Owing to the courtesy of the Commissioners it has been my good fortune to make careful researches through the documents which are concerned with the old smuggling days, the Revenue cutters, and the Preventive Service generally; and it is from these pages of the past and from other sources that I have been enabled to put forth the story as it is here presented; and as such it represents an attempt to afford an authentic picture of an extremely interesting and an equally exciting period of our national history, to show the conditions of the smuggling industry from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and the efforts to put a stop to the same.  We shall soon find that this period in its glamour, romance, and adventure contains a good deal of similarity to the great seafaring Elizabethan epoch.  The ships were different, but the courage of the English seamen was the same.  Nor must we forget that those rough, rude men who ran backwards and forwards across the English Channel in cutters, yawls, luggers, and sometimes open boats, stiffened with a rich ballast of tea, tobacco, and brandy, were some of the finest seamen in the world, and certainly the most skilful fore-and-aft sailors and efficient pilots to be found anywhere on the seas which wash the coasts of the United Kingdom.  They were sturdy and strong of body, courageous and enterprising of nature, who had “used” the sea all their lives.  Consequently the English Government wisely determined that in all cases of an encounter with smugglers the first aim of the Preventive officers should be to capture the smugglers themselves, for they could be promptly impressed into the service of the Navy and be put to the good of the nation instead of being to the latter’s disadvantage.

As everyone familiar with the sea is aware, the seamanship of the square-rigged vessel and of the fore-and-aft is very different.  The latter makes special demands of its own which, for the present, we need not go into.  But we may assert with perfect confidence that at its best the handling of the King’s cutters and the smuggling craft, the chasing and eluding in all weathers, the strategy and tactics of both parties form some of the best chapters in nautical lore.  The great risks that were run, the self-confidence and coolness displayed indicated quite clearly that our national seafaring spirit was not yet dead.  To-day many descendants of these old smugglers remain our foremost fore-and-aft sailors, yet engaged no longer in an illicit trade but in the more peaceful pursuits of line fishermen, oyster dredging, trawling during the winter, and often shipping as yachts’ hands during the summer.