Modern Pirates Out-Do Captain Kidd.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 4 January 1930, Page 19 (Supplement)

Modern Pirates Out-Do Captain Kidd.

New Yor\ Harbour Infested by Many Gangs.

(Written for the “Star" by

JACK O’DONNELL.)

TALK about the Chinese river pirates'! The river pirates of New York harbour beat any gang of buccaneers afloat. A single crew has been known to get away with more loot in one night than Captain Kidd collected in his whole career. Gather around and listen to this tale: It was what the sailors call a dirty night in New York harbour. There was a whistling wind from the sea that bit into one’s marrow. Pier watchmen made their rounds with heads pulled, turtle-like, deep down in the upturned collars of their heavy coats. Passengers on the late Staten Island ferries looked out of the windows at the March night and were glad they were not targets for the crystal-hard hailstones that whirled down over the dark, wind-whipped waters. Tugboats—switch engines of the sea —moved cautiously in and out of ships, towing lighters laden with rich cargoes. Harbour craft constantly sent mournful warning blasts back and forth. In the cosy cabin of a lighter tied to the offshore side of a big ship from an East Indian port—a ship flying the Union Jack —the lighterman, who bears the courtesy title of captain, was lying in his bunk reading an evening newspaper. His thoughts were far from the cargo of shellac, valued at more than 50,000 dollars, in the superstructure of his craft—a long shack resembling a freight car. Suddenly the more serious things of life were brought back to him by the toot! toot! of a tugboat. Rising, he went to the window and peered out into the wind-swept night. “ Hey, cap’n! ” came a hail from the tug that had come alongside. “ Haul in your lines. Were taking you down the river a piece.” Grumbling because he had to leave his warm berth, the captain donned a heavy coat, and stepped out on deck. He had hardly slammed the door alter him when he was jerked off his feel and thrown to the deck. “ Yip once and we’ll feed you to the fishes,” he was told in a low voice. At the same instance a hand was clapped over his mouth and a pistol was pressed against his head.

many of them are classed as pirates by the harbour police. When thousands of motor-boats and sailing craft are o\erboard for the summer, there is a seasonal pest of petty piracy. It is petty in individual thefts, but in bulk it reaches the stage of great-grand larceny. But the real pirates of the bay look upon petty thieves as a safe-cracker looks upon a pickpocket—that is, with contempt. While the pirate operates on the bay he has his colleague on the docks, working perhaps as a shenango or longshoreman. He makes elaborate plans for a big haul. He works by day and by night. One profitable job done recently was that of three cases of gold watches and a case of solid silverware, taken from the hold of a ship which was about to sail for British ports. The tip-off came from one of the gang who was working on the dock as a shipping clerk or checker. The buccaneers know that sailors “earn their money like horses and spend it like asses.” They are always broke. So what is easier than to bribe one of them to give aid and comfort to the captain’s enemy? The pirate chief who had an eye on the jewellery cargo found one of the ship’s crew in a waterfront speakeasy. A deal was made. That night when the stevedores knocked off, they threw tarpaulins over the hatches but did not batten them down. Watchmen were placed on guard. It happened that the night was wet and cold, with a biting sea wind. By midnight the watchmen were chilled to the bone. Then along came sunshine in the person of the bribed sailor. lie was wet inside as well as out. “Heigh-o, mates!” he cried cheerily. Soon the watchmen were in easy conversation with the sailorman. "What do you say, mates, to a drop o’ rum? It’ll warm up your hatches. I’ve got the stuff here.” He patted his hip. What could be fairer? “Come along,” invited the congenial seaman, as he started for the fo’castle. The watchmen followed. Grimy glasses were brought out, a

“ Truss him! ” ordered a second voice. In another moment the lighter captain was heavily bound with rope. While his assailants were dragging him back into his cabin 'the captain sawothers casting off the lighter’s lines. There were a few preliminary jerks that told him the tug was bringing the lighter about. Out into the open water of the Upper Bay went the tug with the prize in tow. Half an hour afterward the lighter was tied up to another dock and the captain heard the rumwe of moving trucks and hurrying men. He knew that his cargo of shellac was being transferred to another craft. When the work was completed the two men who had been guarding the lighterman shoved a gag into his mouth, made sure that he was securely tied, then left. The 50,000-dollar cargo of shellac was now the property of one of the gangs of harbour pirates who ply their profitable trade in the waters in and around New York—the buccaneers of the bay —the Captain Kidds of 1028. The tug used to tow the lighter to the pirates’ point of get-away was abandoned. It had been “borrowed” for this operation from a company that considered night watchmen a luxury. With the shellac aboard their trucks the pirates huiried to their favourite fence, sold the cargo for about half its real value, and the night s work was done. In the last twelve months these twentieth century freebooters made away with approximately 50,000,000 dollars’ worth of merchandise in the port of New York. How do they get away with it? They get away with it by exercising the same daring and cunning employed by their more picturesque predecessors, plus modern signal systems and elaborate organisations. Pirates of old—“ sweepings of hell and Hackney”—were recruited under the Jolly Roger from ships where the rule was small pay, scanty food, and a hard-fisted captain who believed that men should be kept busy as the devil in a gale of wind. The pirates of today are recruited from New York gangs—the furtive-eyed Hudson Dusters, the Yorkville Pointers, the Gophers, Gas House gangs, the Red Hooks, the Bay Ridge Hoofers, and the Dago Pirates—men who “ live hard, die hard, and go to Hell afterward.” The buccaneers of the- bay have become such a serious menace to shipping that the Maritime Exchange recently called a mass meeting to devise means of putting an end to piracy in New York harbour. A few nights after this meeting was held a small band of pirates set out from the Brooklyn side of the bay in search of loot. A concealing fog hung over the bav and the pirates had word that a flotilla of barges loaded with hard coal was coming up from Perth Amboy. Down the bay they went until they met the coal fleet chugging along. There were eighteen barges in the tow, a watchman on each. That they knew. They also knew that the watchman on one barge was their own man. He used a flashlight—waved it horizon tally three times. The barge was in the rear of the tow, seven or eight hundred feet from the tugs. In a few minutes they were alongside. In a minute their motor-boat and yawl were made fast. Then all hands went to work on the black diamonds. In a short time their yawl was loaded to the gunwales. Twelve tons of A 1 anthracite, which could be disposed of in Brooklyn next day at fifteen dollars a ton. “Well, that's only one hundred and eighty dollars,” you say; “not such a big haul for a boat’s crew and a night of hard work.’’ But this sort of thing is going on all the year round: deckloads of merchandise far more valuable than coal are constantly being “sweated” by harbour pirates. In this connection a funny thing happened recently. Pirates boarded a lighter containing hundreds of cases of shoes and succeeded in tossing overI>oard about thirty cases, which were picked up by confederates in a yawl. These shoes were packed separately in right-foot and left-foot cases. Tough luck! The pirates had thirtv cases of left-foot shoes. No pirate courts a chase from the ever-alert harbour police. But the buccaneers of the bay know that these sea coppers cannot very well cover the vast waterfront and do a thorough job with only seven or eight boats. The ‘ water bulls” know the haunts of the pirates and of almost all of the junkies—the operators of small boats who go about buying old rope and other junk. These dealers are licensed, but

cork popped, and the trio sat down to their grog. The pirate’s confederate was a good story-teller, and a generous host. After the shock of the first drink passed, it was easy for the watchmen to take another and another, until finally, what with the heat of the fo’castle and the droning voice of their host, they dragged their moral anchors and drifted out to the wide channels of unconsciousness. Out on deck, with nobody to disturb them, the pirates were hard at work. They managed to transfer three cases of gold watches and a case of solid silverware—enough loot to keep a group of pirates comfortable for the remainder of a hard winter. The pirates in that instance made a clean get-away. Another gang, not so fortunate, was caught disposing of a cargo of copper. This outfit had made a big haul of ingots from a lighter after beating the captain and leaving him tied on the open deck. The harbour police received word of the piracy by wireless. Their boat scurried to the scene, arriving there just as the last truck-load of copper was being hauled away. Three policemen trailed this truck half the night without making an arrest, their aim being to follow it until they found the fence. Toward dawn the truck turned into an alley near Flatbush and came to a halt. The driver and his companion jumped down and entered by a side door of what appeared to be a hand laundry. The police followed, hearing muffled sounds of revelry. One of them opened the outer door with a skeleton key, and the three, with guns drawn, crashed through a second door. Here was a modern pirates’ den. Here were grog and fair women, feasting and celebration. In a short, swift battle the police won. The copper—thousands of dollars’ worth of it—was recovered, and the entire gang taken into custody. Out Rum Row way the buccaneers of the bay are feared even more than the Coast Guard. In ye olden days, when the black bunting at a pirate craft’s mast-head carried the slogan. “A gold chain or a wooden leg!” there was, perhaps, honour among pirates. Not so to-day. It wasn’t so long ago that one of the bands that infest New York waters learned that a lone rum ship with a cargo of twenty-five hundred cases of Cld Orkney Scotch was hovering just beyond the twelve-mile limit It looked like fair prey I- was fair prey. Two emissaries of the pirate chiel went to the ship to reconnoitre, taking a bank roll with them. The money was to be flashed to whet the appetite of the rumrunner’s super-cargo, and to make it easier fer the pirates to get aboard and look things over. That worked out just as the pirate chief figured. “We’ll be back to-night,” said one of the freebooters after sampling some of the Scotch. That night the gang “borrowed” a tug and fifteen of them went aboard her, armed and ready for high adventure. Their scouts had reported that the crew of the rum runner numbered only six, including the captain. As they neared the rum runner all but two of the pirates flattened themselves on the cabin floor. Numbers would arouse suspicion. After a short exchange of words the visitors were in vited alongside. Hardly had the two crafts come together when the pirate captain yelled, “Up and at them I” Over the sides the band swarmed guns in hand. The crew of the rum runner made no resistance, only three of them being above deck. They were lined uo against the rail made fast with

line, and then the others were summoned from their berths and tied. Before the sun rose the twenty-five hundred cases of booze had been transferred to the tug, and all was ready for the return trip to Long Island City, the gang : s headquarters. But before they left they showed they had in them a strain of their piratical forefathers They hauled in the anchor of the rum ship and turned her adrift, her captain and crew lashed to the rails! The rum runner was picked up by a Government boat the next afternoon, her men in a state of exhaustion from exposure. It is said along the water front that this haul brought 90,000 dollars and that in the split-up of the loot a fight started in which two men were killed and five wounded. These pirates of 1928 are a far more picturesque band than their unlawful cousins, the rum smugglers. They have imagination, courage, and some of the swashbuckling qualities of the pirates of old. They can spin a good yarn when under the lee of the longboat on a dirty night. All of one March day and part of one night I was the guest of a modern pirate chief. In a motor-boat cosy as a Dutch kitchen, he took me round the harbour nointinor nut. th<» renrleT-1

vous of other gangs, the lurking places of police boats, where this job was done and where that pirate ran foul of the law. That night I was taken to the den of these freebooters—a place I could never find again, so completely was it hidden in the heart of Brooklyn’s water front and there I saw things that took me back to the days when I thrilled over Stevenson’s Treasure Island. What’s to be done about them? The problem is growing more and more serious Immediately after the war, when the Federal Government restored the harbour to its former and natural guardians, the marine police were able to cope with the pirates. Then came prohibition and fleets of rum pirates. The dry organisations demanded the dispersal of the rum fleet. The Coast Guard wasn’t able to do it alone. It had to look for assistance to the little fleet of speed boats that flew the flag of the New York Police Department But while this agency of the law was devoting its efforts to the rum runner:the buccaneers of the bay began running wild—and away, as well, with 50, 000,000 dollars’ worth of booty every year. fAnzlo-American N.S. Copyright.)