On the 5th of August the boats from Lieutenant Smith’s station at Branscombe went out to the spot where the Georges had been captured and the mark-buoy with a grapnel at the end of it had been thrown.  There they crept for a time and found nothing.  But it had been heavy weather, and probably the tubs had gone adrift without sinkers to them.  At any rate no landing was reported along the shore, so it was doubtful if the tub-boat had managed to get to land.  As to the Georges herself, she was found to be almost a new vessel.  She was described as a handsome craft, “and very much the appearance of a yacht, and carries a white burgee at her masthead with a red cross in it, similar to vessels belonging to the Yacht Club.”

The reference to the “Yacht Club” signifies the Royal Yacht Squadron, which was originally called the Royal Yacht Club.  In those days the number of yachts was very few compared with the fleets afloat to-day.  Some of the Royal Yacht Club’s cutters were faster than any smuggler or Revenue craft, and it was quite a good idea for a smuggler built with yacht-like lines to fly the club’s flag if he was anxious to deceive the cruisers and coastguards by day.  Some years before this incident there was found on board a smuggling lugger named the Maria, which was captured by the Revenue cruiser Prince of Wales about the year 1830, a broad red pendant marked with a crown over the letters “R.Y.C.,” and an anchor similar to those used by the Royal Yacht Club.  One of the Maria’s crew admitted that they had it on board because they thought it might have been serviceable to their plans.  The point is not without interest, and, as far as I know, has never before been raised.

But to conclude our narrative of the Georges.  As it was pointed out that she was such a fine vessel, and that Lyme Cobb (as many a seafaring man to-day knows full well) was very unsafe in a gale of wind, it was suggested that she should be removed to Weymouth “by part of one of the cutters’ crews that occasionally call in here.”  So on the 7th of September in that year she was fetched away to Weymouth by Lieutenant Sicklemore, R.N.  She and her boat were valued at L240, but she was found to be of such a beautiful model that she was neither destroyed nor sold, but taken into the Revenue service as a cutter to prevent the trade in which she had been so actively employed.

And so we could continue with these smuggling yarns; but the extent of our limits has been reached, so we must draw to a close.  If the smuggling epoch was marred by acts of brutality, if its ships still needed to have those improvements in design and equipment which have to-day reached such a high mark of distinction, if its men were men not altogether admirable characters, at any rate their seamanship and their daring, their ingenuity and their exploits, cannot but incite us to the keenest interest in an exceptional kind of contest.