# Porch Stories: Smuggling on Whidbey Island

**Channel:** Island County Historical Society & Museum
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DHd0AOdt44
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/-DHd0AOdt44

## Chapters

- 0:05 — Opening Remarks and Geographic Setup
- 6:56 — Early Smuggling and Local Whiskey Runs
- 18:29 — Chinese Exclusion and Human Cargo
- 25:45 — Prohibition and Roy Olmstead
- 32:55 — Canadian Rum Runner Malahat

## Transcript

**[0:05] Speaker A:** Um, real quick before you get started. Okay. Yeah. Um, I just want to thank everybody for coming to the museum and sorry about the timing snapping that we have here. Um, a little bit of a miscommunication this afternoon, but we're so glad that you're all here. There's more seats right over here. Yeah. Um, we always like to give a shout out to our sponsors, uh, EBS and the friends of EBS as well as Whley Island Center.

**[0:32] Speaker B:** Are you okay? Okay. Um,

**[0:37] Speaker A:** but, uh, we're super excited to have Bill here talking with us today. Uh, I know I'm very much looking forward to hearing what he has to say. Um, next week we'll have Ron Ber who's going to talk about uh place names here in Kville uh and also um how some of the merkantile businesses started up here in the early days. So that should be a fun one as well. But otherwise besides that, Bill, take it away.

**[1:03] Speaker B:** Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Um so um okay we'll um we'll carry on. Um and um so welcome to those who just come. Um I'll uh I I think I'll I'll start I'll I'll go from a little

**[1:27] Speaker A:** you have to hold the like this like as if I'm swallowing it better that way. It's pretty loud out here.

**[1:38] Speaker B:** If it turns out that you can't hear, just, you know, tell me and I'll try to do better. Try to improve. Um, lots of colorful tales to tell about smuggling in our region uh from 18 basically 1870 to 1933. Um, I'll start with the boring and hopefully we can u work our way up to getting something that uh will entertain you. Um, as a sailboat guy, uh, I've paid a lot of attention to geography and so did the smugglers uh, in the era that we are going to be talking about. um the geography of our area uh played really a critical role. In fact, there wouldn't be wouldn't have been any smuggling going on at all if it weren't for the geography of our area, the Salish Sea. Now, I'll refer to the Salish Sea. Some of you um if you're visiting from far away may not be familiar with the Salish Sea, but basically it's the whole area that encompasses the Straits of Wand Fuca, the Straits of Georgia, um all of Admiral T

**[2:55] Speaker B:** inlet, all of Puget Sound. Uh and in about 2008, geographers started to call it the Salish Sea, the name for the Co Salish people that have lived here for a very long time, about farther than we know probably, but at least 13,000 years. Uh so and one of the characteristics of the sish sea that was very important for everybody who has settled here is that this the the water was the highway. Okay. Our forests were thick uh practically impassable except maybe by foot and for a few game animals. um roads uh up until about 1900 were large largely unknown. A few buggy paths and and maybe to ride a horse on, but that's about it. Um, and so the native people who were here long ago, uh, figured that out very quickly and made wonderful sea for seaorthy canoes to, uh, traverse uh, the the, um, the sail sea, for trade, um, mostly for trade,

**[4:18] Speaker B:** but sometimes for raids as well. Um and in fact um the person uh and well you I'll just preface this in in 1850 um there were a number of folks that that came out here and Congress had initiated a an act called the land donation act. Okay. um it it preceded other ones that were more historically popular, but the Land Donation Act would give 360 acres to anyone who claimed it and would settle. Uh meaning that they would develop it um primarily for farming um because Congress wanted to populate the West with people other than Native American people. Um and so uh a Dr. Kellogg came from the east and came here um put a land claim in on the area that is now known as Fort Casey and the U and the lighthouse and uh was and now of course in in these in 1853 this you know being a physician was a little different than being a physician today but he was a physician and took care of a lot of people here and hired Native American people who were excellent mariners

**[5:48] Speaker B:** and who had excellent craft to take him around to take care of his patients because in those days um getting off the island uh was only by boat. Okay, there was no there were no bridges until 1936. So um it was it was a by boat only kind of kind of proposition. and uh the the people what we have tended to refer to as the canoe culture uh flourished and you you probably will be able well I know you'll be able to see some beautiful examples of canoes down uh on the lower floor here in the museum um so the geography of the place um has been very important um for one thing. Um, I'm going to just make sure I kind of look at my notes here so that I don't forget something important. Um,

**[6:56] Speaker B:** as I mentioned, thick for forest, no roads. Puget Sound, as we would call it today, the Sish Sea, generally speaking, is easy to navigate.

**[7:12] Speaker B:** This is my wife, Lauren, by the way. She's

**[7:16] Speaker A:** You want to just take the notes and

**[7:17] Speaker B:** Okay. Okay. I'll just take the notes and we'll go with that.

**[7:22] Speaker A:** I'll be the podium.

**[7:23] Speaker B:** Okay. Okay. Um Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, beyond uh relatively easy navigation, um, as most of you know who lived here, there are lots of islands, lots of inlets, lots of basin, little coes, and so this place basically was about as good as you could get if you were a smuggler. Uh, it was easy to get around by boat. You could put in, be undetected. get away and um never be seen. Um not only that, but Canada was close. Okay. So, and Canada had things that um we did not have as much of or not as good of as in those days.

**[8:23] Speaker B:** Thanks today.

**[8:28] Speaker B:** Um,

**[8:31] Speaker B:** so it it really didn't take that long to get from Canada by boat. Uh, even in early days of just sail, even before engines, uh, generally speaking, depending on where you would launch from and where you would land, about 60 65 miles away. Um, now if you play pay attention to current, tide, and wind, you can do that pretty quick. So, um, it's, um, it's a it's a pretty, like I said, it was a pretty good setup.

**[9:13] Speaker A:** I didn't think we were going to have planes today.

**[9:18] Speaker B:** They fly when they want to. Um,

**[9:26] Speaker B:** Native Americans were quick to recognize that this was a good place. Um they there were there was lots of food. Um trade was was very uh uh popular and abundant. um by canoe you could travel to see your friends uh trade and get a whole day shopping done and and do it all in style. So early smugglers were also uh keen to understand that this was a good spot. Um the earliest ones were um basically um there to escape uh taxes, to smuggle uh things into the United States. And I'll I'll tell you, I'm going to give you the highlight reel. There's there's quite a few um stories and you can look them up. It's easy to research this stuff on the internet and some books as well. Um but the the the early ones that just had sailboats and they were called the sailboats were called plungers.

**[10:41] Speaker B:** Okay. They were about 25 ft long. They were shallow draft meaning that they didn't uh require a lot of uh water underneath them. And the it was especially especially good because these guys could run their boats right up on sand or sloping mud, which we have a lot of, and wait for the tide, unload, take care of business, the tide would refloat you, and on you could go. So, it was it was a a pretty good deal. And the plungers were fast. um at 25 ft carrying pretty good pretty good array of canvas they could they could make their way faster than any of the uh cutters in those days that were patrolling out here and there weren't very many of them. So there was a lot of open water and a lot of uh uh space to roam. Um I'm going to tell you about one guy.

**[11:42] Speaker B:** His name was Blue Jay Jimmy Hawkins. Okay. and his boat was named Guess What? The Blue Jay. I like this story because it's about the Port Towns and waterfront. And some of you who are aware of Port Townsen know it's it's been a colorful place for a long time. And it was especially colorful back in the 1870s and 1880s. Um, Blue Jay Jimmy would would take Canadian whiskey. um bring it across, end up at the waterfront saloons in Port Townsend, um remove the cargo, uh pay no taxes, and um be on his way. Um this this was a very lucrative business for Blue Jim and people like him. Um, and he quickly became, as was the case for people later on, a kind of a public benefactor. Um, people liked him.

**[12:51] Speaker B:** He he brought them uh good Canadian whiskey uh at a at a reasonable cost because the saloons of course made a a little profit on it, but it was much cheaper than what was being produced in the United States at that time. And um nobody paid any taxes. And Blue Blue Jim um was kind of a early Robin Hood kind of guy. and he um was um uh considered um kind of a popular public benefactor in his day and uh made out very well. Um however, selling alcohol, Canadian good Canadian alcohol to waterfront saloons in Port Townsen was a very different issue than selling alcohol to Native American people. Um, and so it it was generally regarded in those days that uh it was a big no no to sell alcohol to Native American folks. It was um considered to be basically uh a forerunner to disaster.

**[14:09] Speaker B:** Um and so uh there are a couple of incidents that I'll share with you um about that. Um, there was the Denny incident. Some of you have been to Seattle and you recognize Denny, the name Denny, one of the founders of of Seattle. Um, Arthur Denny uh got wind of people landing on Alkai Beach, which is one of the first places that Seattle got started, and uh selling alcohol to the Dwamish people, and Native American people there. Um, this again was considered to be a big no no and Denny led a group of respectable citizens, frontiersmen down, intercepted the boat and gave the uh miscreant a good fgging uh right there on the beach for trying to sell alcohol to native people. Um, another incident which kind of Yes, sir. Did the Denny Frontiersman then take the whiskey?

**[15:14] Speaker A:** In all likelihood, they did. Yeah. Um,

**[15:18] Speaker B:** a perk.

**[15:20] Speaker A:** Yeah. Um, an incident on the other side of the coin uh featured a man whose name was Jack Knight and the sloop the eagle. Uh Jack Knight also sold alcohol to Native American people and uh had done some jail time for doing so and paid some fines. Um this particular location he visited the Oino uh Native American group which are it was a tribal clan up along the British Columbia what we today call the the um Gold Coast of British Columbia. Um now the OCO um took a slightly different point of view about Mr. Knight um Captain Knight. He um went to try to trade, but the Oeo said, "We don't have anything to trade." Oh, and by the way, um we're going to take your boat anyway. So he they they ended up killing Jack Knight, killing the crew, taking the uh alcohol and uh scuttling the boat.

**[16:34] Speaker A:** So that was the other side of the coin for smugglers. Um at least with early the early alcohol trade. Um now it alcohol wasn't the only thing that was being smuggled. Okay? And there's there there were other things. Any anytime a smuggler could get information that said you can make money on this, you can bet that that was aboard the boat to to try to get into the United States. Um wool was one most people don't realize, but wool was one that was also a favorite. Um Canada had a good supply of wool. the Gulf Islands uh here that we call today the San Juans um had some sheep. So the trick of course was to load up on Canadian wool, stop at the Gulf Islands, uh particularly San Juan Island, which was close to Victoria, um load a little wool on the boat, then make it over to

**[17:40] Speaker A:** Port Townsen. Now, Fort Townsen in those days was the seat uh for customs. That that's where you declared customs. Uh make it over there ready to swear that all of this wool came from San Juan Island and therefore no no taxes could be applied. Um and that worked. Um, and so the the problem the only problem was the wrinkle in this was that in terms of loading the hold of a boat with wool, there weren't enough sheep on San Juan Island to equal the load that they were bringing in to smuggle at Port Townsen. Um, but um that was slow to catch on and uh as a as a lucrative business uh they made money.

**[18:29] Speaker A:** Um the big the big part of smuggling um is is kind of a sad tale uh took place uh after 1882. In 1882, the United States established what they called the uh Chinese Exclusion Act. Um there are several reasons why and it's not within my topic to tell you all the reasons today but basically Chinese people were considered to be uh persona nonrada uh in the United States and uh people discriminated against them a great deal. However, Chinese people did land in British Columbia and they were quite willing to pay $100 or more for passage over to the states over to the states side. Um, and these were men, okay? Um, Chinese men. So, prepaid my $100 fee, got on board a sloop. In addition to that, okay, another perk for this trade was that the Chinese brought opium with them and opium became a very popular drug and would sell that came in tins a tin of opium sold for $45.

**[19:53] Speaker A:** Okay? And you could load a lot of tins of opium on a boat and and bring it over and basically pack Chinese men in the hold of the boat about the same with the same density as you pack the tins of opium. And so, um, on they came and

**[20:18] Speaker A:** um, Lawrence Kelly was considered king of the smugglers in that day and age. Um, there were many there. He wasn't the only one. I'm just trying to give you sort of the highlight reel here. Um his favorite trick was to take um China Chinese men and opium all the way down Puget Sound and land them down uh near Olympia. Um there were there were people in Olympia, Chinese people who would receive them and integrate them into the environment there. And the problem was that he would come in now in those days uh it was um better to travel at night or in the fog and without running lights. Now after after 18 basically after 1880 or so more and more steamboats were making inroads into the the vessels the the watercraft in Puet Sound. And so, um, on they would go across dead of night, land at Olympia, slide up on the mud banks, um, unload, and the the, uh, Chinese men would have to jump off the boat, wait a shore, and sleep

**[21:43] Speaker A:** in the ferns, uh, until they could be picked up the next day. Opium was discharged right there at the dock. Uh, in the meantime, the steamboat would take on water and fuel and when the tide came back in, um, refloat the boat and on they'd go. Steamboats in those days also were shallow draft boats. They they could land they they didn't they didn't draw a lot of water. Um, some some of them actually uh could draw only inches of water. So they could come in and um make a pretty pretty quick landing, refloat and get back out pretty quickly. Um so

**[22:28] Speaker A:** I want to just briefly mention because the the Chinese suffered a great deal um during this era 1890s and the United States wasn't doing particularly well uh economically. There had been a series of economic downturns in the 1870s, in the 1880s, and particularly in 1893. Uh, and so there was there was a lot there were a lot of of people saying, you know, what are these Chinese guys doing here? They're taking our work and we uh don't want them around. They were different. They wore uh their hair different. They smoked opium. They did not buy from people in Cootville at the general stores. They they kind of tended to themselves. Um probably for good reason because a lot of times they were shot at. And uh as a result um uh were were considered to be in in many ways, especially from the smuggler's point of view, nothing but cargo.

**[23:30] Speaker A:** Um I like to I like to talk about Mr. Lassour who was a kind of a champion in Kville. Um, Mr. Bill Lassour was a a townsman, townskeeper here, a shopkeeper, uh, farmer. He stood up for the Chinese people. Um, basically against everybody else in town. Okay? He was the lone guy that said, "Uh-uh." You know, um, these are people. We need to treat them with respect. They're good workers, which they were. Um, and uh, so let's we we we can't, for instance, uh, shoot at them. Um, Mr. Lur took it so far that he his the the last Chinese person here in Kufell that we know about Patrick might know more than I do about this but uh was a suit and uh Mr. Lord actually uh reserved a plot in his grave uh area, his grave plot for a suit and a is actually buried in the Sunnyside Cemetery in the Lord um right now to this day.

**[24:50] Speaker A:** You can go and see it. Patrick,

**[24:53] Speaker B:** just a little side note on that. Uh, Michael Ferry was told by Dorothy Sherman years ago that the Lasser actually had to either threaten or commence a lawsuit against the cemetery district to get lawsuit in their family.

**[25:12] Speaker A:** Okay.

**[25:13] Speaker B:** That's what they ultimately did.

**[25:15] Speaker A:** That's a good That's a good sideline. Yeah. Yeah.

**[25:18] Speaker B:** So, I I recognize Mr. Lassour and his descendants. Um, some of you may be Shermans, but if you're not, you surely know that the Shermans have been a family here for a long time, farmers and um, quite successful people and good people that have supported the community a very great deal. Um, now things were going along quite swimmingly for a while.

**[25:45] Speaker B:** Um and uh the uh the Chinese Exclusion Act had kind of warmed in and along came the Volstead Act of 1918. Um the Volstead Act was basically prohibition. Okay. Um people here in town um a number of a number of folks were very much in favor of prohibition. um don't have to go very far to find the Methodist church over here. Um Methodist church had a very active following of women in the Christian women's Christian temperance union and uh alcohol was one of their primary missions to make sure we didn't do any more of that. Um, and so the Volstead Act in Washington actually had been dry for a while as a state to uh eliminate the sale of alcohol. You could still drink it, but you couldn't sell it. In 1919, you couldn't sell it either. Okay? So, it was totally we we went totally dry just like the rest of the United States did.

**[27:00] Speaker B:** Um now once again um here here comes some smart smugglers who said yo um we can we can do one better here. Um money to be made. Uh let's let's make sure we have the equipment and we can we can make some money on this deal. um the person that I've chosen for this particular talk to say um okay um who who are some of the greats and that they were smuggling. Um Roy Olmstead comes to the surface uh almost immediately in the literature that I've I've been able to research. Um Roy Almstead was a um a former police officer and um um he um had the advantage of um being well networked. Okay. Um he was also a businessman. He was also a very smart guy. And so he decided to take advantage of the latest technology that had come down the pike. particularly technology from World War I.

**[28:18] Speaker B:** Boeing had made airplanes. Royal Mstead said, "Hey, we'll take some airplane engines, put them in boats, we'll outrun the Coast Guard, no problem." And that's what he did. Um, in earlier days, the boats that went across the Puget Sound by night were called shadow boats. People refer to them as the shadows. new name. Now they were called fireboats because they carried fire water. And so um Roy Olmstead incorporated a couple of things. One, faster boats. They could easily outrun. Even though the Coast Guard at that point started to carry machine guns on their deck, you could still outrun them. And also radios. Okay. Roy Mstead's wife actually had a radio uh show and she read literature to children on the radio show, but it was all um encrypted. So she would she would tell him what was what and he would then direct his boats following.

**[29:31] Speaker B:** This was not a one guy, one boat kind of deal. Roy Olmstead had an empire. He he he went at it in a big way, big business. Some people would say a lot like organized crime in the in the east. However, Roy Olmstead was a different kind of guy. He actually had a a strong streak of morality about him. He told his men, "We don't carry guns. We don't do violence. That's a waste of time. Don't waste your time on that. You're wasting your life. uh risking your life and wasting time. We we're here to make money. Um just do the drill and don't be violent. Uh we're doing a good service. What we're doing is providing good Canadian whiskey to and in those days of course uh alcohol became in many cases quite tainted. called it bathtub gin and people would pour all kinds of things into their alcohol and then and then try to to uh to serve it in speak easys and and whatnot and poison people.

**[30:45] Speaker B:** Now while it's true that alcohol is poison in to a certain extent uh especially 200 proof alcohol but um Roy said well people need to have a drink occasionally and be happy and we want to sell them something decent and by the way we'll make a little money on it in the meantime. Um so

**[31:14] Speaker B:** Roy uh had the other advantage of as I mentioned earlier being well networked and so he knew something about bribery and so he knew who would was on the take and who wasn't and as a result became extremely successful uh because there were a whole lot of people that got paid off that said nothing to anybody. And so uh his army uh of u of of men uh running alcohol all over. However, um some some very um um say ambitious federal agents tapped his wires um and were able to convict him. And in 1927 he was convicted and had to go to prison and he served three years at McNeel Island uh right here in Puget Sound. Uh after which he got out and um became again a community organizer uh community supporter and again ended his days in 1936 um as again a a popular good guy.

**[32:30] Speaker B:** So his his motivation as I've read the literature never was about being evil or transporting um drugs. It was about giving people a good healthy drink of alcohol. So um okay. So um just think you know bribes did wonders in those days probably still do.

**[32:55] Speaker B:** Um, now that wasn't the only source of smugglers in the uh in Puget Sound and along the coast. The Canadians had a role to play as well. I want to tell you one last story. Almost time to stop. Um, about uh a Canadian ship called the Malahhat. The Malah was a four mast five fivemasted schooner that actually had the benefit of a diesel engine. Now diesel engines were relatively rare in those days. Rudolph diesel around the turn of the century started to turn out diesel engines. They're pretty rudimentary compared to the ones we have today. But they equipped the this fivemasted scooter. And you if you want to see what a schooner looks like, uh there's a good example of one in the museum here in the maritime exhibit. Schooners had uh a couple of big benefits. For one thing, uh they were much faster than the barks and barkantines and brigantines of an earlier day.

**[34:07] Speaker B:** They were not square rigged. Okay? They were they were basically all gaffrigged, meaning that the boom would they would run the boom up the mast rather than having what we refer to as yard arms. Okay? There were no yard arms on a scooter. Everything was four and a straight. You could look at it and see the sails lining up one right after the other. And um these these ships were much faster um than the than the older sail ships. And they had this the Malahad had the benefit of a diesel engine as well. So it had an auxiliary engine. Um she she was known as the queen of the rum runners. Now there was no rum being run because we don't uh grow sugar cane here. There are no molasses and we don't make rum. But um that that's what that was the term in those days.

**[35:05] Speaker B:** Um what was the trick? Well, the trick was the Malahhat stayed outside the three-mile limit. Okay? Now, in those days, uh you could sail outside the three- mile limit and you couldn't be touched. You could carry anything you wanted and nobody could nobody could get you. Okay. Now, Mr. Uh, President Ronald Reagan established a new limit when he was president to 226 milei limit. So that changed things a bit, but this was quite a bit before then. Um, so the Malahhat would sail down the coast all the way to California. Um, stay outside the three-mile limit. people. They would radio by wireless people to come out to the ship at at um usually in the dark of night um pick up uh cases and they came in in plastic or not plastic, burlap bags and so there was a case of alcohol whiskey, Canadian whiskey in a burlap bag and these people would gather would come right out to the boat.

**[36:17] Speaker B:** They're outside the three mile limit. no problem. Um, there were men who ran up the masts and would would sit on the booms, not the cross trees, but the booms of these of the uh schooner and with glasses and look for to see was who was coming. Okay. Was it the Coast Guard or was it somebody who wanted to, you know, buy the alcohol? Um, if it was the Coast Guard and they had already started to load the the boat, then what they would do is unload the boat. The Coast Guard would come and find an empty boat. They were just out cruising around at night having a midnight cruise. And the Malahad would take off and go into deeper water. If the Coast Guard gave chase, another technique that the Malahad had was to run the coast. they just keep going, run the Coast Guard out of fuel.

**[37:18] Speaker A:** And so they'd eventually go to the point where the Coast Guard couldn't go any further. The Malahad could circle back, reposition themselves, and go ahead and deliver their cargo um at a slightly later date. Um um let's see. On some occasions, um there was another trick that they would use. the um Malahhat would carry sacks uh basically burlap sacks of sand and so they would drop the sand just as the the Coast Guard got there. The Coast Guard of course being very ambitious about getting any alcohol that they could would then gaff the the bag of sand and figure out that oh this was sand um this was not alcohol and the Malahad and then and would also be on its way. So they had a few tricks and and uh it was it was very actually very lucrative business that the Canadians ran up and down the go all the way down to San Diego uh during prohibition.

**[38:25] Speaker A:** Okay. Um Okay.