On the 1st of October of this same year a highly ingenious device was discovered through a hitch, which unfortunately ruined the smugglers’ chances.  In its broad conception it was but a modification of an idea which we have already explained.  In its application, however, it was unique and original.  At half-past six on this morning a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel was observed to be sailing into Chichester harbour.  When first discovered, she was about a mile from Hayling Island.  She was boarded, as smuggled goods were supposed to have been taken by her from a raft at sea.  Manned by a master and a crew of two, all English, she was well known in that neighbourhood.  She was registered at Portsmouth as the Rival.

Her cargo was found to consist of a few oysters and thirteen tubs of spirits, but these were attached to the stern in a most ingenious manner.  By her stern-post was an iron pipe, and through this pipe ran a chain, one end of which was secured at the top, close to the tiller, the other end running right down into the water below the ship.  Attached to the chain in the water were thirteen tubs wrapped in canvas.  The theory was this.  As the vessel sailed along, the chain would be hauled as tight as it would go, so that the casks were kept under the vessel’s stern and below water.  Now, having arrived in Chichester harbour, the helmsman had suddenly let go the chain, but the latter had unhappily jammed in the pipe, and the tubs were thus dragged with a large scope of chain.  The coastguard in coming alongside used his boat-hook underneath, and thus caught hold of the chain and tubs.  The vessel was now soon laid ashore, and when her bottom was examined, the whole device was discovered.  It had only quite recently been added, but the crew were notorious smugglers, so they got themselves into trouble in spite of their ingenuity.

[Illustration:  The Rival’s Ingenious Device (see text).]

And now let us bring this list of smuggling adventures to an end with the activities of a very ubiquitous French sloop named the Georges, which came into prominent notice in the year 1850.  Her port of departure was Cherbourg, and she was wont to run her goods across to the south coast of England with the greatest impudence.  In piecing together this narrative of her adventures, it has been no easy task to follow her movements, for she appeared and disappeared, then was seen somewhere else perhaps a hundred miles away in a very short time.

It appears that on April 19 the Georges, whose master’s name was Gosselin, cleared from Cherbourg, and two days later was sighted by the commander of the Revenue cutter Cameleon off Bembridge Ledge, about one o’clock in the afternoon, about eight or nine miles E.S.E.  After she had come up she was boarded by the Cameleon, and was found to have one passenger, whom the Cameleon’s commander described as an Englishman “of a most suspicious appearance.”  But after being