ALL PB

>>7951125

>Interdasting find.

>Thinking island express may be the dig.

Or Catalina Island

>They claim they are all over celeb instagrams.

>Flights to Catalina, wasn't the Standard chopper crash en route to Cataline?

Linking the Kobe Bun. Island Express started by running flights to Catalina Island.

Catalina perfectly situated for smuggling

>>7951720, >>7951759, >>7952031, >>7952007, >>7952059, >>7952050, >>7952016, >>7952028, >>7952293 Kobe crash bun; >>7951796 bodies recovered

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Home News Mysterious Island:Smugglers Galore

Mysterious Island:Smugglers Galore

By

Jim Watson

From time to time we see our Island home in the news in a less-than-flattering light (through no fault of our own) in the form of occasional drug smugglers caught transporting their wares in nearby waters.

Such modern-day discoveries by the U.S. Coast Guard or L.A. County Sheriff’s Department of drug smuggling usually involve small panga-type launches or other such watercraft that transfer the illicit goods to another boat for what the smugglers hope will be a Customs-free entry into the United States.

Incidentally (and in an unsolicited plug), this is one of the topics covered in the current exhibition at the Catalina Island Museum “100 Years of Bizarre, Fascinating and Colorful History.”

If this increase in such activities over the years has you down, you can take a strange comfort, I suppose, in the fact that smuggling is nothing new in these parts. It is, in fact, centuries old. The contraband goods involved (including human trafficking in years past) may change from era to era, but the business of smuggling remains.

Wherever there is the combination of commercial activity and government regulation there will be smuggling. “Find a need and fill it” is the motto of all successful business people and smugglers take the idea one step farther with the addendum “no matter what the risk.”

Over the centuries, the numerous coves and bays on Catalina have proved too irresistible to those who ply the “sweet trade” and smuggling on the Island has had many faces, from the importation of Chinese laborers to Cantonese opium to distilled liquors during the Prohibition years.

For most of these goods, Catalina is of course not the main destination, but rather nothing more than a weigh station of sorts. The idea was simple and is still in use by smugglers today: get your illicit goods ashore at Catalina and wait for the right opportunities to secret them away to the mainland, thereby bypassing U.S. Customs.

Some of the earliest accounts of smuggling involving Catalina date back to the Yankee traders during the early 1800s in the days when California was under Mexican rule. It was the imposition of ridiculously high tariffs (like, say, 100%) on all goods imported from the United States, the Hawaiian Islands (known then as the Sandwich Islands) as well as China that helped create the market for smuggled goods.

In his classic non-fiction tale “Two Years Before the Mast,” author and sailor Richard Henry Dana describes the activities of the Avon, a curious ship with which they shared an anchorage off the coast of city of Ventura, known back then by its official name of San Buenaventura.

“She was fitted up in handsome style…a band of four or five pieces of music on board and appeared more like a pleasure yacht than a trader,” he wrote. “[S]he carried on a great trade—legal and illegal—in otter skins, silks, tea, specie, etc.”

Dana then noted a full-rigged brig that rounded the point from the north and “stood off again for the south-east, in the direction of the large island of Catalina.”

The following day, the Avon weighed anchor and headed in the same direction as did the brig. “The brig,” wrote Dana, “was never again seen on the coast, and the Avon arrived at San Pedro in about a week, with a full cargo of Canton and American goods.”

In other words, the Avon rendezvoused with the brig somewhere around or even ashore at Catalina where the transfer of illicit goods took place. Typically, a smuggler like the Avon would only bring in a small portion of its cargo, say 10%, for actual entry into Mexican customs in an effort to look “legit.” Over time, the ship and its crew would make forays out to Catalina—where the balance of goods were stashed—in the dark of night to slowly secret the goods to the mainland.

It’s interesting to note that, being a clever smuggler, the skipper of the Avon kept his ship proverbially in ship-shape to help keep the suspicions of Mexican customs officials (many of whom were no doubt on the take anyway) at bay.

In future columns, we will explore in greater detail the role that Catalina and the other Channel Islands played in the smuggling trade, a dubious trade that—as noted earlier—continues to this day.

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Mysterious Island: The Canton Connection

By

Jim Watson

Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series on the history of smuggling on Catalina.

From its earliest days under European and American rule, Santa Catalina Island has been a haven for smugglers of all shades.

The numerous secluded coves, caves, bays and canyons coupled with the Island’s proximity to the burgeoning population centers of Southern California have proven an ideal combination for those of a trade whose age rivals that of any other profession on earth.

Catalina’s location makes it the perfect stash point for illicit goods to be deposited on the Island and then secreted to the mainland all at once or incrementally without having to pass through U.S. Customs.

In last week’s column I introduced to you some of the earliest accounts of the “sweet trade” here on Catalina. Those accounts involved the illegal importation of goods into Mexican-controlled California on the part of Yankee smugglers who refused to pay the 100 percent tariffs imposed by the Mexican government.

While most of the merchandise smuggled over the centuries has been goods such as alcohol, drugs and a variety of more traditional consumer products, there was a brief period in our history where that merchandise was composed of human beings, namely cheap labor from the Canton region of southern China.

While technically not a slave trade, the conditions and treatment endured by these Chinese were often comparable to that of African slaves. And the wages weren’t that much better.

Chinese immigrants, mostly from the southern China region of Canton, had become quite successful in California during the 1800s, particularly in the farming and fishing industries. They had established numerous small towns and villages throughout California where they carried on their trades, all the while maintaining their customs and keeping in close contact with family back home.

Everything was fine as long as the living was good in California. But by the 1870s, tensions began to mount as more and more immigrants representing all demographics began to compete for fewer and fewer jobs.

The Chinese became scapegoats and were accused of undercutting wages and depriving white laborers of work. Therefore in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, barring all new immigrants from China.

But California was still growing and the mining, ranching and railroad interests in the state still needed cheap labor. Thus was born the illegal trade in Chinese laborers, many of whom passed through Catalina Island on their torturous route from Hong Kong to Mexico and then to the mainland of California.

Some of these Chinese workers were simply “recycled” from their jobs in Northern California. From time to time, vigilante groups in San Francisco would get worked up and would round up Chinese with the goal of sending them “back to China.” But the joke was on the vigilantes, for rather than being sent back to China, the Chinese were simply brought to places like Catalina and left here until the heat blew over up north. Then, like their newly arrived brothers from China, they would slip over to the mainland to disappear into L.A.’s Chinatown.

Ironbound Cove on Catalina’s West End, along with Lobster Bay and (where else?) China Point, were the temporary homes for many of these transient Chinese. On the Island, most Chinese were allowed a fair amount of freedom while awaiting the opportunity to get to the mainland. Though they could hardly be called villages, small settlements sprouted up where the Chinese could socialize, eat, drink and mostly just wait. (In 1966, a small cache of opium was actually unearthed by some Boy Scouts at the West End).

Although the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn’t repealed until (incredibly) 1943, Catalina as the way station for smuggled laborers from Canton only lasted a short time and by the end of the 19th century the era was all but over. (Many of the gardening and construction jobs in early Avalon, in fact, were carried out by legitimate Chinese laborers “on loan” from L.A.’s Chinatown).

But Catalina Island wasn’t done with her role as a smuggler’s paradise and the new role of Catalina as a tourist destination brought new opportunities.

NEXT WEEK: AVALON AND ALCOHOL

>>7952920

Mysterious Island: Smuggling

By

Jim Watson

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles on the history of smuggling on Catalina Island.

If you’ve ever traveled to other beach resorts around the world, you’ve perhaps noticed something different about Avalon.

Consider the layout of Avalon’s beachfront area: First, you have the beach, then the town’s main street and finally you have the first row of buildings, such as hotels, restaurants and curio shops.

However, most beach resorts around the world feature a row of hotels and associated businesses right smack on the beach. Behind these establishments, they then proceed with a main street followed by more businesses on the inland side of that street.

Examples that come to mind include Waikiki Beach with its on-the-beach hotels backed up by Kalakaua Boulevard. Same goes for Acapulco or Cancun or just about any beach resort in Mexico.

So why are there no hotels built right on the beach in Avalon? While it may seem a trivial question, the answer is nonetheless fascinating and has everything to do with Avalon’s relationship with that bane and boon to humankind, alcohol.

Like many towns—resort towns in particular—Avalon has long had a sort of love-hate relationship with “John Barleycorn,” the old fashioned term for wine, beer, spirits, etc. From town founder George Shatto to the Banning Brothers to the Wrigley family, Avalon’s powers-that-be have dealt with alcohol in a variety of ways, from outright prohibition to grudging acceptance to welcoming the revenue it brings in.

George Shatto was perhaps the strictest of the teetotalers. Right from Avalon’s beginnings in the late 1880s, Shatto was engaged in a battle against the bottle with many of the fishermen, goat herders and assorted squatters who had made Catalina Island their home for many years.

In those days, the temperance movement was in full swing and Shatto counted himself as one of the strongest adherents to this anti-alcohol philosophy. George Shatto wanted no hooch on his island and getting caught selling alcohol could mean the loss of your lease.

Initially, the thorn in Shatto’s side in developing his temperance utopia consisted chiefly of a gentleman named Billy Bruin who sold hard liquor out of his “hardware” store, which butted up against the hill just inland of where the Tuna Club stands now.

Shatto was in fact so anti-alcohol that after months of trying to deal in a civilized manner with Bruin and his cohorts he hired a pair of men to burn Bruin’s place down, which they did.

Free enterprise being what it is, Billy Bruin’s answer to that was to head to the mainland and purchase a barge, which he then towed to Avalon Bay. It was from this barge that Bruin and his pals George Bryant and Henry Crocker continued to sell liquor. Selling their wares on the public waterways meant Shatto was powerless to stop them.

But Shatto wasn’t ready to throw in the bar towel yet and while he couldn’t ban the sale of liquor on Bruin’s barge, it was within his power to keep the booze from coming ashore. Therefore, in consultation with his right-hand man Charles Sumner, Shatto decided to lay out the streets and buildings of the town in such a way that there would be no structures close enough to the water into which Bruin could smuggle his hooch. Anything that came ashore would have to be moved under the watchful eyes of Shatto’s minions.

Thus, it was decided that the entire beach area of Avalon Bay would be kept clear of any buildings, including—you guessed it—hotels. Although a handful of buildings such as the Tuna Club and the Catalina Island Yacht Club were eventually built on the water, it was this early decree that essentially created the foundation for later ordinances banning building on the beach.

The final irony of this story is that—unbeknownst to Shatto—his trusted agent Charles Sumner was all along selling high-end liquor out of Room 6 at Shatto’s own Metropole Hotel.

All through the battles with Billy Bruin, George Bryant, Henry Crocker and scores of long-forgotten drifters, it turned out that Shatto’s right-hand man was selling the demon rum right under his very nose.

NEXT WEEK: PROHIBITION

>>7952902

>>7952920