Smuggling
Smugglers and Preventivemen
Dr Johnson defined a smuggler as a wretch who, in defiance of justice and the laws, imports or exports goods without payment of the customs. John Wesley, another contemporary of the great period of free trading, extended his condemnation to include those who bought or sold smuggled goods, a definition which would have included whole communities. Other definitions were laid down in the various Acts designed to stamp out the trade. For example in 1721, any person who carried firearms or wore a vizard or mask when handling contraband was treated as a smuggler. Of the thousands who took part in the trade, most did so on a casual or part-time basis; only a smaller number were full-time professionals. There was also important distinction between the sea smugglers who brought the goods from continental suppliers, and the land gangs responsible for landing and transporting the contraband. When Admiral Vernon sent the following report to the Admiralty in 1745, he was describing the sea smugglers of Kent, and he could have added the seamen from Rye, Hastings and Shoreham to his list. (The extract is from the Parry Collection, by courtesy of HM Customs & Excise.)
'there are said to be in the town of Deal, not less than two hundred young men and sea-faring people, who are known to have no visible way of getting a living, but by the infamous trade of smuggling, many keeping a horse and arms to be ready at all calls. At Dover it is conjectured there may be four hundred; at Ramsgate and Folkstone three hundred each; and it is said, that within these three weeks no less than nine cutters at a time have gone off from Folkstone to Boulogne; and ... that from the town of Folkstone only a thousand pounds a week is run over to Boulogne in a smuggling way... This smuggling has converted those employed in it, first from honest industrious fishermen, to lazy, drunken and profligate smugglers, and now to dangerous spies on all our proceedings. ... I can't but think it is a national reproach upon us, to have let their villainy and treachery run to such an extensive length...'
Despite Admiral Vernon's strictures, these men were generally recognised as superb seamen. They had to contend with all the normal hazards of sailing in darkness and at the worst times of year, to keep an appointment on some secluded beach, and in addition to avoid any patrolling preventive vessel. At least during the early eighteenth century, disaster was more likely to arise from shipwreck than from intervention by the small number of revenue craft. One Essex smuggling vessel is said to have made 35 consecutive successful voyages! Later, during the long years of war with France, the ever present danger was capture by an enemy privateer and (like all seamen) the crew had to evade the dreaded press gang.
Virtually every type of craft was used for smuggling at one time or another; naval vessels, revenue cutters, packet boats and pilot boats, even a royal yacht made the occasional venture. However, two types of vessel were increasingly used, and were often specially built for the trade. The large smuggling vessels were luggers, generally from 50 to 200 tons. Some were carvel-built (with timbers edge to edge) for greater speed. They normally carried square sails on three masts, and it was the development of fore-and-aft rigging during the seventeenth century which had given such vessels greater manoeuvrability. Their decks were sometimes protected by a form of breast-work, behind which were mounted carriage and swivel guns. With a crew of perhaps 50, the larger ships were formidable indeed. Both smugglers and revenuemen came increasingly to use cutters (an improved version of the sloops common around 1700). A cutter derived her strength from being clinker or clinch-built (with overlapping timbers). Her tall mast carried a very great spread of canvas, thanks partly to a long bowsprit (which could be brought inboard). Specially built smuggling craft were sometimes built of fir rather than oak, for cheapness as well as speed, since their life expectancy was short!
Many of the larger smuggling vessels were built at Hastings, until the government forced the industry to move to France and the Low Countries. By the 1780s these larger craft were powerful enough to engage naval ships, and sometimes tried to run down and sink their smaller adversaries. They also carried tub boats used to run barrels of spirit ashore. These open rowing boats had a rail on their outer edge along which a necklace of tubs could be hung, ready for instant sinking if danger threatened. Without sinking stones the tubs would float, so various methods of'sowing a crop' (sinking the casks below the surface at marked spots) were soon developed.
By the 1790s Deal specialised in building long slender galleys rowed by up to 20 men, but having a small sail in addition. These light and cheaply-built boats were particularly used by the guinea smugglers during the Napoleonic Wars. Various smaller, but similar open boats were also used to bring back tubs of spirit left in mid Channel. A galley could be rowed back from Dunkirk to Deal in as little as five hours if the tide was favourable. At Rye the boatbuilders were particularly adept at devising secret compartments to outwit customs officers rummaging a cargo. Another ploy was for the smuggling vessel to claim bogus foreign nationality, and to carry appropriate flags and ship's papers. Admiral Vernon was right to suspect that some acted as spies, and other men were probably double agents. The seamen of Deal were particularly notorious; their actions roused the fury of Prime Minister William Pitt, and in 1784 he retaliated by burning all their vessels as these lay drawn up off the beach to escape the winter storms. Napoleon is said to have received English newspapers by courtesy of a Bexhill smuggler, and Sir John Moore, who was responsible for defending the most vulnerable stretch of coast against an expected invasion, reported 'There is hardly a family in Folkestone which has not relatives settled in Flushing, and there is constant intercourse.' However, most of these seamen remained loyal to Britain; smugglers brought regular reports from France to Wellington, and Nelson employed Deal smugglers as pilots because of their skill and experience.
Once the sea smugglers had brought the contraband to the shore, the various land-based groups took over. Lookout men would exchange signals with the vessel, and if danger threatened would warn the ship to withdraw by flashing a light from a special lantern or a flink pistol, or even lighting a clifftop fire (all actions which were punishable offences). The landing party remained concealed until the crucial moment; sometimes several hundred men and horses had been assembled. Most of these men were local labourers hoping to receive more for a single night's work than they could otherwise earn in a week. Those detailed to unload the cargo were protected by others armed at the very least with bats (wooden staves), and often with hangers (swords), cutlasses or firearms. Sometimes a smuggling vessel was beached for unloading; more often small boats were used to carry the goods ashore, and tubs of spirit were pulled in attached to a long rope. A good team could run 500 tubs ashore in 20 minutes. Landings usually took place on nights away from full moon, but on Romney Marsh in 1734 no such precautions were taken. The Secretary to the Commissioners of Excise reported that ... 'the smugglers pass and repass to and from the sea-side, forty and fifty in a gang in the day time loaded with teas, brandy and dry goods; that above two hundred mounted smugglers were seen one night upon the sea beach waiting for the loading of six boats and above one hundred were seen to go offloaded with goods; that they march in a body from the beach about four miles into the country and then separate into small parties ...'
The individual smuggler protected his anonymity with various disguises, such as covering his face or wearing a shepherd's smock, and called his companions and the landing places by nick-names, but the large armed convoys relied on their superior strength to defy all opposition. Whereas West Country smugglers seem generally to have operated in small groups, in Kent and Sussex large and powerful gangs dominated the trade, though innumerable smaller groups also took part. The gang based on the Wealden village of Hawkhurst during the 1740s became the most notorious. Others had developed some years earlier at Mayfield and Groombridge not far away, and we know the names and nicknames of a number of the leading members. Behind such men lay the shadowy figures who provided the capital for ventures which could involve an outlay of £10,000 or more.
Around 1780 the War of American Independence had denuded the country of its armed forces, and for a time smuggling gangs rode defiantly through major towns all over England. A further attempt to establish powerful gangs began around 1820. At this time George Ransley led the last important gang in Kent. He had his own foreign suppliers, and retained both a group of seamen and local labourers to act as tub carriers. He used his son as secretary and accountant, and employed his own surgeon and firm of solicitors!
The logistics of a major smuggling run, such as the Hawkhurst gang could have undertaken around 1740, required elaborate organisation. One problem must have been to raise and transport the necessary money, at a time when there was no bank even in Hastings. Sending messages when so many were illiterate, and synchronising the arrival of ship and landing party (with alternative arrangements if the run was foiled) must have taxed their ingenuity. We know they employed various pre-arranged signals, such as the set of windmill sails or animals tethered in particular patterns. If the sea smugglers were excellent sailors, the inland gangs acquired remarkable and widespread knowledge of alternative routes through the countryside.
Though they later made use of carts and coaches, most eighteenth century contraband was carried on horseback. It was estimated that a packhorse could carry 280 Ibs (127kg), while a horse and cart could transport five times as much. The horses were often 'borrowed' from local farmers who dared not refuse to cooperate. Incidentally one of the accusations levelled against the smugglers in 1746 was that they had brought in with a cargo of silk a disease affecting horses, which one army captain described as 'general leprosie'.
As head of the preventive services and Mayor of Hastings, John Collier faced equivalent difficulties. He wrote of the awful road conditions, and of flood water reaching up to his saddlebags as he rode through Robertsbridge. He found it best to send goods to London with the regular sailing cutter, skippered by Nicholas Bossum (whom he suspected of smuggling). In 1745 the 'fast' coach which left Hastings at 4am took three days to reach London, and when ten years later John Collier decided to take the waters at Bath, rather than use the local road, he timed the start of his journey to coincide with low tide, so that his coach could travel west over the firm sands of Pevensey Bay.
Smuggling was very much a high risk occupation. Although some individuals managed to operate through a lifetime, the larger gangs seldom lasted ten years. At times two gangs might work together, but a characteristic of the Hawkhurst men was the way they took over other groups and browbeat them into cooperation. The more successful of the full-time smugglers made their fortunes rapidly, investing part of the money in fine houses with appropriate storage facilities, but the richest rewards went to their financial backers. It is known that London bankers and leading City merchants derived huge profits from smuggling, as they also did from the Slave Trade.
Ranged against both land and sea smugglers were men in the various preventive services, and at the core of this defence were the Custom House officers responsible for legal trade. The Collector was the most senior official at each port, and it is his correspondence with the Board of Customs in London which provides authentic detail on the extent of smuggling. He was also responsible for the warehouse where seizures of contraband were held, often all too insecurely. At important ports like Dover he was assisted by a number of other officers, ranging from his deputy, the Comptroller, down to humble boatmen. (An indication of the numbers involved comes from a report of 1822, when the establishment was 62 at Dover, 28 at Rye and 19 each at Deal and Shoreham.) While the Collector's Clerk battled with a flood of official forms (some still in Latin), the officers most likely to come into direct conflict with the smugglers were the landwaiters, responsible for imported goods, the tide surveyors who rummaged vessels, and the tidesmen who were put on board a vessel until unloading was completed.
Excisemen constituted a separate, and sometimes rival preventive service. Their original task had been to collect tax on items manufactured in the country, but as Excise duty was later extended to various imported goods, they too had the right to search ships and seize contraband. Both Customs and Excise officers were entitled to call on the help of dragoons (the mounted soldiers), but such assistance often proved totally inadequate. Each group was poorly paid, and their main incentive for tangling with the smugglers was the chance of reward for a successful seizure. There was also every motive for competition rather than concerted action between them, and this unhappy situation was compounded by the slowness and meanness with which any reward was granted.
To meet the special problem of controlling the illegal export of wool, Riding Officers were appointed and stationed on the most vulnerable stretches of coast. By 1700 there were 300 of these men operating in 19 English countries. Each officer was responsible for providing his own horse, and for night-time patrols along a stretch of coast (4 miles in the worst areas and about 10 miles elsewhere). His job entailed listening to rumours, while keeping his own movements secret and unpredictable, and writing a daily record. He was paid £25 a year, with an allowance for his horse. He could also call on the help of locally-based dragoons, but the number available was small and the men disliked the work. The first Surveyor-General of Riding Officers in Kent was Captain Henry Baker, and from 1735 to 1750 this post was held by John Collier, a lawyer and five times Mayor of Hastings. Among the 2000 letters which have survived from Collier's correspondence (otherwise known as the Sayer Manuscripts) are the best accounts of smuggling in Kent and Sussex at this time. Unfortunately Major Battine, who held the equivalent post in Sussex, left few records.
Conscientious Riding Officers ran a considerable risk of being killed or injured by the smugglers among whom they lived. Some became too old or infirm to discharge their duties, and it is hardly surprising that others succumbed to a mixture of threats and bribery. For example, John Sowton, a West Sussex smuggler, said of the Riding Officer at Lancing in the 1740s 'Damn him, its as easy as can be to make him quiet, for do but dash a bottle of brandy in his face and he is as blind as a beetle.'
The Board of Customs also controlled a small number of vessels which patrolled offshore. By 1700 there were some twenty Revenue craft responsible for the whole coastline, and four of the smaller naval vessels were added specifically to help against the owling trade. More ships were presently made available, and larger, better armed and faster vessels were to form the most significant defence against smuggling by the 1780s. However, even these were seldom a match for the bigger smuggling cutters or the French privateers.
As the smuggling trade increased after 1720, the government responded partly by making more soldiers available to meet particular crises, but chiefly by enacting a flood of legislation, much of which proved difficult to enforce in the absence of adequate manpower and finance. Legislation was aimed first to make smuggling as difficult as possible, and then to catch and punish the offenders. The sequence begins with the Act of 1698 to stop the illegal export of wool. This was followed by a series of Hovering Acts intended to prevent vessels loitering-with-intent outside territorial waters, and at one stage persons loitering within five miles of the coast were also suspect. Vessels below a certain size, and carrying suspect cargo were liable to forefei-ture. After 1721 any rowing boat with more than four oars was liable to be seized and destroyed, and there were later measures to forbid the carrying of spirits and tobacco in small containers. The reasoning behind these measures was sensible enough; the problem once again was enforcement. Some successes could be claimed, however. Between 1723 and 1736, 229 smuggling boats had been confiscated, 2000 persons prosecuted, and nearly 200,000 gallons of brandy seized. At the same time 250 Revenue Officers had been beaten or wounded, and six had been murdered.
As the violence escalated, the penalties became increasingly savage. For an unarmed man caught carrying contraband, the penalty in 1700 would have been imprisonment; after 1736 it became transportation, and after 1746 death. By then, an armed smuggler injuring an officer faced being gibbeted, that is, the hanging of his body in chains as a warning to others (a prospect which horrified the toughest villain). But the measures which had the greatest impact and which drove the gangs to terrorise whole communities and torture suspected informers were the Smuggling Acts of 1736 and 1746. Under the former, any smuggler, even if in gaol, could have a free pardon if he confessed all and gave the names of his associates. In 1746 the names of known smugglers were published in the London Gazette. If thereafter a gazetted man did not surrender within 40 days, he was automatically sentenced to death, and anyone turning in such a man was entitled to a reward of £500. This is the Act against which to set the savage and bestial actions of the Kent and Sussex gangs. The climax came in 1749 and 1750 when the Hawkhurst and Groombridge gangs were finally broken up. The Duke of Richmond, who had conducted a personal campaign against these villains, was able to report that in two years 35 smugglers had been executed, 8 had died in gaol, one had drowned and another been pardoned.
Though violence and bloodshed continued as late as the 1830s, it was never again on the same scale. The full severities of the Smuggling Act of 1746 had been introduced for an experimental period of seven years, and later legislation softened its provisions. By 1782, when Britain had been brought low by the War of American Independence, an Act of Oblivion was proclaimed. This allowed any smuggler who could find one landsman and one seaman to serve the country, to commute a penalty up to £500. And for two landsmen and two seamen he could go free of any penalty, however great! But the net was tightening around the smuggling fraternity, and a scale of rewards for their capture presently evolved. In mercenary fashion, a smuggler who defected to the Revenue service was known as a ten shilling man (since this was his weekly pay), while one handed over to the authorities earned his captor £20.
Meanwhile the struggle against the sea smugglers assumed greater importance. Both the Customs and the Excise now maintained patrol vessels, and private individuals were encouraged to build and sail ships under contract to the Board of Customs. The incentive, once again, was prize money, and William Arnold, Collector of Customs at Cowes and father of the famous school headmaster, was one who took up this challenge. By 1784 the number of Revenue cruisers had risen to 44, crewed by over a thousand men, the largest ship being about 200 tons. Naval vessels played an increasing role against the smugglers, and by 1786 naval officers had powers to arrest and search suspect craft. By this time men in the Revenue service could claim immunity from the press gangs, and a scale of compensation for injury had been worked out. (£10 was paid for the loss of a hand or foot!) During the long wars with France some Revenue vessels were withdrawn to do battle against French privateers; not to be outdone, the captains of large smuggling ships took out Letters of Marque and became privateers in their turn!
The fight against smuggling gained ground slowly after 1800, as measures intended to thwart Napoleon destroyed the privacy of many favourite landing places. Barracks, signal stations and Martello Towers lined the Kent and Sussex coasts, and with the completion of the Royal Military Canal in 1806, the smuggling beaches of Romney Marsh were effectively cut off from their hinterland. In 1809 the Preventive Waterguard was established. Thereafter boat crews, under the command of a Boatsitter, rowed nightly patrols along each stretch of coast, and the first Watch Houses were built to accommodate these men, recruited from outside the area to avoid collusion with local smugglers. The Riding Officers were still retained as a Landguard; indeed in Kent and Sussex their patrols continued until after 1850.
The real change came after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, and the return home of some 250,000 soldiers and sailors. Many turned to smuggling in the absence of alternative employment, but in 1816 Captain McCulloch put to his masters at the Admiralty proposals for establishing a Coast Blockade. This scheme was initially tried out along the Kent coast between the North and South Forelands, under the control of McCulloch from HMS Ganymede at Deal. It was soon extended to all the coasts from Sheerness round to Beachy Head. By 1824 a total of 2784 men were employed in making nightly patrols, and the Coast Blockade was further extended to Chichester. Groups of naval seamen under a naval lieutenant were based either in Martello Towers or in Watch Houses built at intervals of two or three miles along the vulnerable coasts. The seamen disliked their task and were frequently offered bribes to allow goods to be run. Several fell to their deaths from the cliffs and others were killed or injured in fights with the smugglers. Among the more positive aspects of the system were early attempts to rescue people by life-saving apparatus. Another rescue in 1824 concerned a cargo of apples brought ashore from a wreck near Beachy Head, and later sold in Newhaven!
Meanwhile a national Coast Guard had been established in 1821 to patrol the coasts not protected by the Coast Blockade, and in 1831 this service took over from the Blockade in Kent and Sussex when the latter was disbanded. Experience had now shown the most effective means of control. Some Coastguards served in Revenue cutters at sea, and others manned a rowing guard offshore, but most were shore-based parties patrolling a regular beat along the coast. The men were encouraged to seize the smugglers rather than the contraband. From the beginning the service was under naval command, though responsible to the Board of Customs, and it eventually became in effect a naval reserve. Recruits were based away from their home area, and the familiar Coastguard cottages were built as a result. The Coastguard had become a uniformed and disciplined force, and as smuggling declined, the service became increasingly involved in rescue and livesaving work.
After 1820 the smugglers had to resort to bribery and every sort of deception to land their goods. Tubs of spirit were sunk offshore, to be grappled up later with oysters and crab pots. In the cat-and-mouse tactics which developed, tubs were towed in under the keel of a boat, in a canvas tube behind it, or in carefully contrived rafts. They were camouflaged or hidden under other cargo, and fishing boats, packet boats and colliers were employed. Official reports from this period contain drawings of ingenious methods of concealment; boats had false bottoms and hidden compartments, hollow masts and even hollow oars. Rummaging a vessel came to involve very careful inspection and measurement, and dexterous use of a gimlet! Many of the tunnels and secret passages probably date from this period. One particularly discreditable episode involved the Tide Surveyor's boat at Deal. The six-man crew regularly used this to bring tubs ashore, and when they were caught doing so in July 1825, close to the Watch House, the consequences included demotion for the Collector at Deal.
The final blow came when the reduction of Customs and Excise duties made most smuggling unprofitable. As an official report of 1839 put it, 'smuggling as a well-organised system no longer exists'. Nevertheless it was thought prudent to retain a total of 1451 Coastguards along the Kent and Sussex shores during the 1840s.