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.
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.
Jim Watson is the author of “Mysterious Island: Catalina,” available at Amazon, Kindle and in stores all over Avalon.
