Smugglers detained on board were not to have spirits.  Before proceeding to sea each cruiser was to have on board not less than two months’ supply of salt beef, spirits; suet or sugar and tea in lieu, as well as Scotch barley.  With reference to the other articles of food, they were to carry as large a proportion as could be stowed away, with the exception of fresh beef and cabbages.  But two years prior to this, that is to say on April 5, 1823, the Board of Customs had reduced the victualling allowances, so that Commander and mates and superintendents of Quarantine received 2s. 6d. a day each; mariners 1s. 3d.; and mariners of lazarettes (hospitals 1s. for quarantine) 1s. 3d. a day.

As to the methods of the smugglers, these continued to become more and more ingenious, though there was a good deal of repetition of successful tricks until the Revenue officers had learnt these secrets, when some other device had to be thought out and employed.  Take the case of a craft called the Wig Box, belonging to John Punnett.  She was seized at Folkestone in the spring of 1822 by a midshipman of the Coast Blockade.  There were found on her six gallons of spirits, which were concealed in the following most ingenious manner.  She was quite a small vessel, but her three oars, her two masts, her bowsprit, and her bumpkin, had all been made hollow.  Inside these hollows tin tubes had been fitted to contain the above spirits, and there can be little doubt but that a good many other small craft had successfully employed these means until the day when the Wig Box had the misfortune to be found out.  There is still preserved in the London Custom House a hollow wooden fend-off which was slung when a ship was alongside a quay.  No one for a long time ever thought of suspecting that this innocent-looking article could be full of tobacco, lying as it was under the very eyes of the Customs officers of the port.  And in 1820 three other boats were seized in one port alone, having concealed prohibited goods in a square foremast and outrigger, each spar being hollowed out from head to foot and the ends afterwards neatly plugged and painted.  Another boat was seized and brought into Dover with hollow yards to her lugsails, and a hollow keel composed of tin but painted to look like wood, capable of holding large quantities of spirits.

But there was a very notorious vessel named the Asp, belonging to Rye, her master’s name being John Clark, her size being just under 24 tons.  In 1822 she was seized and found to have a false bow, access to which was by means of two scuttles, one on each side of the stem.  These scuttles were fitted with bed-screws fixed through false timbers into the real timbers, and covered with pieces of cork resembling treenails.  The concealment afforded space for no fewer than fifty flat tubs besides dry goods.  But in 1824 another vessel of the same name and port, described as a smack, was also arrested at Rye, and found to have both tobacco and silk goods