy, and to sink the Tomoka if he resisted.
On November 25 the Coast Guard cutter Senaca steamed out to the Tomoka and sent over a 15-man boarding party. When they were aboard, the commanding officer ordered McCoy to bring his ship into port. Instead, he set sail and raced away, with the boarding party still on board. The Seneca opened fire with her four-inch deck guns and the Tomoka’s crew answered with a machine gun set up on her forward deck. But as the shells from the Seneca started dropping closer to his ship, McCoy realized the game was up. He lowered his jib and surrendered. On board the Coast Guard found $60,000 in cash (about a million dollars in today’s money) and only 400 cases of the original 4,200 case cargo.
Once brought ashore reporters asked McCoy how he intended to defend himself against the charges. He answered with a smile, “I was outside the three-mile limit, selling whisky, and good whisky, to anyone and everyone who wanted to buy.”
But after two years of legal wrangling, McCoy ultimately decided to accept a plea bargain. He pled guilty to violating the Volstead Act and was sentenced to nine months in jail.
After serving his time, McCoy retired from rumrunning, returning instead to the boat building business. He also became a successful real estate investor and when Prohibition ended he cashed in on his notoriety by putting out his own brand of whisky, called “The Real McCoy” and featuring the Tomoka on the label.
William Frederick “Bill” McCoy, the King of the Rumrunners, died in Florida at age 71 on December 30, 1948, seventy-five years ago today.
