At another port a vessel was actually discovered to have false bows.  One might wonder how it was that the officer ever found this out, but he was smart enough to measure the deck on the port side, after which he measured the ship below.  He found a difference of over a foot, and so he undertook a thorough search of the ship.  He first proceeded to investigate the forepeak, but he was unable to discover any entrance.  He therefore went to the hold, examined the bulkhead, and observed that the nails of the cleats on the starboard side had been drawn.  He proceeded to force off the cleats, whereupon one of the boards of the bulkhead fell down, and a quantity of East India silk handkerchiefs came tumbling out.  Needless to say, this proved a serious matter for the vessel’s skipper.

Sometimes too, cases used to come over from France containing carton boxes of artificial flowers.  These boxes, it was found, were fitted with false bottoms affording a space of not more than a quarter of an inch between the real bottom and the false.  But into this space was squeezed either a silk gauze dress or some parcels “very nicely stitched in,” containing dressed ostrich feathers.  The flowers were usually stitched down to the bottom of the boxes to prevent damage, so it was difficult to detect that there was any false bottom at all.  However, after this practice had been in vogue for some time it was discovered by the Revenue officers and the matter made generally known among the officials at all the ports, so that they could be on the alert for such ingenuity.

Sometimes when a Revenue officer was on her station she would come across a sailing craft, which would be found to have quite a considerable number of spirits in small casks together with a number of other prohibited goods.  If the master of such a craft were told by the cruiser’s officer that they would have to be seized as they were evidently about to be smuggled, the master would reply that they were nothing of the kind, but that whilst they were on the fishing grounds working their nets they happened to bring these casks up from the sinkers and warp which had kept them below water; or they had found these casks floating on the sea, and had no doubt been either lost or intentionally thrown overboard by some smuggling vessel while being chased by a Revenue cruiser.  It became a very difficult matter to ascertain under such circumstances whether the master were speaking the truth or the reverse, for it was not altogether rare for the kegs to be picked up by fishermen in the manner indicated.  So the only way out of this dilemma was for the commanders of the cruisers to bring such craft as the above to the nearest Custom House, where the master could be brought ashore and subjected to a cross-examination as to where they found these casks and what they proposed doing with them.