Historic Smuggling & Smugglers

[Yithian]

I received this as a Christmas gift and have only just got around to opening it up. It seems to be just the kind of history book I like, with several lengthy extracts from old and hard to acquire texts. Disappointingly, the FTMB seems to be showing little in the way of results for a search on smuggling, with only tangential discussion on the topics of tunnels and inns.



Feel free to contribute sources and observations here if you have them.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

Oooh my neck o' the woods!

 

[rynner2]

HM Coastguard was originally created to counter smuggling. Only when the war against smuggling was mainly over did the CG evolve into its modern SAR role. So to find stories about smuggling, look at the early history of the CG.

eg several links here may be of interest: http://www.coastguardsofyesteryear.org/weblinks.php?cat_id=1

Also here: http://hansonclan.co.uk/coastguards_1.htm

And of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_Majesty's_Coastguard#History

And on another thread I posted:
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/forgotten-history.37271/page-45#post-1376692

etc...

 

[Yithian]

I will shortly replace the photographs that were snatched from the original post of this thread by the PhotoBucket Cash Grab, but in the meantime I enoyed this little vignette as an example of the risks of crossing the 'Owlers' of the Seventeenth Century.

Edit: images back, should be readable if expanded to full size.

 

[Mrs Migs]

I will shortly replace the photographs that were snatched from the original post of this thread by the PhotoBucket Cash Grab, but in the meantime I enoyed this little vignette as an example of the risks of crossing the 'Owlers' of the Seventeenth Century.

View attachment 9031

Edit: images back, should be readable if expanded to full size.

My 7x great grandfather was a smuggler, on the Isle of Wight. He was shot, accidentally, by the coastguard when he failed to pull over (whatever the nautical equivalent is.... heave to?) one dark night... his family insisted it it was a case of mistaken identity, and that he was pursuing his lawful job as a ferryman. There were, however, something like 60 barrels of brandy fished out of the surrounding water.
7x great grandfather was buried with a fancy memorial. The crew of the coastguard cutter were apparently sent to the Caribbean to work, to avoid reprisals.

The poem at the bottom reads
“All you that pass pray look and see
How soon my life was took from me
By those officers as you hear
Thy spilled my blood that was so dear.
But God is good, and just, and true
And will reward to each their due.”

The gravestone looks new, because we had it cleaned a few years back. It is original, however.

 

[Bullseye]

Blimey, where to start !. Being Hastings born and bred smuggling was not entirely unheard of around here.Historically,the Hawkhurst Gang were probably the main local lot,as well as the men of the Marsh (Romney). We had plenty of our own.Everyone was in on it.
In the 60's and 70's unscrupulous people would cast aspersions on the local fishermen saying they would meet their French and Dutch counterparts in the middle of the Channel and exchange hard earned cash in exchange for illicit exotic substances, can't believe people would have thought this was so...........70's and 80's also saw a very lucrative sideline in re-importing tobacco back into England from France. Friend of mine got stopped by the police for a minor traffic offence, which he hastily agreed to, he had the whole boot and back seats of his Ford Capri (covered over) full of contraband tobacco and fags (note for our colonial cousins,fags=cigarettes),lucky escape.
Fishing boats could'nt get away with it today (not that they ever did such things) look online you can see where every boat in the Channel is. Nowadays it's the "ethnically" owned mini-supermarts on every street that sell knock-off tobacco and fags and very dodgy spirits, alledgedly.
Sort of incedentally, many years ago a stoner I knew told me that once, early morning, when he was high on acid he flew across the Channel till he came across a fishing boat,reckons he could smell the bacon the fishermen were cooking for breakfast, who knows, he was convinced but he was a well known acidhead?.