Part 2 of Pirates, Smugglers, and Rum-Runners

Written by Chris Chiller

Without offering too much of a spoiler, a historic smuggling operation is central to a subplot that twines through several books in the Admiral Inn Mysteries series. This is only as interesting as it is plausible. If there were no history of extra-legal trade in Maine, the plot is as fanciful as gator hunting in Connecticut; possible but highly unlikely. Fortunately, Maine has a well-documented history of moving goods without government sanction—smuggling. In fact, there is a running history of “owlers” and “freebooters” in Maine from the 1700s until present day. It turns out that the history is weird and perfect for a mystery series. 

After the 1783 treaty of Paris established the border between the new United States and Great Britain, The Passamaquoddy Bay was a focal point of smuggling between New Brunswick and the district of Maine. Laws restricting trade cross-border and even the exact location of the boundary were honored in the breach which is a polite way of saying that most ignored them as economic interests outweighed the differences between those loyal to the crown and newly minted Americans.

Eastport, Maine, located on Moose Island in Passmaquoddy Bay began as a safe harbor for fishermen and fisheries. Because it was also a city of men leaving every day in small boats adjacent to another country, Eastport grew on the profits from smuggling as well as legal trade. It is hard to believe, but smuggling aside, 1800s Eastport was the second largest trading port in the US, behind New York City and had the first sardine cannery in America. 

The entrance to Passamaquoddy was through the Quoddy and Lubec Narrows between the Lubec Peninsula on the American side and Campobello Island on the Canadian side. Famous character Benedict Arnold set up a smuggling operation on Campobello soon after the 1783 treaty, hiring men from both sides of the border to move illicit trade items. It seems the label “traitor” was too small for Arnold, so he added freebooter and smuggler to his signature.

Privateers

A different sort of smuggler deserves a short digression to the time before the treaty of Paris. At least 52 Maine-based ships received Letters of Marque from the continental authorities and began attacking British ships, mainly commercial vessels. It is estimated that the privateers had a key role in the outcome of the war as they brought back gunpowder and saltpeter for the use of the continental army. The revolutionary era privateers are considered the “fathers of the Merchant Marine” and after the crown issued an embargo order, privateers brought in all sorts of trade goods to sustain the colonies. More… privateer information, but it’s a bit of a rabbit hole.

There were also corresponding privateers on the British side but they were not so successful

(link is to a song with much artistic license, and curse words, but reflects the struggles on the British side.) 

The embargo started some enterprising privateers who were less patriotic to begin the practice of collusive capture, which is as outlaw as it sounds. A ship under privateer command would meet a merchant vessel and capture it with all its cargo, then pay a predetermined share to the owner of the ship and cargo. This method of smuggling became more common after the mutual embargos of 1807 made captured trade goods attractive both for their utility and because privateers’ prizes were auctioned off by local authorities and exempt from duties and taxes. The shipowners rarely bid against each other, so the cargo would be obtained for much less than the import duty would have been. It wasn’t just the capture that was collusive. 

This form of smuggling effectively ended in 1815 with the treaty that ended the war of 1812 and reestablished trade between the US and Great Britain. Many of the privateers continued to transport goods back and forth between the Maine district and New Brunswick but as legal traders with greatly reduced profitability.

Smuggling

The Embargo Act of 1807 crashed the Maine maritime economy such that 30 commercial Houses in Portland failed in the first year of the act with towns along the coast experiencing 60% unemployment. Smuggling became a survival act for middle-class Mainers and not to be left to criminals. Who can blame them when their means of living was taken away?

Smuggling after 1815 was mostly the realm of the  Plastermen, smugglers of gypsum from Nova Scotia mines. Gypsum was valuable in New England because its properties as a soil amendment led to greater crop yields through addition of calcium and reduction of sodium. In 2026, we would never think of the mineral inside the drywall covering the walls of our homes as something to smuggle, but the plastermen were avoiding the duties charged by the new country to the south and returning with tobacco, rum, molasses and tea which also escaped the British North America duties. In 1820 the gypsum trade is estimated to have been 100,000 tons. 

Each side’s difficulty in collecting duties led to what is referred to as the Plaster War. New regulations were issued and enforcement attempted which was met with resistance by the traders in gypsum. The War was not British North America vs. the United States, but rather acts of violence perpetrated by the Plastermen upon hapless customs agents. While the violence subsided, smuggling for raw materials such as gypsum continued until the late 1800s.

 In addition to plaster, there was a lively trade in smuggled lumber from British North America to the US which persisted also until the last years of the 19th century. Don’t think of 2x4s, the smuggling was mostly of logs, especially along the St. Croix River. Dishonest loggers would declare their raft of logs on the river to be from whichever country offered the lowest duty on the wood and the highest price from the sawmill.

The Smuggling Governor

In 1819 prominent citizens of Maine met together in a constitutional convention to create a constitution for Maine as no longer a district of Massachusetts but as its own state. The chair of the convention was William King. In 1820 Maine was admitted as a state as part of the Missouri Compromise. Maine prohibited slavery while Missouri allowed it. William King was elected Maine’s first Governor.

Governor King is interesting in the context of smuggling because there were public allegations, backed up by copious evidence that he had been in the thick of running British goods from Barbados to Bath, Maine. He became rich as a shipowner during a time when embargoes impoverished many and evidence points to smuggling which did not disqualify him in the eyes of Maine voters.

What to Smuggle Next

One of the lucrative British items smugglers brought back from Barbados was rum, consumed in such quantity that Mainers began to fear moral decay. The town of Calais on the Canadian border was a center of smuggling and tolerant of much transgressive behavior but also the location of a temperance society in 1828. While the first didn’t last long, probably collapsing under the weight of irony, by 1841 a temperance society again rose in Calais and proved to be influential leading to the state enacting an alcohol prohibition in 1851 which lasted until the repeal of national prohibition laws in the 1930s.

The consequences of prohibition might be surmised from the Mainers’ ingrained attitude to such restrictions, and deserve a separate consideration in the next Facts of Fiction devoted to Rum Runners and beyond. This story gets even wilder as the focus turns to all forms of alcohol.