Noting Prohibition’s Repeal on Dec. 5

December 5 marks the 75th Anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition, ending nearly 14 long years of a dry America…well, sort of.
Lots of places, including some Cape May County towns and harbors, remained wet as the Atlantic despite this “Noble Experiment.
The 18th Amendment passed in Dec. 18, 1919, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol beginning in January 1920.
But advocates of abstinence failed to understand a crucial quality in human nature that Mark Twain so wisely observed in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: “In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”
America’s massive coastline insured that rumrunners could unload their cargo largely undetected, and Cape May County’s harbors and waterways, as well as its rural communities, made it a bootlegger’s dream.
Freighters dropped anchor beyond the three-mile limit and became offshore wholesalers of illegal spirits, and the Coast Guard couldn’t keep up.
They had just 75 patrol boats and 12,000 miles of coastline to patrol. According to news reports in June of 1924, Domenic Cappachione of Wildwood, was arrested by Captain Charles Wright, Jr. of the Anglesea Coast Guard, when his boat, the “Loretta,” was intercepted. He was caught while attempting to purchase liquor from “a schooner 16 miles off-shore.”
Another newspaper story from this period reported that the Coast Guard had obtained Loening amphibian planes to become the agency’s “eyes,” and officials hoped that “all fraternizing of coast guards with rumrunners (would) be reduced to a minimum through the activities of the planes.”
In Wildwood, police conducted raids rarely, and when they did, it was usually in conjunction with federal and state authorities. In February of 1923, a newspaper reported that local police and state troopers conducted a raid on four area “speakeasies.”
Charges of a “disorderly house” or “possession of alcohol” were brought against the offenders. Steep fines were imposed for these offenses, but they rarely had a lasting effect.
Jeffrey M. Dorwart’s book, “Cape May County, New Jersey” documents that residents of rural Cape May County turned to the production of moonshine or “bathtub gin” for extra income.
The granddaughter of a Wildwood club owner reported that her grandfather frequently rode out “to the country” to buy liquor from farmers. The state police reported finding dozens of stills in the rural communities of Belleplain and Woodbine at the time.
Ottens Harbor and Hereford Inlet in Wildwood both became hubs for smuggling “hooch.” Liquor was also brought right onto the beach, where it was transferred to trucks and delivered to warehouses or speakeasies.
Some, like Moore’s Inlet, operated in plain site, while others were more discreet, hiding liquor stills fitted with rubber hoses for dispensing whiskey or gin within the walls of the building.
In 1982, Wildwood resident Benjamin Lauriello found two of these stills while completing renovations on a building at 501 Montgomery Ave. The copper tanks were wrapped in burlap and embedded in the wall.
Local sources reported at the time that Lauriello’s building had once housed a “speakeasy” and a brothel called Chester Dick’s Harbor Inn. The tanks from Chester Dick’s are now artifacts in the Wildwood Historical Museum on Pacific Ave.
Gun battles erupted at sea between Coast Guard patrols and rumrunners in clear view of beachgoers.
By 1931, a presidential commission reported what most citizens already knew—Prohibition had failed. In Cape May County, 72 percent of voters approved its repeal.
The Great Depression brought with it other concerns, and upon the repeal of the law, President Franklin D. Roosevelt perhaps said it best, “What America needs now is a drink.”