First Edition. Yarns of Rum-Running during Prohibition. McCoy was trained at the Pennsylvania Nautical School on board the USS Saratoga, and served for some years as mate or quartermaster on a variety of merchant vessels. When his family moved to Florida he set up a small boat-yard with his brother Ben, gaining a reputation as a skilled yacht-builder and constructing vessels for Andrew Carnegie amongst others. Their freight business undermined by the increase in road transportation, the brothers fell on hard times and decided to go into rum-running. In a short time they had built up a successful business with half a dozen boats shipping good quality of liquor from the Bahamas to the East Coast - the superior nature of their offerings being, some say, the origin of the phrase “The Real McCoy”, genuine rather than bootleg booze - spending most of their time dealing on "Rum row" off Long Island. When the Coast Guard had caught on to McCoy, he established the system of anchoring large ships off the coast in international waters and selling liquor to smaller ships that transferred it to the shore. Late in 1923 McCoy was targeted by the Coast Guard cutter Seneca, and, he refusing to surrender, his boat was fired on and holed at the waterline. Pleading guilty McCoy was sentenced to nine months in a New Jersey gaol. On his release he returned to Florida and boat-building. This copy warmly inscribed by McCoy on the title page and with a 1p. ALS from him presenting the copy tipped in.
8vo. Original green cloth, lettered in yellow and dark blue. Portrait frontispiece and 14 other plates. Light toning, cloth a little rubbed and sunned at the spine, but overall very good.
