A few pages back we witnessed an incident off Hastings.  On the 5th of January 1832, a much more serious encounter took place.  Lieutenant Baker, R.N., was cruising at that time in the Revenue cutter Ranger off the Sussex coast, when between nine and ten in the evening he saw a suspicious fire on the Castle Hill at Hastings.  Believing that it was a smuggler’s signal, he despatched his four-oared galley, with directions to row between Eccles Barn and the Martello Tower, No. 39.  At the same time the Ranger continued to cruise off the land so as to be in communication with the galley.  About 1 A.M. a report was heard from the Hastings direction, and a significant blue light was seen burning.  Baker therefore took his cutter nearer in-shore towards the spot where this light had been seen.  He immediately fell in with his galley, which had shown the blue light, and in her he found about two hundred casks of different sizes containing foreign spirits, and also five men who had been detained by the galley.

The men of course were taken on board the cruiser, and as the morning advanced, the Ranger again stood into the shore so that the lieutenant might land the spirits at the Custom House.  Then getting into his galley with part of his crew, the tubs were towed astern in the cutter’s smaller boat.  But on reaching the beach, he found no fewer than four hundred persons assembled with the apparent intention of preventing the removal of the spirits to the Custom House, and especially notorious among this gang were two men, named respectively John Pankhurst and Henry Stevens.  The galley was greeted with a shower of stones, and some of the Revenue men therein were struck, and had to keep quite close to the water’s edge.  Stevens and Pankhurst came and deposited themselves on the boat’s gunwale, and resisted the removal of the tubs.  Two carts now came down to the beach, but the mob refused to allow them to be loaded, and stones were flying in various directions, one man being badly hurt.  Lieutenant Baker also received a violent blow from a large stone thrown by Pankhurst.

But gradually the carts were loaded in spite of the opposition, and just as the last vehicle had been filled, Pankhurst loosened the bridle-back of the cart which was at the back of the vehicle to secure the spirits, and had not the Revenue officers and men been very smart in surrounding the cart and protecting the goods, there would have been a rescue of the casks.  Ultimately, the carts proceeded towards the Custom House pursued by the raging mob, and even after the goods had been all got in there was a good deal of pelting with stones and considerable damage done.  Yet again, when these prisoners, Pankhurst and Stevens, were brought up for trial, the jury failed to do their duty and convict.  But the Lord Chief Justice of that time remarked that he would not allow Stevens and Pankhurst to be discharged until they had entered into their recognisances to keep the peace in L20 each.