The Rum Line: Smugglers, Speedboats, and the Caribbean Pipeline to Prohibition America
How Island Rum Kept America Wet from 1920 to 1933

About this book:

For thirteen years, the United States tried to legislate thirst out of existence. The Caribbean had other plans. *The Rum Line* plunges you into the high-stakes maritime pipeline that kept America wet, tracing the Gulf Stream from the limestone cays of the Bahamas to the speakeasies of New York. This is the untold story of how a constellation of broke island outposts—Nassau, Bimini, West End, Havana—transformed overnight into the world’s most lucrative liquor stores, fueling a floating black market that turned sponge fishermen into speedboat kings and colonial treasuries into gold mines.

Meet the architects of the "Real McCoy": Bill McCoy, the meticulous pioneer who anchored just outside the three-mile limit and invented offshore retail; Gertrude Lythgoe, the "Bahama Queen" who commanded fleets and out-negotiated mobsters; and the desperate armada of local captains who ran the Gauntlet of the Gulf Stream by night, dodging Coast Guard cutters firing six-pounder shells and hijackers wielding machine guns. From the evolution of the Liberty V12-powered rum runner to the secret radio war waged over the airwaves, every chapter crackles with the mechanics of a billion-dollar insurgency fought wave by wave.

Drawing on Coast Guard logbooks, court testimonies, and archival gold, *The Rum Line* rewrites the Prohibition map, proving the "Noble Experiment" wasn't lost in Chicago alleys or Canadian woods, but on the rolling decks of "Rum Row." It is a saga of borders—where they end, how they break, and the sheer human audacity required to sail straight through them. If you think you know Prohibition, you’ve only heard half the story. The wetter, wilder, salt-soaked half starts here.