Stephen T. Moore. Bootleggers and Borders

In September 1924, an American lighthouse keeper posted on a small U.S. island in the Haro Strait, which is divided by the international boundary between the U.S. and Canada, noticed a small boat, the Beryl G, bobbing aimlessly a mile and a half offshore. Upon closer inspection, he and another man found the boat abandoned, and so towed it to a nearby harbor, where the pair made some alarming discoveries, including a bullet hole and a pile of blood-drenched clothing. Given that the vessel had almost surely originated in Canadian waters, officials in Victoria, British Columbia, began a painstaking investigation, in which they discovered that the Beryl G was a rum-runner, smuggling Canadian liquor across the line into the U.S., where Prohibition was the law of the land. In time, investigators determined that three Americans had hijacked the boat, murdered the captain and his son, dumped the bodies overboard, and made off with the contraband spirits. After a sensational trial, two of the culprits were executed in Vancouver and the third sentenced to life in prison.

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