Jack Myers was an outlaw. Small but wiry, he had a short temper and was tough as nails. He'd been a member of an outlaw gang in Wyoming and boasted of having killed four men. 1893 found Myers in jail in Port Blackely, Washington for stealing logs, then, while being held in an Everett, Washington jail on forgery charges, he escaped.

With a $100 bounty on his head, Jack Myers made his way to Tumbo Island in the Canadian Gulf Islands where he bought an 18 ft. sloop. He set sail for Burrard Inlet and the town of Vancouver, British Columbia, where he purchased ten cases of stolen "Gaelic" whiskey. Using the alias "Ben Kennedy", he set about bootlegging up the inside passage towards the Discovery Islands.