The 579-ton steam schooner Caoba, slugging it out with the gale off the mouth of the Columbia, had suffered a knockout blow: A wave had burst through and flooded the engine room, putting out the boiler fire. The ship was adrift, rolling in the trough of a very heavy sea, and filling with seawater. The crew had taken to the lifeboats.

Pamphlet was in perfect position to help. But there was just one problem: The hold of Pamphlet’s 90-foot, 100-ton gasoline-powered schooner, the Pescawah, was crammed with Scotch whisky — a total of 12,876 bottles of it. And the date was Feb. 1, 1925 — Prohibition wouldn’t end for another eight years.... (Off Astoria, Clatsop County; 1925) (For text and pictures, see http://www.offbeatoregon.com/1808c.pescawah-rumrunner-rescuers-509.html)