served double
duty, as grain alcohol could be
made with a lot of the same equipment.
Moonshine is much different than regular
alcohol, though, and with a prolifi c amount
of this 100-proof fi rewater available, the
men who worked the camps were prone to
violence and mischief.
In an article written in the Englewood
Review in 2007, Ken Kocab wrote,
“Moonshine liquor also brought its share of
problems. Workers at the Manasota Lumber
Company in Woodmere were consuming
so much illegal booze, and getting into so
many violent fi ghts, that a curfew was put in
place at the company with no worker being
able to leave the grounds after 9 p.m. A
nine-foot electrifi ed fence was also installed
around the entire 250-acre property.
“The hottest nightspot in Englewood
during the 20s was the Royal Casino at the
foot of Buchan’s Landing. Illegal liquor was
available at the casino and people from as
far away as Boca Grande and Punta Gorda
enjoyed long nights of dancing, gambling
and drinking.”
In a Pirate Coast
article written in
January of 2004,
David Futch wrote
of one of his
relatives, Dan Futch,
who smuggled
rum and cigarettes
during the days
of the Depression
… a time when
there was little
other way to make
money. Futch
described how on
a typical smuggling trip, Dan would make
his way from Boca Grande to Everglades
City, staying with the Browns, who gained
notoriety in Peter Matthiessen’s novel
“Killing Mr. Watson.”
Dan Futch was quoted in
the article as saying, “Back
then, Everglades City was
nothin’ but a bunch of
outlaws. It was a place where people went
to assume new identities.”
One interesting note: In the days of rum
running, it was common for captains to
add water to the bottles to stretch their
profi ts, or to re-label it as a better brand.
Often, cheap sparkling wine would become
French champagne or Italian Spumante,
and unbranded liquor became a top-ofthe
line name brand. Bill McCoy, one of
the most famous bootleggers in Gulf and
Atlantic waters, became famous for never
adding water to his booze and selling only
top brands. Although the phrase appears
in print in 1882, this is one of several folk
etymologies for the origin of the term “The
real McCoy.”
Bootleggers and drug runners go hand in
hand with Florida’s history. When Prohibition
was over, there was still money to be made.
By the 1960s, the more popular illegal
product to make money from was what
became known as the “square grouper”
– a name that was given to the bales of
marijuana that were dropped from “mother
ships” to smaller run boats that used to
frequent our waters. It wasn’t uncommon,
even into the
early 1990s, to
occasionally fi nd
a drop point for
drugs around
our barrier island
chain. Sometimes
the offl oad boats
were just too small
to haul the entire
load, but the larger
ships who brought
the load would
still have to fi nd a
way to get rid of it.
They would then
dump the bales overboard so they could
clean up their ship and head home without
any worries. There have been stories of
fi shermen and pleasure boaters discovering
hundreds of bales, just fl oating in the water