The Washington Times, 30 December 1929, page 2: the Black Duck shooting off Newport

Page 2 of the Washington Times, 30 December 1929. The page-top headline concerns medicinal liquor; the Black Duck story runs below it, continued from page one, under the deck “‘We Didn’t Intend to Kill,’ Says Coast Guard ‘Skipper’” and the dateline “NEW LONDON, Conn., Dec. 30.” A photograph caption reads “Black Duck rum loaded on New London trucks.”

The dispatch quotes Boatswain Alexander C. Cornell: “We did not shoot to kill. We’d have given anything to have avoided killing the men. But it could not be helped.” It says the men under his command “killed three rum runners and wounded a fourth” in the shooting off Newport the day before. The wounded man “gave his name as Charles Travers, of New Bedford,” and named the dead as “Jake Weisman, Providence, R. I.; Dudley Brandt, Boston, and John Goulart, Fair Haven, Mass.” The paper adds that Weisman “had recently been admitted to bail on a Federal court charge of conspiracy to violate the prohibition laws.” No conviction is stated.

This is a wire report of a Prohibition shooting by federal officers. It does not connect the men to any organized group, and this archive does not either. Quotations follow the Library of Congress OCR, corrected only where the scan is plain.