| Memo |
- This is an article written by Kirk Mariner and published in the EASTERN SHORE NEWS on Wednesday, January 17, 2007.
?Capt. Polk,? businessman, rumrunner
His name was William Henry Lang (1859-1934), but for some reason long forgotten he was generally known as Polk-?Captain Polk? to most people.
In our family, however, he was known as Cousin Polk, because he was indeed the first cousin of my grandmother, Myrtle Lane Mariner of Greenbackville.
Cousin Polk died a few years before her grandchildren came along, but I knew of him because of my grandmother?s custom of reciting with admiration the comings and goings of all her relatives, even those down at the county seat whom we youngsters never knew.
If during one of her recitations she happened to mention ?Cousin Polk,? my grandfather would wisely say nothing at such times, but raise an eyebrow, or flash a quick, sly grin, as if there was something more that was not being said.
What was this unspoken agenda about Cousin Polk? Was he not the successful businessman she proclaimed? Was he some sort of scoundrel, or outlaw?
Or, would you believe, a rumrunner?
The Peninsula Enterprise, Accomac?s weekly newspaper of that day, frequently cites the exploits of the young Capt. Polk. His first appearance in its columns is from August 1882, when he issued a challenge to other boat owners to race his 14-foot skiff, the Robert E. Lee, for a prize of up to $1,000. He was often the victor in the sailboat races that provided public entertainment (and betting) from Chincoteague to Kiptopeake in the 1890s.
His last sailboat race was at the Jamestown Exposition in 1907, when in Kendall Harmon?s skiff, the John W. Edmonds, he won the cup offered by President Theodore Roosevelt. That cup is today in the possession of Kenneth Lang of Accomac.
More than once Capt. Polk was on hand to save those in peril on the sea. In 1884 he assisted the U.S. Life Saving Service in the rescue of three men whose sloop sank south of Metompkin Island. In 1905 it was he who stood on the bow of the government surfboat and threw the life line to the crew of the Pendelton sisters, stranded off Metompkin Inlet.
Yet he himself had to be rescued in March 1888 when his sloop Florence Killinger lost her rudder near Fisherman Island in a gale ?such as rarely visits our coast.? On that occasion, only the intervention of the Life Saving Crew on Smith Island kept Polk and his employee, Jeff Potts, from being swept out to sea.
In 1885 Capt. Polk married Nannie Milliner (1863-1929), and for a while the couple lived in Norfolk while he engaged in the oyster business, using his boat Shamrock to ferry to the Norfolk markets the oysters he gathered from his own stake on Myrtle Island.
But Myrtle Island, just off Cape Charles, had once been a part of Smith Island, which had for years been owned by the Custis Lee family (as in Robert E. Lee), and when that prominent and influential family began to assert and litigate its claim to the whole island, Polk moved his oyster-planting business northward.
In 1902 he took up a large oyster ground in Metompkin Bay and built an oyster shucking plant at ?Black Stump? on the north bank of Folly Creek, south of Accomac. Within a year he was employing more than 50 shuckers and was shipping to market as many as 1,000 gallons of oysters a day.
Once back in this native Accomac, Capt. Polk prospered. In 1906 he purchased the old store that stood downtown at the crossroads where the office converted from a service station stands today and operated it for the next 14 years.
He acquired considerable real estate in and around the county seat, and eventually owned hundreds of acres. By 1916 he was leasing more oyster grounds (51 beds) than any other dealer on Virginia?s Eastern Shore. In 1913 he moved his main business to the south side of Folly Creek to ?Deep Water? (at the end of today?s Oysterhouse Road) where he built a new oyster house ?the largest of its kind in the world,? insisted a local newspaper.
To his new dock piled his eight power boats with crews totaling 75 men, bringing oysters from his own oyster grounds which his 75 shuckers then prepared in one-and five-gallon cans for shipment to points as far away as British Columbia-59,830 gallons of them in one season. By 1919 he had expanded his business to include not just oysters but also fishing pounds from which, in time, his fishermen were bringing in over 200 barrels of fish a day.
Thus by his mid-fifties, Capt. Polk was well on his way to achieving his dream of being the richest man in Accomac. He and Nan lived at 23496 Drummondtown Road in the handsome, up-to-date house he built in 1904. Here was his office, staffed by a secretary, and here he kept not one but two cars, including an impressive Buick, for he could when the occasion demanded it dress well, befitting a man of his success.
He had his soft side, was known to give financial help to those less fortunate, and raised two nephews as his own after their father died (he and Nan were childless). He could, when a Sunday school class or a civic group wanted a special outing be counted on to boat them over to Metompkin Beach for an all-day ?excursion;? one such event in 1910 was for the benefit of the Women?s Christian Temperance Union.
Yet despite his wealth and aspirations, the good citizens of Accomac considered him quaint, colorful, and something of an outsider. He had a gruff manner, was most likely to be seen in his work clothes and beat-up old Chevrolet, and seldom mingled with the lawyers and professionals of the county seat.
His oyster house was a rough place a part of the neighborhood local kids were told to avoid; her Polk provided dormitories for his fishermen, most of whom were homeless, rootles men who worked hard, drank hard, and were not the kind of people to be seen in church on Sunday. A bona fide local character and ?old salt? in his own right, Capt. Polk was the subject of many stories-such as the time he fired upon, rounded-up and took to court a group of men he found poaching on his oyster bed; when the men pleaded guilty and were unable to pay their fines, Polk paid it for them, then whispered to them as he left the courthouse, ?I just wanted to show you what I could do.?
On another occasion he was headed into Onancock when he was stopped for speeding and issued a fine; ?You might as well write me a second one,? he told the policeman, ?cause when I leave town I?m going to be traveling at the same speed.?
All of this was before Jan. 20, 1920, the date on which the Eighteenth Amendment took effect and the manufacture, sale and importation of alcoholic beverages became illegal. No sooner did Prohibition become law than the smuggling of alcoholic beverages began, and the East Coast was lined with foreign vessels hovering offshore in international waters until the moment when they could slip landward to rendezvous with local vessels and transfer their contraband.
The intricate and secluded seaside of the Delmarva Peninsula soon became one of the primary theatres of this illegal trade, and a good many Eastern Shoremen, enticed by quick profits, its practitioners.
Just when Capt. Polk joined the ranks of the rumrunners is not known, for this was the only one of his business ventures not chronicled by the local newspapers. Indeed today, after nearly a century, there are few written records to substantiate the history of the rumrunning on Virginia?s Eastern Shore, though a dwindling number of oldtimers can speak with authority about if from memory, or even direct experience.
Polk?s legitimate business was an almost perfect set-up for the illegitimate trade, and enabled him to become one of its largest local operators. His fish pounds became an easy rendezvous point for the transfer of liquor t local vessels from larger ones. Bottles of whiskey could easily be hidden in the barrels of fish brought in by his crews, then spirited northward when every other night a truck loaded with ?fish? set out from Folly Creek for Philadelphia.
An aura of intrigue often surrounded the haul to Philadelphia. Capt. Polk?s men followed detailed instructions handed down anonymously from the big city. Drivers were ordered to take different routes, the better to evade government agents. Destinations in the city to which deliveries were to be made changed with frequency.
One driver, upon reaching the address he had been given in Philadelphia, found only a garage door in a deserted commercial section; just as he was about to decide he was in the wrong place, the door mysteriously opened, and he drove in. ?Don?t get out,? he was told by a voice somewhere behind him, ?and don?t look at us.? The truck was quickly unloaded, and he backed out and returned home. Another driver was involved in an accident which left his truck disabled in Smyrna, Del.
Instead of allowing the locals there to work on it, Capt. Polk dispatched from Accomac the equipment needed to get the vehicle moving and to complete the run to Philadelphia with its cargo unexamined.
Despite the cloak and dagger, the existence of this illegal trade was far from secret, in virtually every community where it was going on, and in Accomac in particular, where ?everybody knew what was happening? down at the oyster house.
The town?s lawyers were, of course, well versed on the law and the consequences of getting caught, and sometimes shared their knowledge aloud, and free, for the benefit of those who might be listening. Oldtimers insist that the Coast Guard not infrequently looked conveniently the other way when transfers or deliveries were to be made.
Yet in their defense it must be said that the authorities charged with intercepting this illegal traffic were badly outnumbered and faced an almost impossible task. The Coast Guard station at Hog Island, for example, had but one boat with which to patrol a 40-mile stretch of coastline, marshes and winding creeks. As a result, few of the rumrunners of the Eastern Shore were ever caught, and even fewer prosecuted.
Capt. Polk was never charged or apprehended for any of his dealings in smuggling. One of his nephews was ? the very one, it is said, who is the likely candidate for setting up all the urban and foreign ?connections? that made the business possible. (But that?s another story?).
On December 5, 1933, the nation?s experiment with Prohibition ended, and with it the rumrunning that had been going on for more than a decade. In time the smuggling became ?the stuff of back-creek legend? across the Delmarva Peninsula.
As for those who had engaged in it, the vast majority of them ?emerged unscathed, uncaught, unidentified? They got on with their lives. They kept their mouths shut and grew old.?
Among them was Polk Lang, who was in his 70s and a widower in declining health when Prohibition ended. He continued to oversee his business affairs (the legitimate ones) until by August 1934 he was so infirm he was doing so from his bed. He died at home on Oct. 26, 1934, and was buried at Edgehill Cemetery next to his beloved Nan. One local newspaper, in reporting his death, labeled him ?one of the most colorful figures of the present-day Eastern Shore.?
Decades later his cousin Myrtle was still talking about him, and my grandfather still silently punctuating the official account with a sly, knowing grin.
Kirk Mariner is an author and retired United Methodist minister who lives in Onancock.
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Abt 1859 - 1934 (75 years)
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