The government boats knifed across the Pacific, cutting a line toward the ship floating a little more than three nautical miles off the California coast.

The S.S. Rex was the biggest and most opulent gambling boat anchored off Santa Monica in 1939. And the man at the helm was a brash bootlegger-turned-gaming-kingpin who wore a white Stetson, lived in a Beverly Hills bungalow and held court at the Trocadero nightclub.

His name was Tony Cornero.

Cornero and others like him saw a way around California laws prohibiting gambling by operating floating casinos in waters they believed to be beyond the state’s jurisdiction. But the authorities disagreed with their interpretation of geography.