We believe the most magical thing about Yarmouth is that new arrivals and locals end up at the same table.
about
portside
east coast kitchen parties done right
Portside Pub sits on Main Street, steps from where the CAT ferry now docks... but this stretch of Yarmouth harbour was doing a different kind of work almost a hundred years before the ferry ever existed.
Yarmouth wasn't just a fishing town. It was a rum-running town. Boats like the Grace and Ruby were built right where the CAT ferry
terminal sits today. Yarmouth was not geographically part of Rum Row… but it was one of the most critical supply engines powering it! Our shipyards built high-speed rum-running boats that were engineered low-profile, grey-hulled vessels equipped with hidden compartments and powerful engines specifically designed to evade the U.S. Coast Guard
Nova Scotian fishermen and merchant sailors who were hit hard by a post-WWI economic slump traded their fishing nets for alcohol crates. They loaded large schooners and motor freighters in Canada and sailed down the Eastern Seaboard to drop anchor right on Rum Row.
The Grace and Ruby was seized in a 1922 U.S. court case, and was so significant it's still cited in American law nearly a century later.
If that's the kind of thing you like to go down a rabbit hole on, the Yarmouth County Museum & Archives has the real record — documents, artifacts, the whole story in more detail than we've got room for in an email.
Worth a visit next time you're downtown!
Portside Pub sits on Main Street, steps from where the CAT ferry now docks... but this stretch of Yarmouth harbour was doing a different kind of work almost a hundred years before the ferry ever existed.
Yarmouth wasn't just a fishing town. It was a rum-running town. Boats like the Grace and Ruby were built right where the CAT ferry terminal sits today. Yarmouth was not geographically part of Rum Row… but it was one of the most critical supply engines powering it! Our shipyards built high-speed rum-running boats that were engineered low-profile, grey-hulled vessels equipped with hidden compartments and powerful engines specifically designed to evade the U.S. Coast Guard
Nova Scotian fishermen and merchant sailors who were hit hard by a post-WWI economic slump traded their fishing nets for alcohol crates. They loaded large schooners and motor freighters in Canada and sailed down the Eastern Seaboard to drop anchor right on Rum Row.
The Grace and Ruby was seized in a 1922 U.S. court case, and was so significant it's still cited in American law nearly a century later.
If that's the kind of thing you like to go down a rabbit hole on, the Yarmouth County Museum & Archives has the real record — documents, artifacts, the whole story in more detail than we've got room for in an email.
Worth a visit next time you're downtown!
look back in time
The Portside Story
today
2003
1933
1922
Early 1920s
1920
We're on the same stretch of waterfront the schooners once sailed from, which felt like reason enough to take the history seriously rather than just decorate around it. Come by, and we'll tell you more than we could fit in a timeline.
Yarmouth's waterfront got a permanent marker naming the route these boats actually ran: Rum Row to St. Pierre et Miquelon to these wharves. It's a short walk from where you're sitting right now.
Not every Yarmouth vessel caught up in Prohibition-era law ended the same way — the Mazel Tov went to court and won outright. It's a smaller footnote than the Grace and Ruby's, but it's proof this wasn't a one-sided story between the law and the rum-runners.
One of the shipyard's own schooners, the Grace and Ruby, was seized by U.S. authorities that year. The case that followed was significant enough to still be cited in American federal law a century later, in Cook v. United States, 288 U.S. 102.
Right where the CAT ferry terminal sits today, the Kirk & Sweeney shipyard was building schooners for the rum trade. It was a working yard on a working waterfront, doing exactly what shipyards do — just with cargo nobody was supposed to be carrying.
The United States outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcohol, and almost overnight, the trade moved offshore. Nova Scotia's harbours — Yarmouth's included — became part of the supply line that kept it moving.
Once a month, we send out THE DISPATCH — a quick email with the month's secret menu password. It's also where you'll hear about live music and anything new before it hits our social pages.
psst. Trust us... you don't want to miss this!
232b Main St, Yarmouth. just a quick 2 minute walk from the cat ferry terminal
CHART YOUR COURSE
[email protected]
902-742-0022
Monday Closed
Tuesday 5–11 p.m.
Wednesday 1 p.m.–2 a.m.
Thursday 1 p.m.–2 a.m.
Friday 1 p.m.–2 a.m.
Saturday 1 p.m.–2 a.m.
Sunday Closed
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