The Long Blue Line blog series has been publishing Coast Guard history essays for over 15 years. To access hundreds of these service stories, visit the Coast Guard Historian’s Office’s Long Blue Line online archives, located here: THE LONG BLUE LINE (uscg.mil)
The smuggling of opium into the west coast prompted the entry of the Coast Guard—at earlier times called the Revenue Marine and the Revenue Cutter Service—into maritime drug interdiction. The mission would stretch through WWI, wane during Prohibition, and practically disappear during World War II. However, a resurgence would begin in the early 1970’s, with the growing popularity of marijuana. A decade later, the Coast Guard’s focus would begin to shift yet again, this time as maritime smugglers began to emphasize moving cocaine over marijuana.
The Beginning: Opium by Sea
The first at-sea drug seizure was made on November 30, 1886. On the morning of that day, U.S. Revenue Cutter (USRC) Richard Rush, a 175-foot hybrid sail/steamer, had been running a northeast/southwest-oriented barrier patrol off the entrance to the passage through the San Francisco Bar. For two days, the cutter had enjoyed calm seas, clear skies, and balmy temperatures while awaiting the arrival of the SS Rio de Janeiro—which intelligence from the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong indicated would be attempting to smuggle opium into the U.S.
Despite reduced visibility from a light fog that rolled in at around 8:00 a.m., a lookout board the Rush detected the approach of a large steamer at mid-morning. As the steamer neared, CAPT Calvin Hooper directed the launch of a whaleboat and the firing of a blank charge from the RUSH’s forward 6-lb rapid fire gun to signal the vessel to slow and prepare to be boarded.
After the Rush’s boat pulled alongside the 345-foot transpacific steamer, a boarding party led by 2nd LT Thomas Benham scrambled up over its side, then proceeded aft as the Rush escorted the steamer into the Bay. At the stern, LT Benham found several large packages—each containing a box of 20 tins holding roughly half a pound of prepared (aka “smoking”) opium, for a total of about 350 pounds. He had just made the service’s first known drug seizure at sea.
Opium into San Francisco
By the time of the Rush’s seizure, opium had been legally imported into the U.S. for decades. Transpacific steamers plying the trade route from San Francisco to Hong Kong via Yokohama returned with Indian and Chinese opium as part of their cargoes. The opium was widely—and legally—used as an active ingredient in medicines and consumer products. However, in the late 1870’s the U.S. experienced a major shift in usage. The highly addictive practice of smoking opium had spread from immigrant Chinese workers to the general U.S. population—with an attendant rise in crime and related health issues. Accordingly, the U.S. government implemented a series of actions designed to limit the availability of opium. The most significant action was taken in 1883, when Congress increased the tariff on refined opium (which at the time retailed for $10/pound) from $1/pound to $10/pound.
While a low level of smuggling had been going on since the importation of opium began—mainly by passengers and crew of transpacific steamers smuggling a few to around 50 pounds at time—the low profit margin limited the practice. The new tax expanded the profitability of smuggling opium tenfold and drove an explosion in the practice.
Soon after the levy was implemented, every transpacific steamer arriving in San Francisco from Hong Kong was believed to be concealing several hundred pounds of opium somewhere onboard. These loads were increasingly ferreted out with intelligence that had been gathered by Treasury Agents working out of the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong and telegraphed to the Customs House in San Francisco. Officers and crews of revenue cutters were frequently detailed to assist Customs Inspectors with vessel searches, providing both manpower and technical expertise.
Some smugglers reacted to the success of these searches by seeking to drop off the opium prior to entering San Francisco Harbor. Loads of 300 to 500 pounds would be wrapped in waterproof coverings, attached to a marker float, and dropped from the stern of a steamer for retrieval by a contact boat. Cutters Rush and Chase were kept busy reacting to intelligence of these events, which was shared by the local Collector of Customs.
Only 10 days after having first seized 350 pounds of opium from the Rio de Janeiro, Rush made a second bust. During its first seizure, a boarding party from the Rush had found the drugs on the stern of the steamer—the same light fog that had complicated the Rush’s intercept had likely prevented the smugglers aboard the steamer from sighting their contact boat and dumping the opium over the side for pick up. In the second instance, the poor visibility of the rainy and foggy morning of December 9, 1886, again hindered the smuggler’s plans. Incredibly, this time, in the reduced visibility, smugglers aboard the SS Gaelic mistook the Rush’s whaleboat for their contact and lowered 500 pounds of opium into the very laps of the cuttermen.
A Shift to Washington Territory
Concurrent with the rise in trafficking from Hong Kong to San Franciso, a new, much more efficient smuggling route emerged—aided once again by unintended consequences of new U.S. policy. Besides increasing the tariff to discourage importation, the U.S. had also targeted domestic production of smoking opium. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which severely limited the entry of Chinese Nationals to the U.S., and an earlier ban of the importation of raw opium by Chinese persons and businesses, were designed to eliminate the workforce and material needed to produce smoking opium in the states. While these measures did achieve the intended purpose, operations merely shifted across the border with Canada to British Columbia.
Not only was importation of opium into Canada by Chinese persons still legal, but the import duty remained only $1/pound. Now rather than making a long, trans-Pacific voyage, smugglers could make a short run from Canadian ports such as Victoria, which sat at the southern end of Vancouver Island, less than 40 miles from U.S. territory. Within a few years, every boat of Victoria’s fishing fleet and most coastal freighters plying the region’s waters would be suspected of carrying opium at one time or another.
-USCG-