Many of the ghost-stories of a hundred years and more ago originated in the smugglers’midnight escapades. It was, of course, entirely to their advantage that superstitious people who heard unaccountable sounds and saw indescribable sights should go off with the notion that supernatural beings were about, and resolve thenceforward to go those haunted ways no more. The mysterious “ghostly drummer” of Herstmonceux, who was often heard and seen by terrified rustics whose way led them past the ruined castle at night, was a confederate of the Hastings and Eastbourne smugglers, to whom those roofless walls and the hoary tombs of the adjoining churchyard were valuable storehouses. Rubbed with a little phosphorus, and parading those spots once in a way with his drum, they soon became shunned. The tombstones in Herstmonceux churchyard, mostly of the kind known as “altar-tombs,” had slabs which the smugglers easily made to turn on swivels; and from them issued at times spirits indeed, but not such as would frighten many men. The haunted character of Herstmonceux ceased with the establishment of the coastguard in 1831, and the drummer was heard to drum no more.
The churchyards of the Sussex coast and its neighbourhood still bear witness to the fatal affrays between excisemen and smugglers that marked those times; and even far inland may be found epitaphs on those who fell, breathing curses and Divine vengeance on the persons who brought them to an untimely end. Thus at Tandridge, Surrey, near Godstone, may be seen a talltombstone beside the south porch of the church, to one Thomas Todman, aged thirty-one years, who was shot dead in a smuggling affray in 1781. Here follow the lamentable verses, oddities of grammar, spelling, and punctuation duly preserved:
Thou Shall do no Murder, nor Shalt thou Stealare the Commands Jehovah did Revealbut thou O Wretch, Without fear or dreadof Thy Tremendous Maker Shot me deadAmidst my strength my sins forgiveAs I through Boundless Mercyhope to live.
Thou Shall do no Murder, nor Shalt thou Stealare the Commands Jehovah did Revealbut thou O Wretch, Without fear or dreadof Thy Tremendous Maker Shot me deadAmidst my strength my sins forgiveAs I through Boundless Mercyhope to live.
The prudery of some conscientious objector to the word “wretch” has caused it to be almost obliterated.
Tandridge church
At Patcham, near Brighton, the weatherworn epitaph on the north side of the church to Daniel Scales may still with difficulty be deciphered:
Sacred to the memory ofDaniel Scaleswho was unfortunately shot on Thursday evening,November 7th 1796Alas! swift flew the fatal lead,Which piercèd through the young man’s headHe instant fell, resigned his breath,And closed his languid eyes in death.All you who do this stone draw near,Oh! pray let fall the pitying tear.From this sad instance may we all,Prepare to meet Jehovah’s call.
Sacred to the memory ofDaniel Scaleswho was unfortunately shot on Thursday evening,November 7th 1796
Alas! swift flew the fatal lead,Which piercèd through the young man’s headHe instant fell, resigned his breath,And closed his languid eyes in death.All you who do this stone draw near,Oh! pray let fall the pitying tear.From this sad instance may we all,Prepare to meet Jehovah’s call.
Daniel Scales was one of a desperate smuggling gang, who had had many narrow escapes, but was at last shot through the head.
Again, at Westfield, Sussex, not far from Rye, may be found an old stone, rapidly going to decay, bearing some lines to the memory of a smuggler named Moon:
“In Memory of John Moon, who was deprived of life by a base man, on the 20th of June 1809, in the 28th year of his age.’Tis mine to-day to moulder in the earth. . . .”
“In Memory of John Moon, who was deprived of life by a base man, on the 20th of June 1809, in the 28th year of his age.
’Tis mine to-day to moulder in the earth. . . .”
The rest is not now readable.
Among the many tragical incidents of the smuggling era was the affray aboard a fishing-smack off Hastings in March 1821, in which a fisherman named Joseph Swain, supposed by the blockading officers of the preventive force to be a smuggler, was killed. Fishing-boats and their crews were, as a matter of course, searched by these officials; but the boat boarded by them on this occasion belonged to Swain, who denied having any contraband goods aboard and refused to permit the search. So strenuous a refusal as Swain offered would seem, in those times, of itself sufficient evidence of the presence of smuggled articles, and the boarders persisted. A sailor among them, George England by name, pressed forward to the attack, and Swain seized his cutlass and tore it out of his hand; whereupon England drew a pistol and fired at Swain, who instantly fell dead.
An epitaph in the churchyard of All Saints, Hastings, bears witness to this incident:
Tombstone at Tandridge
This StoneSacred to the memory ofJoseph Swain, Fishermanwas erected at the expence ofthe members of the friendlySociety of Hastingsin commiseration of his cruel anduntimely death and as a record ofthe public indignation at the need-lefs and sanguinary violence ofwhich he was the unoffending VictimHe was shot by Geo. England, oneof the Sailors employ’d in the Coastblockade service in open day on the13th March 1821 and almost instantlyexpir’d, in the twenty ninth Year ofhis age, leaving a Widow and fivesmall children to lament his lofs.
This StoneSacred to the memory ofJoseph Swain, Fishermanwas erected at the expence ofthe members of the friendlySociety of Hastings
in commiseration of his cruel anduntimely death and as a record ofthe public indignation at the need-lefs and sanguinary violence ofwhich he was the unoffending VictimHe was shot by Geo. England, oneof the Sailors employ’d in the Coastblockade service in open day on the13th March 1821 and almost instantlyexpir’d, in the twenty ninth Year ofhis age, leaving a Widow and fivesmall children to lament his lofs.
England was subsequently put on his trial for wilful murder at Horsham, and was sentenced to death, but afterwards pardoned.
In short, in one way and another, much good blood and a great quantity of the most excellent spirits were spilt and let run to waste, along the coasts.
The affair of theBadgerrevenue cutter and theVre Brodiers, orFour Brothers, smuggling lugger was the next exciting event. It happened on January 13th, 1823, and attracted a great deal of attention at the time, not only on account of the severe encounter at sea, but from the subsequent trial of the crew of the smuggler. TheFour Brotherswas a Folkestone boat, and her crew of twenty-six were chiefly Folkestone men. She was a considerable vessel, having once been aFrench privateer, and was, as a privateer had need to be, a smart, easily handled craft, capable of giving the go-by to most other vessels. She carried four six-pound carronades. In constant commission, her crew pouched a pound a week wages, with an additional ten guineas for each successful run.
On January 12th, of this momentous voyage, she sailed from Flushing with over one hundred tons of leaf-tobacco aboard, snugly packed for convenience of carriage in bales of 60 lb., and carried also a small consignment of brandy and gin, contained in 50 half-ankers, and 13 chests of tea—all destined for the south of Ireland. Ship and cargo were worth some £11,000; so it is sufficiently evident that her owners were in a considerable way of business of the contraband kind.
At daybreak on the morning of January 13th, when off Dieppe and sailing very slowly, in a light wind, the crew of theFour Brothersfound themselves almost upon what they at first took to be French fishing-boats, and held unsuspiciously on her course. Suddenly, however, one of them ran a flag smartly up her halliards and fired a gun across the bows of theFour Brothers, as a signal to bring her to. It was the revenue cutterBadger.
Unfortunately for the smuggler, she was carrying a newly stepped mainmast, and under small sail only, and accordingly, in disobeying the summons and attempting to get away, she was speedily outsailed.
The smuggler, unable to get away, hoisted the Dutch colours and opened the fight that took place by firing upon theBadger, which immediately returned it. For two hours this exchange of shots was maintained. Early in the encounter William Cullum, seaman, was killed aboard theBadger, and Lieutenant Nazer, in command, received a shot from a musket in the left shoulder. One man of theFour Brotherswas killed outright, and nine wounded, but the fight would have continued had not theBadgersailed into the starboard quarter of the smuggler, driving her bowsprit clean through her adversary’s mainsail. Even then the smuggler’s crew endeavoured to fire one of her guns, but failed.
The commander of theBadgerthereupon called upon theFour Brothersto surrender; or, according to his own version, the smugglers themselves called for quarter; and the mate and some of the cutter’s men went in a boat and received their submission, and sent them prisoners aboard theBadger. The smugglers claimed that they had surrendered only on condition that they should have their boats and personal belongings and be allowed to go ashore; but it seems scarce likely the Lieutenant could have promised so much. TheFour Brotherswas then taken into Dover Harbour and her crew sent aboard theSevernman-o’-war and kept in irons in the cockpit. Three of her wounded died there. The others, after a short interval, were again put aboard theBadgerand taken up the Thames toimprisonment on the Tower tender for a further three or four days. Thence they were removed, all handcuffed and chained, in a barge and committed to the King’s Bench Prison. At Bow Street, on the following day, they were all formally committed for trial, and then remitted to the King’s Bench Prison for eleven weeks, before the case came on.
On Friday, April 25th, 1823, the twenty-two prisoners were arraigned in the High Court of Admiralty; Marinel Krans, master of theFour Brothers, and his crew, nearly all of whom bore Dutch names, being charged with wilfully and feloniously firing on the revenue cutterBadger, on January 13th, 1823, on the high seas, about eight miles off Dungeness, within the jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty of England.
Mr. Brougham, afterwards Lord Brougham, defended, the defence being that theFour Brotherswas a Dutch vessel, owned at Flushing, and her crew Dutchmen. A great deal of very hard swearing went towards this ingenious defence, for the crew, it is hardly necessary to say, were almost all English. At least one witness for the prosecution was afraid to appear in consequence of threats made by prisoners’ friends, and an affidavit was put in to that effect. It appeared, in the evidence given by the commander of theBadgerand other witnesses for the prosecution, that the prisoners all spoke excellent English at the time of the capture, and afterwards; but they, singularly enough, understood little or nonewhen in court, and had to be communicated with through the agency of an interpreter.
In summing up, Mr. Justice Parke said the crime for which the prisoners were tried was not murder, but was a capital offence. Two things, if found by the jury, would suffice to acquit the prisoners. The first was that no part of the vessel which they navigated belonged to any subject of His Majesty; the other that one half of the crew were not His Majesty’s subjects. For if neither of these facts existed, His Majesty’s ship had no right to fire at their vessel. But if the jury believed that any part of the vessel was British property, or that one half of her crew were British subjects, then His Majesty’s shipBadger, under the circumstances that had been proved, being on her duty, and having her proper colours flying, was justified in boarding their vessel; and their making resistance by firing at theBadgerwas a capital offence. The reason for the evidence respecting the distance of the vessels from the French coast being given was that, by the law of nations, ships of war were not, in time of peace, permitted to molest any vessel within one league of the coast of any other power.
The jury, after deliberating for two hours, returned a verdict of “Not Guilty” for all the prisoners, finding that the ship and cargo were wholly foreign property, and that more than one half the crew were foreigners. They were, accordingly, at once liberated, and returned toFolkestone in midst of great popular rejoicings. TheFour Brotherswas also released, and the commander of theBadgerhad the mortification of being obliged to escort her out of Dover harbour.
Dover town was, about this time, the scene of stirring events. One Lieutenant Lilburn, in command of a revenue cutter, had captured a smuggler, and had placed the crew in Dover gaol. As they had not offered armed resistance to the capture, their offence was not capital, but they were liable to service on board a man-o’-war—a fate they were most anxious to avoid. These imprisoned men were largely natives of Folkestone and Sandgate, and their relatives determined to march over the ten miles between those places and Dover, and, if possible, liberate them. When they arrived in Dover, and their intention became known, a crowd of fisherfolk and longshore people swarmed out of the Dover alley-ways and reinforced them. Prominent among them were the women, who, as ever in cases of popular tumult, proved themselves the most violent and destructive among the mob. Nothing less than the destruction of the gaol was decided upon, and the more active spirits, leaving others to batter in the walls, doors, and windows, climbed upon the roof, and from that vantage-point showered bricks and tiles upon the Mayor and the soldiers who had been called out. The Mayor, beset with tooth and claw by screeching women, who tore the Riot Act out of his hand, fled, and Lieutenant Lilburn exhorted the officerin charge of the military to fire upon the crowd, but he declined; and meanwhile the tradespeople and respectable inhabitants busied themselves in barricading their shops and houses.
“Run the Rascals through!”
The prisoners were triumphantly liberated, taken to a blacksmith’s, where their irons were knocked off, and then driven off in post chaises to Folkestone, whence they dispersed to their several hiding-places.
Romney was, about this time, the scene of another desperate affair, when an attempted seizure of contraband brought all the smugglers’ friends and relations out, in violent contest with the excise and a small party of marines in command of which was one Lieutenant Peat. A magistrate was sent for, who, amid a shower of stones, read the Riot Act. The Lieutenant hesitated to resort to extreme force, but one of the smugglers was eventually killed by him, in response to the magistrate’s order, in respect of one of the most violent of the crowd: Secure your prisoner, sir. Run the rascal through!
Fatal Affrays and Daring Encounters at Rye,Dymchurch,Eastbourne,Bo-Peep,and Fairlight—The Smugglers’ Route from Shoreham and Worthing into Surrey—The Miller’s Tomb-Langston Harbour—Bedhampton Mill
The’twenties of the nineteenth century formed a period especially rich in smuggling incidents, or perhaps seem so to do, because, with the growth of country newspapers, they were more fully reported, instead of being left merely the subject of local legend.
A desperate affray took place in Rye Harbour so late as May 1826, when a ten-oared smuggling galley, chased by a revenue guard-boat, ran ashore. The smugglers, abandoning their oars, opened fire upon the guard, but the blockade-men from the watch-house at Camber then arrived upon the scene and seized one of the smugglers; whereupon a gang of not fewer than two hundred armed smugglers, who had until that moment been acting as a concealed reserve, rushed violently from behind the sandhills, and commenced firing on the blockade-men, killingone and wounding another. They were, however, ultimately driven off, with the capture of their galley, but managed to carry off their wounded.
On another occasion, four or five smugglers were drowned whilst swimming the Military Canal, with tubs slung on their backs, at a point on Pett Level called “Pett Horse-race.” They had, in the dark, missed the spot where it was fordable. Romney Marsh, and the wide-spreading levels of Pett, Camber, Guilford, and Dunge Marsh had—as we have already seen, in the account of the owlers given in earlier pages—ever been the smugglers’ Alsatia.
The Rev. Richard Harris Barham, author of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” has placed upon record some of his meetings with smugglers in “this recondite region,” as he was pleased to style it; and his son, in the life he wrote of his father, adds to them. Barham, ordained in 1813, and given the curacy of Westwell, near Ashford, had not long to wait before being brought into touch with the lawless doings here. One of the desperate smugglers of the Marsh had been shot through the body in an encounter with the riding-officers, and fatally wounded. As he lay dying, Barham was brought to convey to him the last consolations of religion, and was startled when the smuggler declared there was no crime of which he had not been guilty.
“Murder is not to be reckoned among them, I hope,” exclaimed the not easily shocked clergyman.
“Too many of them!” was the startling response of the dying man.
In 1817 Barham was collated by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the adjoining livings of Warehorne and Snargate, the first-named situated on the verge of the marsh; the second situated, moist and forbidding, in the marsh itself. The winding road between these two villages crossed the then newly made Royal Military Canal by a bridge. Often, as the clergyman was returning, late at night, to his comfortable parsonage at Warehorne, he was met and stopped by some mysterious horsemen; but when he mentioned his name he was invariably allowed to proceed, and, as he did so, a long and silent company of mounted smugglers defiled past, each man with his led horse laden with tubs. The grey tower of Snargate church he frequently found, by the aroma of tobacco it often exhaled, instead of its customary and natural mustiness, to have been recently used as a store for smuggled bales of that highly taxed article.
TheCinque Ports Heraldof 1826 records the landing on a night in May, or in the early hours of the morning, of a considerable cargo of contraband hereabouts:
“A large party of smugglers had assembled in the neighbourhood of Dymchurch, and a boat laden (as is supposed) with tubs of spirits, being observed to approach the shore nearly opposite to Dymchurch, the smugglers instantly commenced cheering, and rushed upon the coast,threatening defiance to the sentinels of the blockade; who, perceiving such an overwhelming force, gave the alarm, when a party of marines, coming to their assistance, a general firing took place. The smugglers retreated into the marshes, followed by the blockade-men, and, from their knowledge of the ground, were indebted for their ultimate escape. We regret to state two of the blockade seamen were wounded; one severely in the arm, which must cause amputation, and the other in the face, by slug shots. There can be no doubt but that some of the smugglers must have been wounded, if not killed. One of their muskets was picked up loaded—abandoned, no doubt, by the bearer of it, on account of wounds. The boat, with her cargo, was obliged to put to sea again, without effecting a landing, and, notwithstanding the vigilance of Lieutenants Westbrook, Mudge, and McLeod, who were afloat in their galleys on the spot, from the darkness of the night, effected its escape. We have also heard that a run of five hundred tubs took place on the Sussex coast last week, not far from Hastings, the smugglers losing only eleven tubs. This was also effected by force, and with such a superiority in number that they completely overpowered the blockade force.”
“A large party of smugglers had assembled in the neighbourhood of Dymchurch, and a boat laden (as is supposed) with tubs of spirits, being observed to approach the shore nearly opposite to Dymchurch, the smugglers instantly commenced cheering, and rushed upon the coast,threatening defiance to the sentinels of the blockade; who, perceiving such an overwhelming force, gave the alarm, when a party of marines, coming to their assistance, a general firing took place. The smugglers retreated into the marshes, followed by the blockade-men, and, from their knowledge of the ground, were indebted for their ultimate escape. We regret to state two of the blockade seamen were wounded; one severely in the arm, which must cause amputation, and the other in the face, by slug shots. There can be no doubt but that some of the smugglers must have been wounded, if not killed. One of their muskets was picked up loaded—abandoned, no doubt, by the bearer of it, on account of wounds. The boat, with her cargo, was obliged to put to sea again, without effecting a landing, and, notwithstanding the vigilance of Lieutenants Westbrook, Mudge, and McLeod, who were afloat in their galleys on the spot, from the darkness of the night, effected its escape. We have also heard that a run of five hundred tubs took place on the Sussex coast last week, not far from Hastings, the smugglers losing only eleven tubs. This was also effected by force, and with such a superiority in number that they completely overpowered the blockade force.”
Barham meets the Smugglers
TheBrighton Gazette, of a few days later, contained the following:
“We have been favoured with some particulars of another recent attempt to work contraband goods a few miles eastward of Eastbourne,when it appears the coast blockade succeeded in taking a large boat and upwards of two hundred tubs. We are sorry to add much mischief has occurred, as on the following morning blood was observed near the spot. Two men, it is said, belonging to the boat are taken prisoners, and two of the blockade are reported to be much bruised and beaten, and it is also suspected some of the smugglers are seriously, if not mortally, wounded. The blockade in this instance behaved in the most humane manner, having received a regular volley from their opponents before their officers gave directions for them to fire. We have just heard that five smugglers were killed in the affray.”
“We have been favoured with some particulars of another recent attempt to work contraband goods a few miles eastward of Eastbourne,when it appears the coast blockade succeeded in taking a large boat and upwards of two hundred tubs. We are sorry to add much mischief has occurred, as on the following morning blood was observed near the spot. Two men, it is said, belonging to the boat are taken prisoners, and two of the blockade are reported to be much bruised and beaten, and it is also suspected some of the smugglers are seriously, if not mortally, wounded. The blockade in this instance behaved in the most humane manner, having received a regular volley from their opponents before their officers gave directions for them to fire. We have just heard that five smugglers were killed in the affray.”
On a Sunday night towards the end of July 1826, during a run of smuggled goods at Dover, the smugglers shot dead a seaman of the preventive force named Morgan, for which no one was ever convicted.
A determined and blood-stained struggle took place at Bo-Peep at midnight of January 3rd, 1828. Bo-Peep was the name of a desolate spot situated midway between Hastings and Bexhill. The place is the same as that westernmost extension of St. Leonards now known by the eminently respectable—not to say imposing—name of “West Marina”; but in those times it was a shore, not indeed lonely (better for its reputation had it been so) but marked by an evil-looking inn, to which were attached still more evil-looking “Pleasure Gardens.” If throats were not, in fact,commonly cut in those times at Bo-Beep, the inn and its deplorable “Pleasure Gardens” certainly looked no fit, or safe, resort for any innocent young man with a pocketful of money jingling as he walked.
A Landing at Bo-Peep
On this occasion a lugger came in view off shore, when a party of smugglers armed, as usual, with “bats,”i.e.stout ash-poles, some six feet in length, rushed to the beach, landed the cargo, and made off with it, by various means, inland a distance of some three miles to Sidley Green. Here the coast blockade-men, some forty in number, came up with them.
The smugglers drew up in regular line-formation, and a desperate fight resulted. The smugglers fought with such determination and courage that the blockade-men were repulsed and one, Quartermaster Collins, killed. In the first volley fired by the blockade an old smuggler named Smithurst was killed; his body was found next morning, with his “bat” still grasped in his hands, the stout staff almost hacked to pieces by the cutlasses and bayonets of the blockade-men.
At the Spring Assizes held at Horsham, Spencer Whiteman, of Udimore, Thomas Miller, Henry Miller, John Spray, Edward Shoesmith, William Bennett, John Ford, and Stephen Stubberfield were indicted for assembling, armed, for purposes of smuggling, and were removed for trial to the Old Bailey, where, on April 10th, they all pleaded guilty; as did Whiteman, Thomas Miller, Spray, Bennett, and Ford, together withThomas Maynard and William Plumb, for a like offence on January 23rd, 1828, at Eastbourne. Sentence of death was passed on all, but was commuted to transportation. With three exceptions, they were young men, under thirty years of age.
Again, in broad daylight, in 1828, a lugger landed a heavy cargo of kegs on the open beach at Bo-Peep. No fewer than three hundred rustic labourers, who had been hired by the job, in the usual course, by the smugglers bold, assembled on the beach, and formed up two lines of guards while the landing of the tubs, and their loading into carts, on horses, or on men’s shoulders, was proceeding. If the preventive officers knew anything of what was toward that busy day they did not, at any rate, interfere; and small blame to them for the very elementary discretion they displayed. They had, as already shown, been too seriously mauled at an earlier date for them to push matters again to extremity.
On January 3rd, 1831, in Fairlight Glen, two miles east of Hastings, two smugglers, William Cruttenden and Joseph Harrod, were shot dead, and on February 22nd, 1832, at Worthing, when between two and three hundred smugglers had assembled on the beach, William Cowardson was shot dead, and several others were carried away wounded.
Still the tale was continued, for during a landing on January 23rd, 1833, at Eastbourne, the smugglers, who had assembled in large numbers,killed George Pett, chief boatman of the local preventive station, and ran their cargo safely. Several of both sides were wounded on this occasion, but no one among the smugglers was ever arrested.
The last fatal happening in this way along the Sussex coast appears to have been in the marshes at Camber Castle, on April 1st, 1838, when a poor fiddler of Winchelsea, named Thomas Monk, was shot in the course of a dispute over run goods, by the coastguard.
But we may quite easily have a surfeit of these brutal affrays, and it is better to dwell on a lighter note, to contemplate the audacity, and to admire the ingenuity and the resource often displayed by the smugglers in concealing their movements.
To especially single out any particular line of coast for pre-eminence in smuggling would be impossible. When every one smuggled, and every one else—owing to that well-understood human foible of buying in the cheapest market—supported smuggling by purchasing smuggled goods, every foreshore that did not actually present physical difficulties, or that was not exceptionally under excise and customs surveillance, was a free port, in a very special signification. The thickly peopled coast-line of Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire of our own time was then sparsely populated, and those shores that are now but thinly settled were in that age the merest aching wildernesses, where not only towns, but even villages and hamlets, were few and far apart. A coast-line such asthat at Brighton would seem to us to present certain obvious difficulties to the smuggler, but close at hand was the low-lying land of Shoreham, with its lagoon-like harbour, a very shy, secretive kind of place, to this day; while away to Worthing, and beyond it, stretched a waste of shingle-beach, running up to solitary pasture-lands that reached to the foot of the noble rampart of the South Downs. On these shores the free-traders landed their illegal imports with little interference, and their shore-going allies received the goods and took them inland, to London or to their intermediate storehouses in the country-side, very much at their leisure. Avoiding the much-travelled high-roads, and traversing the chalk-downs by unfrequented bridle-tracks, they went across the level Weald and past the Surrey border into that still lonely district running east and west for many miles, on the line of Leith Hill, Ewhurst, and Hindhead. There, along those wooded heights, whose solitary ways still astonish, with their remote aspect, the Londoner who by any chance comes to them, although but from thirty to thirty-five miles from the Bank of England in the City of London, you may still track, amid the pine-trees on the shoulders of the gorsy hills, or among the oaks that grow so luxuriantly in the Wealden clay, the “soft roads,” as the country folk call them, along which the smugglers, unmolested, carried their merchandise. On Ewhurst Hill stands a windmill, to which in those times the smugglers’ ways converged; andnear by, boldly perched on a height, along the sylvan road that leads from Shere to Ewhurst village, stood the “Windmill,” once the “New” inn, which had a double roof, utilised as a storehouse for clandestine kegs. A “Windmill” inn stands on the spot to-day, but it is a new building, the old house having unfortunately been burned down some two years since. Surveying the country from this spot, you have, on the one hand, almost precipitous hill-peaks, gorsy to their summits, and on the other a lovely dale, deeply embosomed in woods. The sub-soil here is a soft yellow sandstone, streaked with white sand, breaking out along the often hollow paths into miniature cliffs, in which the smugglers and their allies were not slow to scoop caverns and store part of their stock. We have already learnt how terrible these men could be to those who informed against them or made away with any of their property, and by direct consequence the goods thus stored were generally safe, either from the authorities or from the rustics, who had a very wholesome and well-founded dread of the smuggling bands. But they had a way of their own of letting these justly dreaded folk see that their stores were evident to some, and that silence was supposed to have a certain market value. Their way was just a delicate hint, which consisted in marking a tub or two with a chalk cross; and, sure enough, when the stock was removed, those chalk-marked tubs were left behind, with possibly, if the country-folk had been modest and thesmugglers were generous, a few others to keep them company.
Smuggler’s tracks near Ewhurst
An old brick-and-tile-hung farm, down below Ewhurst Hill, older than it looks, known as Barhatch, was in those times in possession of the Ticknor family; and still, in what was the old living-room, may be seen the inglenook, with its iron crane, marked “John Ticknor, 1755.” The Barhatch woods were often used by smugglers, and the Ticknors never had any occasion to purchase spirits, because, at not infrequent intervals, when the household arose, and the front door was opened in the morning, a keg would be found deposited on the steps: a complimentary keg, for the use of the Ticknor property and the discretion of the Ticknor tongue.
One of the choicest landing-places along the Sussex coast must undoubtedly have been just westward of Worthing, by Goring, where the shore is yet secluded, and is even now not readily come at by good roads. In a line with it is Highdown Hill, a rounded hump of the Downs, rising to a height of two hundred and ninety-nine feet, two miles inland; a spot famed in all guidebook lore of this neighbourhood as the site of the “Miller’s Tomb.” This miller, whose real business of grinding corn seems to have been supplemented by participation in the stern joys of illegal importation, was one John Olliver. His mill was situated on this hill-top: a very remote spot, even now, arrived at only along lanes in which mud and water plentifully await the explorer’scautious foot, and where brambles and intrudant twigs, currycomb his whiskers, if he have such.
The Miller’s Tomb
John Olliver, miller, was an eighteenth-century eccentric, whose morbid fancy for having his coffin made early in life, and wheeled under his bed every night, was not satisfied until he had also built himself a tomb on the hill-top, on a twelve-foot square plot of ground granted him by the landowner, one W. W. Richardson, in 1766: a tomb on which he could with satisfaction look every day. Yet he was not the dull, dispirited man one might for these things suppose; and Pennant, in hisTour in Sussex, is found saying, “I am told he is a stout, active, cheerful man.” And then comes this significant passage. “Besides his proper trade he carries on a very considerable one in smuggled goods.” Let us pause a moment to reflect upon the impudent public manner in which John Olliver must have carried on his smuggling activities. To this impudence he added also figures on his house-top, representing a miller filling a sack and a smuggler chased by an exciseman with a drawn sword; after the exciseman coming a woman with a broom, belabouring him about the head. The tomb the miller had built for eventual occupation by his body was in the meanwhile generally occupied by spirits—not the spirits of the dead, but sucheaux de vieas hollands and cognac; and he himself was not laid here for many years, for he lived to be eighty-four years of age, and died in 1793. He had long been widely known as an eccentric,and thousands came to his funeral on the unconsecrated spot. Here the tomb, of the altar-tomb type, stands to this day, kept in excellent repair, and the lengthy inscriptions repainted; at whose costs and charges I know not. A small grove of trees almost entirely encircles it. At one end is a gruesome little sculpture representing Death, as a skeleton, laying a hand upon an affrighted person, and asking him, “Whither away so fast?” and at the other end are the following lines:
Why fhould my fancy anyone offendWhofe good or ill does not on it depend(A generous gift) on which my Tomb doth ftandThis is the only fpot that I have chofeWherein to take my lafting long repofeHere in the drift my body lieth downYou’ll fay it is not confecrated ground,I grant yefame; but where shall we e’er findThe fpot that e’er can purify the mind?Nor to the body any luftre give.This more depends on what a life we liveFor when yetrumpet fhall begin to found’Twill not avail where’er yeBody’s found.Blefsed are they and all who in the Lord the Saviour dieTheir bodief wait Redemption day,And fleep in peace where’er they lay.
Why fhould my fancy anyone offendWhofe good or ill does not on it depend(A generous gift) on which my Tomb doth ftandThis is the only fpot that I have chofeWherein to take my lafting long repofeHere in the drift my body lieth downYou’ll fay it is not confecrated ground,I grant yefame; but where shall we e’er findThe fpot that e’er can purify the mind?Nor to the body any luftre give.This more depends on what a life we liveFor when yetrumpet fhall begin to found’Twill not avail where’er yeBody’s found.Blefsed are they and all who in the Lord the Saviour dieTheir bodief wait Redemption day,And fleep in peace where’er they lay.
On the upper slab are a number of texts and highly moral reflections.
As for the Selsey Peninsula, and the district of flat lands and oozy creeks south of Chichester and on to Portsmouth, Nature would seem almost to have constructed the entire surroundings with the especial objects of securing the smugglers andconfounding the customs. Here Sussex merges into Hampshire.
Langston Harbour
Among the many smuggling nooks along the Hampshire coast, Langston Harbour was prominent, forming, as it does, an almost landlocked lagoon, with creeks ramifying toward Portsea Island on one side and Hayling Island on the other. There still stands on a quay by the waterside at Langston the old “Royal Oak” inn, which was a favourite gathering-place of the “free-traders” of these parts, neighboured by a ruined windmill of romantic aspect, to which no stories particularly attach, but whose lowering, secretive appearance aptly accentuates the queer reputation of the spot.
The reputation of Langston Harbour was such that an ancient disused brig, theGriper, was permanently stationed here, with the coastguard housed aboard, to keep watch upon the very questionable goings and comings of the sailor-folk and fishermen of the locality. And not only these watery folk needed watching, but also the people of Havant and the oyster-fishers of Emsworth. Here, too, just outside Havant, at the village of Bedhampton, upon the very margin of the mud, stands an eighteenth-century mill. It would have been profitable for the coastguard to keep an eye upon this huge old corn-milling establishment, if the legends be at all true that are told of it. A little stream, issuant from the Forest of Bere, at this point runs briskly into the creek, after having been penned up and madeto form a mill-leat. It runs firstly, moat-like, in front of a charming old house, formerly the miller’s residence, and then to the great waterwheel, and the mill itself, a tall, four-square building of red brick, not at all beautiful, but with a certain air of reserve all the more apparent, of course, because it is now deserted, bolted, and barred: steam flour-mills of more modern construction having, it may be supposed, successfully competed with its antiquated ways. But at no time, if we are to believe local legend, did Bedhampton Mill depend greatly upon its milling for prosperity. It was rather a smugglers’ storehouse, and the grinding of corn was, if not altogether an affectation, something of a by-product. You may readily understand the working of the contraband business, under these specious pretences, beneath the very noses of coastguard and excise; how goods brought up the creek and stored in this capacious hold could, without suspicion incurred, be taken out of store, loaded in among the flour-sacks in the miller’s wagons, and delivered wherever desired. Of course, that being the mill’s staple business, it is quite readily understood that when the business of smuggling declined such milling as went forward here did by no means suffice to keep the great building going.
The house, which appears now to be let as a country residence for the summer to persons who neither know nor care anything about the story of the place, has an odd inscription on its gable:
The gift of Mr. GeorgeJudge at StubbingtonFarm at Portsea Hard, inMemory of his very good Friend,Mr. George Champ,Senr. 1742.
The gift of Mr. GeorgeJudge at StubbingtonFarm at Portsea Hard, inMemory of his very good Friend,Mr. George Champ,Senr. 1742.
That sporadic cases of smuggling long continued in these districts, as elsewhere, after the smuggling era was really ended, we may see from one of the annual reports issued by the Commissioners of Customs. The following incident occurred in 1873, and is thus officially described:
“On the top of a bank rising directly from highwater-mark in one of the muddy creeks of Southampton Water stands a wooden hut commanding a full view of it, and surrounded by an ill-cultivated garden. There are houses near, but the hut does not belong to them, and appears to have been built for no obvious purpose. An old smuggler was traced to this hut, and from that time, for nearly two months, the place was watched with great precaution, until at midnight, on May 28th, two men employed by us being on watch, a boat was observed coming from a small vessel about a mile from the shore. The boat, containing four men, stopped opposite the hut, landed one man and some bags, while the remainder of the crew took her some two hundred yards off, hauled her up, and then proceeded to the hut. One of our men was instantly despatched for assistance, while the other remained, watching. On his return with three policemen, the whole party went to the hut, where they foundtwo men on watch outside and four inside, asleep. A horse and cart were also found in waiting, the cart having a false bottom. The six men were secured and sent to the police-station; a boat was then procured, the vessel whence the men had come was boarded, and found to be laden with tobacco and spirits. The result was that the vessel, a smack of about fifteen tons, with eighty-five bales of leaf-tobacco, six boxes of Cavendish, with some cigars and spirits, was seized, and four of the persons concerned in the transaction convicted of the offence.”
Bedhampton Mill
East Coast Smuggling—Outrage at Beccles—A Colchester Raid—Canvey Island—Bradwell Quay—The East Anglian “Cart Gaps”—A Blakeney Story—Tragical Epitaph at Hunstanton—The Peddar’s Way
Thedoings of the Kentish and Sussex gangs entirely overshadow the annals of smuggling in other counties; and altogether, to the general reader, those two seaboards and the coasts of Devon and Cornwall stand out as typical scenes. But no part of our shores was immune; although the longer sea-passages to be made elsewhere of course stood greatly in the way of the “free-traders” of those less favoured regions. After Kent and Sussex, the east coast was probably the most favourable for smuggling. The distance across the North Sea might be greater and the passage often rough, but the low muddy shores and ramifying creeks of Essex and the sandy coastwise warrens of Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire, very sparsely inhabited, offered their own peculiar facilities for the shy and secretive trade.
Nor did the East Anglian smugglers displaymuch less ferocity when their interests were threatened, or their goods seized, than was shown by the yokels of those other counties. The stolid, ox-like rustics of the country-side there, as along the margin of the English Channel, were roused to almost incredible acts of brutality which do not seem to have been repeated in the West.
We do not find the hardy seafaring smugglers often behaving with the cold-blooded cruelty displayed, as a usual phenomenon, by the generally unemotional men of ploughed fields and rustic communities who took up the running and carried the goods inland from the water’s edge whither those sea-dogs had brought them. In the being of the men who dared tempestuous winds and waves there existed, as a rule, a more sportsmanlike and generous spirit. Something of the traditional heartiness inseparable from sea-life impelled them to give and take without the black blood that seethed evilly in the veins of the landsmen. The seamen, it seemed, realised that smuggling was a risk; something in the nature of any game of skill, into which they entered, with the various officers of the law naturally opposed to them; and when either side won, that was incidental to the game, and no enmity followed as the matter of course it was with their shore-going partners.
Perhaps these considerations, as greatly as the difference in racial characters, show us why the land-smugglers of the Home Counties should have been so criminal, while from the Devonand Cornish contrabandists we hear mostly of humorous passages.
The “Green Man,” Bradwell Quay
At Beccles, in Suffolk, for example, we find the record, in 1744, of an incident that smacks rather of the Hawkhurst type of outrage. Smugglers there pulled a man out of bed, whipped him, tied him naked on a horse, and rode away with their prisoner, who was never again heard of, although a reward of £50 was offered.
Colchester was the scene, on April 16th, 1847, of as bold an act as the breaking open of the custom-house at Poole. At two o’clock in the morning two men arrived at the quay at Hythe, by Colchester, and, with the story that they were revenue officers come to lodge a seizure of captured goods, asked to be shown the way to the custom-house. They had no sooner been shown it than there followed thirty smugglers, well armed with blunderbusses and pistols, who, with a heavy blacksmith’s hammer and a crowbar, broke open the warehouse, in which a large quantity of dutiable goods was stored. They were not molested in their raid, and went off with sixty oil-bags, containing 1514 lb. of tea that had been seized near Woodbridge Haven. No one dared interfere with them, and by six o’clock that morning they had proceeded as far as Hadleigh, from which point all trace of them was lost.
Canvey Island, in the estuary of the Thames, off Benfleet, with its quaint old Dutch houses, relics of the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuryHollanders who settled there and carried on a more than questionable business, was reputedly a nest of smugglers. The “Lobster Smack,” a quaint old weatherboarded inn built just within the old earthen sea-wall for which those Dutchmen were responsible, and standing somewhat below the level of high water, has legends of smuggling that naturally do not lose by age or repetition.
The Blackwater estuary, running up from the Essex coast to Maldon, offered peculiar facilities for smuggling; and that, perhaps, is why a coastguard vessel is still stationed at Stansgate, half way along its length, opposite Osea Island. At the mouth of the Blackwater there branch other creeks and estuaries leading past Mersea Island to Colchester; and here, looking out upon a melancholy sea, and greatly resembling a barn, stands the ancient chapel of St. Peter-upon-the-Wall, situated in one of the most lonely spots conceivable, on what were, ages ago, the ramparts of the Roman station ofOthona. It has long been used as a barn, and was in smuggling times a frequent rendezvous of the night-birds who waged ceaseless war with the Customs.
Two miles onward, along sea and river-bank, Bradwell Quay is reached, where the “Green Man” inn in these times turns a hospitable face to the wayfarer, but was in the “once upon a time” apt to distrust the casual stranger, for it was a house “ower sib” with the free-traders, and Pewit Island, just off the quay, a desolate islet almost awash, formed an admirable emergencystore. The old stone-floored kitchen of the “Green Man,” nowadays a cool and refreshing place in which to take a modest quencher on a summer’s day, still remains very much what it was of old; and the quaint fireplace round which the sly longshore men of these Essex creeks foregathered on those winter nights when work was before them keeps its old-time pot-racks and hooks.
Kitchen of the “Green Man”
Among the very numerous accounts of smuggling affrays we may exhume from the musty files of old newspapers, we read of the desperate encounter in which Mr. Toby, Supervisor of Excise, lost an eye in contending with a gang of smugglers at Caister, near Yarmouth, in April 1816; which shows—if we had occasion to show—that the East Anglian could on occasion be as ferocious as the rustics of the south.
The shores of East Anglia we have already noted to be largely composed of wide-spreading sandy flats, in whose wastes the tracks of wild birds and animals—to say nothing of the deeply indented footmarks of heavily-laden men—are easily distinguished; and the chief problem of the free-traders of those parts was therefore often how to cover up the tracks they left so numerously in their passage across to the hard roads. In this resort the shepherds were their mainstay, and for the usual consideration,i.e.a keg of the “right stuff,” would presently, after the gang had passed, come driving their flocks along in the sandy trail they had left: completelyobliterating all evidences of a run of contraband goods having been successfully brought off.
Blakeney, on the Norfolk coast, is associated with one of the best, and most convincing, tales ever told of smuggling. This coast is rich in what are known as “cart gaps”: dips in the low cliffs, where horses and carts may readily gain access to the sea. These places were, of course, especially well watched by the preventive men, who often made a rich haul out of the innocent-looking farm-carts, laden with seaweed for manure, that were often to be observed being driven landwards at untimeous hours of night and early morn. Beneath the seaweed were, of course, numerous kegs. Sometimes the preventive men confiscated horses and carts, as well as their loads, and all were put up for sale. On one of these painful occasions the local custom-house officer, who knew a great deal more of the sea and its ways than he did of horses, was completely taken in by a farmer-confederate of the smugglers whose horses had been seized. The farmer went to make an offer for the animals, and was taken to see them. The season of the year was the spring, when, as the poet observes, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love”—and when horses shed their coats. Up went the farmer to the nearest horse, and easily, of course, pulled out a handful of hair. “Why,” said he, in the East Anglian way, “th’ poor brute hey gotten t’ mange, and all tudderuns ’ull ketch it, of yow baint keerful.” And then heexamined “tudderuns,” and behold! eachhadcaught it: and so he bought the lot for five pounds. That same night every horse was back in its own stable.
Searching in graveyards is not perhaps the most exhilarating of pastimes or employments, but it, at any rate, is likely to bring, on occasion, curious local history to light. Not infrequently, in the old churchyards of seaboard parishes, epitaphs bearing upon the story of smuggling may be found.
Among these often quaint and curious, as well as tragical, relics, that in Hunstanton churchyard, on the coast of Norfolk, is pre-eminent, both for its grotesquely ungrammatical character and for the history that attaches to the affair:
In Memory of William Webb, late of the 15th Lt. D’ns,who was shot from his Horse by a party of Smugglerson the 26 of Sepr. 1784.I am not dead, but sleepeth here,And when the Trumpet Sound I will appear.Four balls thro’ me Pearced there way:Hard it was. I’d no time to prayThis stone that here you Do seeMy Comerades erected for the sake of me.
In Memory of William Webb, late of the 15th Lt. D’ns,who was shot from his Horse by a party of Smugglerson the 26 of Sepr. 1784.
I am not dead, but sleepeth here,And when the Trumpet Sound I will appear.Four balls thro’ me Pearced there way:Hard it was. I’d no time to pray
This stone that here you Do seeMy Comerades erected for the sake of me.
Two smugglers, William Kemble and Andrew Gunton, were arraigned for the murder of this dragoon and an excise officer. The jury, much to the surprise of every one, for the guilt of the prisoners was undoubted, brought in a verdict of “Not guilty”; whereupon Mr. Murphy, counsel for the prosecution, moved for a new trial, observing that if a Norfolk jury weredetermined not to convict persons guilty of the most obvious crimes, simply because, as smugglers, they commanded the sympathy of the country people, there was an end of all justice.
A second jury was forthwith empanelled and the evidence repeated, and after three hours’ deliberation the prisoners were again found “Not guilty,” and were, in accordance with that finding, acquitted and liberated.
It is abundantly possible that the foregoing incident had some connection with that locally favourite smugglers’ route from the Norfolk coast inland, the Peddar’s Way, which runs a long and lonely course from Holme, near Hunstanton, right through Norfolk into Suffolk, and is for the greater part of its length a broad, grassy track, romantically lined and overhung with fine trees. Such ancient ways, including the many old drove-roads in the north, never turnpiked, made capital soft going, and, rarely touching villages or hamlets, were of a highly desirable, secretive nature. The origin of the Peddar’s, or Padder’s, Way is still in dispute among antiquaries, some seeing in it a Roman road, others conceiving it to be a prehistoric track; but the broad, straight character of it seems to point to this long route having been Romanised. Its great age is evident on many accounts, not least among them being that the little town of Watton, near but not on it, is named from this prehistoric road, “Way-town,” while that county division, the hundred, is the Hundred of Wayland.
The Dorset and Devon Coasts—Epitaphs at Kinson and Wyke—The “Wiltshire Moon-Rakers”—Epitaph at Branscombe—The Warren and “Mount Pleasant” Inn
Notso much smuggling incident as might be expected is found along the coasts of Dorset and Devon, but that is less on account of any lack of smuggling encounters in those parts than because less careful record has been kept of them. An early epitaph on a smuggler, to be seen in the churchyard of Kinson, just within the Dorset boundary, in an out-of-the-way situation at the back of Bournemouth, in a district formerly of almost trackless heaths, will sufficiently show that smuggling was active here:
To the memory of Robert Trotman, late of Rowd, inthe county of Wilts, who was barbarously murderedon the shore near Poole, the 24th March, 1765.A little tea, one leaf I did not steal,For guiltless bloodshed I to God appeal;Put tea in one scale, human blood in t’otherAnd think what ’tis to slay a harmless brother.
To the memory of Robert Trotman, late of Rowd, inthe county of Wilts, who was barbarously murderedon the shore near Poole, the 24th March, 1765.
A little tea, one leaf I did not steal,For guiltless bloodshed I to God appeal;Put tea in one scale, human blood in t’otherAnd think what ’tis to slay a harmless brother.
This man was shot in an encounter with the revenue officers. He was one of a gang that usedthe church here as a hiding-place. The upper stage of the tower and an old altar-tomb were the favourite receptacles for their “free-trade” merchandise.
Trotman, it will be observed, was of Rowd, or Rowde, in Wiltshire, two miles from Devizes, and was thus one of the “Wiltshire Moonrakers,” whose descriptive title is due to smuggling history. Among the nicknames conferred upon the natives of our various shires and counties none is complimentary. They figure forth undesirable physical attributes, as when the Lincolnshire folk, dwellers among the fens, are styled “Yellow-bellies,”i.e.frogs; or stupidity,e.g.“Silly Suffolk”; or humbug—for example, “Devonshire Crawlers.” “Wiltshire Moonrakers” is generally considered to be a term of contempt for Wilts rustic stupidity; but, rightly considered, it is nothing of the kind. It all depends how you take the story which gave rise to it. The usual version tells us how a party of travellers, crossing a bridge in Wiltshire by night when the harvest moon was shining, observed a group of rustics raking in the stream, in which the great yellow disc of the moon was reflected. The travellers had the curiosity to ask them what it was they raked for in such a place and at so untimeous an hour; and were told they were trying to get “that cheese”—the moon—out of the water. The travellers went on their way amused with the simplicity of these “naturals,” and spread the story far and wide.
But these apparently idiotic clod-hoppers were wiser in their generation than commonly supposed, and were, in fact, smugglers surprised in the act of raking up a number of spirit-kegs that had been sunk in the bed of the stream until the arrival of a convenient season when they could with safety be removed. The travellers, properly considered, were really revenue officers, scouring the neighbourhood. This version of the story fairly throws the accusation of innocence and dunderheadedness back upon them, and clears the Wiltshire rural character from contempt. It should, however, be said that the first version of the story is generally told at the expense of the villagers of Bishop’s Cannings, near Devizes, who have long writhed under a load of ancient satirical narratives, reflecting upon a lack of common sense alleged to be their chief characteristic.
Many of the western smuggling stories are of a humorous cast, rather than of the dreadful blood-boltered kind that disgraces the history of the home counties. Here is a case in point. On the evening of Sunday, July 10th, 1825, as two preventive men were on the look-out for smugglers, near Lulworth in Dorset, the smugglers, to the number of sixty or seventy, curiously enough, found them instead, and immediately taking away their swords and pistols, carried them to the edge of the cliff and placed them with their heads hanging over the precipice; with the comfortable assurance that if they made the least noise, or gave alarm, they should be immediately thrown over.In the interval a smuggling vessel landed a “crop” of one hundred casks, which the shore-gang placed on their horses and triumphantly carried away. The prisoners were then removed from their perilous position, and taken into an adjoining field, where they were bound hand and foot, and left overnight. They were found the next morning by their comrades, searching for them.
There are several points in this true tale that suggest it to have been the original whence Mr. Thomas Hardy obtained the chief motive of his short story,The Distracted Preacher.
We do not find consecutive accounts of smuggling on this wild coast of Dorset; but when the veil is occasionally lifted and we obtain a passing glimpse, it is a picturesque scene that is disclosed. Thus, a furious encounter took place under St. Aldhelm’s Head, in 1827, between an armed band of some seventy or eighty smugglers and the local preventive men, who numbered only ten, but gave a good account of themselves, two smugglers being reported killed on the spot, and many others wounded, while some of the preventive force, during the progress of the fight, quietly slipped to where the smugglers’ boats had been left and made off with the goods stored in them.
“The smugglers are armed,” says a report of this affair, “with swingels, like flails, with which they can knock people’s brains out”; and proceeds to say that weapons of this kind, oftendelivering blows from unexpected quarters, are extremely difficult to fight against.
The captain of this gang was a man named Lucas, who kept an inn called the “Ship,” at Woolbridge; and, information being laid, Captain Jackson, the local inspector of customs, went with an assistant and a police officer from London to his house at two o’clock in the morning and roused him.
“Who’s there?” asked Lucas.
“Only I, Mrs. Smith’s little girl. I want a drop of brandy for mother,” returned the inspector, in a piping voice.
“Very well, my dear,” said the landlord, and opened the door; to find himself in the grasp of the police-officer. Henry Fooks, of Knowle, and three others of the gang, were then arrested; and the whole five committed to Dorchester gaol.
The wild coast of Dorset, if we except Poole Harbour and the cliffs of Purbeck, yields little to the inquirer in this sort, although there can be no doubt of smuggling having been in full operation here. Jack Rattenbury, whose story is told on another page, could doubtless have rubricated this shore of many cliffs and remote hamlets with striking instances; and not a cliff-top but must have frequently exhibited lights to “flash the lugger off,” what time the preventive men were on the prowl; and no lonely strand but must have witnessed the smugglers, when the coast was again clear, rowing outand “creeping for the crop” that had been sunk and buoyed, or “put in the collar,” as the saying went.
A relic of these for the most part unrecorded and forgotten incidents is found in the epitaph at Wyke, near Weymouth, on one William Lewis:
Sacred to the memoryofWILLIAM LEWIS,who was killed by a shotfrom thePigmySchooner21st April 1822, aged 53 years.
Sacred to the memoryofWILLIAM LEWIS,
who was killed by a shotfrom thePigmySchooner21st April 1822, aged 53 years.