William "Bill" McCoy (1877-30 December 1948) was an American shipping captain and bootlegger during Prohibition.
Biography[]
Bill McCoy was born in 1877 in Syracuse, New York, the son of a US Navy sailor who had fought in the American Civil War. McCoy himself would serve in the navy, and he became a yacht builder and freight business owner alongside his older brother Ben. By 1920, McCoy was struggling with money, and he decided to turn to bootlegging in order to make a living for himself. McCoy used his ships to import Canadian club whiskey and other alcoholic beverages into the United States through the port of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and he worked as a partner of political boss Enoch Thompson and Commodore Louis Kaestner. In 1921, his ships began to be captured by the US Coast Guard after Kaestner became enemies with Thompson and his associates, and McCoy was captured in 1923. He spent nine months in prison, and he later became a real estate businessman in Florida. He died in 1948 at the age of 71.