On August 7, 1928, Washington-born rumrunner Johnny Schnarr registers his new boat, Kitnayakwa, under the name of a fish buyer in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Kitnayakwa, built by Victoria shipwright Tomotaro Yoneda, will be used to expand Schnarr's smuggling business on the Salish Sea. Named after a river in B.C., the Kitnayakwa measures 45 feet in length. Its twin Liberty engines will deliver 1,036 horsepower to give it a top speed of 40 knots when dry.
Perilous Encounter
Hauling whisky from Canada into Washington busied Johnny Schnarr (1894-1993) during Prohibition. He made 400 deliveries, he claimed, and rarely felt the stiff arm of the law. Period histories bear out his claims.
In Schnarr’s career as a runner of illicit booze, the Kitnayakwa lay squarely in the crosshairs during one of his closest scrapes. He told the story of that near-miss to his niece Marion Parker for the 1988 book Rumrunner.
The location was Discovery Bay on the northeastern corner of the Olympic Peninsula. One of Schnarr’s clients insisted he could arrange it so the Coast Guard would be absent when Schnarr delivered liquor as arranged. Along with a deckhand named Tom, Schnarr arrived "at about 11:30 p.m. on a very dark night in December" (Rumrunner, 133). He always liked to deliver at night, ideally amid stormy weather, to escape detection. That night he had his head and shoulders out the hatch of the wheelhouse to scout for trouble. Trouble threatened not only from the shore patrol and the Coast Guard – assigned to stop rumrunners like him – but also from hijackers bent on purloining liquor at pistol-point. Motoring close to shore at four knots, Schnarr chanced to glance behind the Kitnayakwa and observed "what looked like a fire on the beach. I picked up the night glasses which were lying beside me on the roof of the pilothouse. I turned and had another look towards the fire" (Rumrunner, 133). What he saw just then jolted him into action.
A Coast Guard cutter was following him. It was not a fire on the shore had caught his attention, but the churn of phosphorescent algae from that boat. A total of 22 Coast Guard cutters were stationed in Puget Sound at that time. Those boats, reconditioned from World War I, came in lengths of 50, 75, and 100 feet. They carried .50 caliber machine guns and one-pound cannons to immobilize those engaged in the liquor trade. "In looking back at those times," Schnarr recalled, "I’m always amazed more people weren’t killed" (Rumrunner, 132). "A shot across the bow" is a dead metaphor now, one that signifies a statement or a gesture to frighten someone into changing their course of action. But in the culture wars that Prohibition fueled, literal shots were being fired across the bows of boats to warn scofflaws. If the captain of a boat did not slow up and surrender, then the cannon could be swung into action and crew members might die.
As Schnarr told the story, "I hit the throttles and the Kitnayakwa flew ahead. The Coast Guard were ready for me, though. As soon as they saw the white water churned up by those Liberty engines, they opened fire on us with their machine gun" (Rumrunner, 134). Schnarr and his deckhand Tom ducked. Other rumrunners had installed bulletproofed and tempered steel behind their pilothouses, but Schnarr had not gotten around to that yet. His only shield was the cases he was hauling, and he soon discovered that "liquor, glass and gunny sack did very little to slow them down" (Rumrunner, 132). The machine gun bullets came right through. "Those machine guns were loaded with a tracer bullet every fifth or sixth shell so the marksman could tell where he was firing. Tom and I were facing each other, our heads not more than two feet apart, when one of those damn tracers went right between our noses!" (Rumrunner, 134). The tracer "buried itself in the bulkhead forward of the wheelhouse" (Rumrunner, 134). Once again confusing phosphorescence with combustion, the men dug the slug out with a pocketknife later and discovered that it was not hot.
Evasive action began at once. Schnarr was a skilled navigator, and he always drove a boat designed to exceed the speed of his pursuers. But he was headed into the bay, not out of it, so he had to change course and head back in a tight half-circle toward the cutter. The night was black. "Before they knew what was going on," he reported, "I was screaming down on the Coast Guard cutter at thirty knots" (Rumrunner, 135). When the waves from his boat hit theirs, he was pleased to see the tracers begin to jag every which way – "some straight up into the dark sky, some into the sea right near the cutter" (Parker, 135). Five more cutters in the bay tried to cut him off, but the phosphorescence of their bow swells gave them away and made them easy to avoid. Schnarr reflected, "I’m sure the Coast Guard must have thought they had us for sure. But I just had too much speed for them ever to catch me when the Kitnayakwa was fired up" (Rumrunner, 135).
After their ordeal, Schnarr concluded with some satisfaction, "We kept that tracer bullet around for a long time! It became kind of like a good luck charm for the boat" (Rumrunner, 135).
Hiding Evidence
If getting fired upon was the climax of their failed delivery, there was much more work to be done before they could rest. They had to hide the evidence first, cache the liquor. Many of the cases were still intact. The men made a beeline for D’Arcy Island on the Haro Strait east of Vancouver Island. Even though they were back in Canadian waters, that did not mean that they were free. Canadian Customs coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard to stop scofflaws. The men had to transfer the cases of booze into a skiff, row to D’Arcy Island, unload in multiple trips, and find a hiding spot. By dawn, they were back in Victoria. There they piloted the boat inside the harbor and hauled it up on "the ways" – timbers on a dock for launching and inspecting boats.
They were racing against the clock. The American Coast guard would notify Canadian Customs about the machine gun fire and the great escape. Schnarr was anticipating an inspection before the day was done. His line of work had often shorted him on sleep. Because he had to be so often watchful, he learned to go 36 hours at a stretch without shuteye. He and Tom hopped to it and surveyed the drydocked boat for bullet holes. Many holes were found in the stern, because they had been racing away from the cutter. "I found eighteen bullet holes in the hull and cabin housing," Schnarr recalled, "and spent a busy morning drilling them all out with a one-inch auger and banging in wooden plugs" (Rumrunner, 136). One would guess such vigorous activity would alert people nearby, but the truth is that Prohibition had few supporters, either in Canada or in the States. The Volstead Act enforcing Prohibition was regarded as governmental overreach. "By eleven o’clock I had the holes patched and painted," Schnarr reported to his niece, more than a half-century later.
The labor entailed in finding and patching up those holes had to be extensive. The Kitnayakwa was 45 feet long. His diligence and foresight illustrate how Schnarr found such success in running alcoholic spirits despite the legal forces lining up to thwart him in both nations. "About two that afternoon a Customs Officer showed up. He had a good look at the hull. He didn’t say exactly what he was looking for, and he didn’t come on board, but he had a real close look at the stern and the side of the hull that was showing alongside the wharf" (Rumrunner, 136). By that time, of course, the boat was already off the ways, back in the water, the paint dry.
For good reason, Schnarr waited a half-century to make his stories public. Rumrunners and bootleggers were always cautious to speak about their operations. They kept to themselves. Unless they were caught, their names would not enter newspapers or other records. The Salish Sea floor harbors more than a few sunken boats, barnacle-encrusted hulks today.
Eighty years later, in 2009, the Kitnayakwa was sold on Craigslist in Seattle. A Canadian couple bought it, trucked it up to Harrison Falls, B.C., and set about reconditioning it. Ten years later their restoration was still underway.
