Of all the many ships and boats that hauled liquor to jurisdictions under prohibition, the Nellie J. Banks is certainly the best known in PEI which in 1901 enacted total prohibition of alcohol.
For a dozen years she supplied customers from Newfoundland to Maine from the warehouses of the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.
She started out as a cod-fishing boat out of Georgetown but the cod market plummeted in the early 1920s and prohibition in the United States from 1920 to 1933 offered far more lucrative shipping opportunities.
The smuggling operations by owners Ed and John Dicks were cat-and-mouse with Canada Customs agents. The Nellie Banks would load up at St. Pierre and deliver cargo to smaller boats outside the three-mile limit.
The ship hit the headlines in 1927 when her crew were fishing cod in the Gulf of St. Lawrence outside British and Canadian waters. Under orders of Capt. John C. McCarthy, the Canadian Revenue Cutter Bayfield which he commanded, rammed the Nellie J. Banks, seized the ship and cargo and towed her to Charlottetown.
The press gleefully covered the court case and in the spring of the following year the owners of the Nellie J. Banks were awarded $5,500 for damages and $700 in costs.
In 1938 the legal limit for enforcement of Canada's Customs Act was changed from three to 12 miles and the ship was again seized by Canada Customs agents, the last rum runner seized off Atlantic Canada.
A jury found in favour of the captain but the cargo was seized and the ship was sold by tender. It was renamed the Leona G. Maguire and sailed the Northumberland Strait for another decade before being permanently anchored in Murray Harbour.
In 1950 she was hauled from the water and in 1953 was burned.
Canada declined to produce a stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Nellie J. Banks, but the French government honoured her on a stamp in 1988, making her the first Canadian vessel depicted on a foreign postage stamp.
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