A truck barreling through Groton at 1 a.m. was bound to raise eyebrows, and sure enough, a police officer got suspicious. Watching it head for the Thames River bridge, he got word to the toll collector to hold the vehicle until he caught up.

When the officer arrived, he found 120 quarts of whiskey inside, which the driver said he was delivering from Providence to New York.

It was the driver's lucky day: Jan. 16, 1920, a century ago this week, and the day before the start of Prohibition. The man was 23 hours away from breaking the law, so he was sent on his way.

The next day began one of the strangest periods in American history, as an alcohol-soaked nation outlawed something it couldn't live without. The result was 14 years of unintended consequences. Instead of a conservative, lawful and sober society, Prohibition brought social change, organized crime and more drinking than ever.

In New London, two parallel dramas played out. There was the cat-and-mouse game of bootleggers and cops. But the city was also a major center of more ambitious law enforcement by the Coast Guard, which had modest success disrupting offshore smuggling, sometimes with bloodshed.

To mark the centennial of the Noble Experiment, here are a few snapshots of New London's Prohibition activities big and small, from the pages of The Day.

* * *

Joseph Porretta awoke on Feb. 9, 1923, to find his Belden Street house in flames. He grabbed his youngest and fled as his wife ushered out the six older children.

The cause of the fire was two 50-gallon stills in the attic. Concetta Porretta quickly identified the bootlegger as a disreputable acquaintance named Guiseppe Viola, who, she said, sub-let the attic room.

Police arrested him, but on reflection, Mrs. Porretta decided the stills were owned not by Viola but by someone who looked just like him. The charges were dropped.

* * *

Eight miles southeast of Block Island, the Coast Guard cutter Seminole zeroed in on its quarry, the steam yacht Vereign. Ignoring an order to heave to, the yacht sped for shore. The cutter fired a blank shot, and the chase was on.

The Vereign was on its way back from "Rum Row," an area stretching from Montauk to Nantucket where a string of supply ships lay just outside U.S. territorial waters. Customers sailed out and returned stocked up with alcohol.

The Coast Guard was tasked with stemming the tide, but the service was too small to make much difference. Still, there was occasional drama, as on June 4, 1924.

The Seminole fired four solid shots at the Vereign, all of which missed. The fifth shattered a windshield, and the sixth entered the pilot house and exploded. Three members of the 13-man crew were injured.

Coast Guardsmen brought the yacht to New London, along with 1,400 cases of alcohol worth $100,000. That's the equivalent of $1.5 million today.

* * *

Officer Howard Sloan was headed home after his shift on May 22, 1924, when he saw a truck parked on Ocean Avenue. He gave the driver directions, then phoned in a hunch that all wasn't right.

More police arrived and found a second truck abandoned and loaded with alcohol. Its two occupants were caught heading for the train tracks and confessed to being smugglers. By then the first truck had disappeared, so police took off through Waterford in search of it. Instead they found a third truck also carrying alcohol.

Meanwhile, the first truck turned up stuck in the mud on a dead-end off Ocean Avenue. Intentionally or not, Sloan had given bad directions.

The total haul: three trucks, seven arrests, 450 cases of booze worth $50,000, and a lead on a major smuggling ring.

When the six officers involved posed for a photo with the trucks, they conferred minor immortality on the incident. Over the years, the photo has adorned the walls of many downtown bars and restaurants.

* * *

Something was afoot at State Pier as a fleet of Coast Guard vessels prepared to depart en masse.

Five years into Prohibition, Congress had allocated funds to expand the service. There was more manpower, and 20 mothballed Navy destroyers were put into service. The new Destroyer Force was headquartered at State Pier, which would soon be the biggest Coast Guard base in the country.

Finally at full strength, the Coast Guard sent an armada seaward on May 6, 1925.

Thirty-one supply ships were on Rum Row, and till then, customers had been mostly unmolested. But the balance of power had shifted. Once the Coast Guard took up position, ready to seize anything brought inside U.S. waters, the customers vanished.

Aboard the destroyer Downes, The Day's John M. Mallon Jr. conducted a remote interview with the captain of a British liquor ship.

"How long do you fellows intend to hold out?" Mallon yelled into a megaphone.

"Dunno," came the answer from across the water. "About as long as you fellows, I guess."

"Don't you think this drive is going to rid the coast of you rummies?" Mallon asked.

"Time alone will tell that."

For the moment, at least, the answer was clear. Within a week, almost every rum ship had weighed anchor and departed.

* * *

Where did all the seized alcohol go? Much of it was stacked up in the basement of the Custom House on Bank Street. By 1928, there were 6,000 cases of whiskey, gin, wine and champagne, most of it considered "the good stuff."

Theft was possible, so over several weeks, it was systematically destroyed: Bottle after bottle was broken on the stone steps behind the building.

"On a previous occasion when some liquor was spilled," The Day reported, "the word got around town and a gulping crowd stood by all during the proceedings sniffing at the aroma."

* * *

George Goss awoke at 2 a.m. on Jan. 6, 1930, to the sound of a rock hitting his houseboat in Shaw's Cove. Then came another rock, and still another.

"I thought I heard footsteps out on the wharf but I wasn't sure so I just listened," he said.

Someone was stoning his boat. He thought about grabbing his gun and going outside, but the footsteps faded into the distance.

"I'll swear I don't know why they picked on me," he said. "I never trouble anybody."

It was all a mistake. The attackers apparently thought they were stoning the home of a Coast Guard officer named Alexander Cornell. A week earlier, his patrol boat had fired on a rumrunner called the Black Duck, killing three smugglers and sparking a national outcry against Prohibition.

Cornell's houseboat, moored 100 feet from Goss', was towed to the safety of State Pier as anger simmered. Two days earlier, two Coast Guardsmen walking to the pier had been roughed up by a mob.

The Black Duck killings tarnished the Coast Guard's image, and a separate incident a day later didn't help. Two men were brutally beaten at a drunken party on Cottage Street, and it was revealed that Coast Guardsmen had supplied the alcohol. They had taken it from the rumrunner Flor-del-Mar, which was found abandoned and burning.

Fifteen Coast Guardsmen were court-martialed and 24 charged with intoxication.

* * *

Four quarts of liquor were enough to get John Kaneen, a respected merchant, arrested in a raid of his Green Street meat market on July 17, 1930. Overcome with shame, he told people he would never face trial.

He never did. Days before his court appearance, he cut a hole in an ash can, inserted the hose from a gas jet, and killed himself.

* * *

The sign over the door at Ye London Grill at State and Main streets said it all: "Welcome, Beer is Here."

Prohibition wasn't dead, but it was dying. The beginning of the end came in May 1933, when beer with 3.2 percent alcohol was legalized.

The day the law took effect, the city's grocery stores filled with Pabst Blue Ribbon, Ruppert's and Rheingold. At London Grill and the Mohican Hotel, beer was served with meals. Package stores sprang up overnight.

Dan Shea's Tavern at 2 State St., the first such establishment in 13 years, opened a week later. Others quickly followed, including one that stood the test of time: the Dutch Tavern on Green Street.

While 3.2 beer was no one's idea of the good stuff, it heralded a return to normal. When Prohibition was repealed a few months later, New London took the news in stride.

"While there was no wild enthusiasm," The Day said, "there was a lot of serious local drinking last night."

j.ruddy@theday.com