In the year 1829, the instructions were issued to the Coastguard.  Afloat, these applied to the commanders, mates, gunners, stewards, carpenters, mariners, and boys of the cruisers.  Ashore, they were applicable to the Chief Officers, Chief Boatmen, Mounted Guard, Commissioned Boatmen, and Boatmen, both sections being under their respective commanders.  Each member of the Mounted Guard was provided with a good horse and sword, with an iron scabbard of the Light Cavalry pattern, as well as a couple of pistols and ammunition.  The cruiser commanders were again enjoined to keep the sea in bad weather and at night, nor were they permitted to come to harbour except when really necessary.

In 1831 came the next change, when the Coastguard took the place of the Coast Blockade, which had done excellent duty for so many years in Kent and Sussex.  The aim was to make the Coastguard service national rather than departmental.  To promote the greatest efficiency it was become naval rather than civil.  It was to be for the benefit of the country as a nation, than for the protecting merely of its revenues.  Thus there was a kind of somersault performed; and the whole of the original idea capsized.  Whereas the Preventive service had been instituted for the benefit of the Customs, and then, as an after-thought, became employed for protection against the enemy across the Channel, so now it was to be exactly the other way on.  The Revenue was to be subservient to the greater and national factor.

In this same 1831, the number of cruisers had risen to thirty-five in England, but many of them had tenders.  There were altogether twenty-one of these latter and smaller craft, their tonnage varying from twenty-five to sixty.  And the next year the Mounted Guard was reorganised and the Riding Officers disappeared.  With the cordon of cruisers afloat, and the more efficient Coastguard service ashore, there was a double belt round our coasts, which could be relied upon both for national and Revenue services.  By this time, too, steam was invading the domain of the ship, and in 1839, besides the old-fashioned sailing cutters and tenders, there was a steamer named the Vulcan, of 200 tons, taken into the service, her duty being to cruise about and search for suspicious vessels.  In some parts of the country, also, there was assistance still rendered by the Mounted Guard for watching the roads leading inland from the beach to prevent goods being brought up.

With this increased efficiency it was but natural that a change should come over the character of the smuggling.  Force was fast going out of date.  Except for a number of rather startling occasions, but on the whole of exceptional occurrence, violence had gone out of fashion.  But because of the increased vigilance along the coast the smuggler was hard put to devise new methods of running his goods into the country without being surprised by the officials.  Most, if not all, of the old syndicates of French and Englishmen, who made smuggling a roaring trade, had died out.  The armed cutters had long since given way to the luggers as the smuggling craft.  Stealth had taken the place of violence, concealments and sunken goods were favoured rather than those daring and outrageous incursions which had been in the past wont to take place.