Did German U-boats smuggle alcohol into the U.S. during Prohibition?

by Sarah Laskow and Sail-World.com on 2 Sep 2017 Editor's note: It is an intriguing and even beguiling notion, almost the stuff of films, where the line, 'based on a true story' can get wafer thin. You even punch it in to the search engine of Snopes to do a little fact checking, and when it circulates at the same time as 'Nazi sub found in the Great Lakes', one eyebrow certainly has higher altitude than the other... Alas, if for no other reason than some really cool old times pics, this is a yarn worth reading....

In the winter of 1922, two years after the start of Prohibition in the United States, a mysterious craft was said to be sneaking around the waters of Seattle’s Puget Sound. Locals reported seeing the boat multiple times, and authorities believed that it had delivered illegal liquor in Seattle and then traveled south to the California coast. In years when the United States was a dry country—by law if not in practice—it was not uncommon for boats to smuggle liquor into the country. But this one was different. This one was a submarine.

Submarines first became practical in the 1860s, when a crewed submarine successfully submerged, cruised, and resurfaced—and when, for the first time, a military submarine sank a ship. Several decades later, during World War I, submarines, specifically German U-boats, began to play a major strategic role for the first time. The creepy, claustrophobic craft had become the focus of public fascination and an enduring source of mystery and paranoia.

Read the full article here.