If we exclude fiction, the amount of literature which has been published on smuggling is exceedingly small.  Practically the whole of the following pages is the outcome of personal research among original, authentic manuscripts and official documents.  Included under this head may be cited the Minutes of the Board of Customs, General Letters of the Board to the Collectors and Controllers of the various Out-ports, Out-port Letters to the Board, the transcripts from shorthand notes of Assizes and Promiscuous Trials of Smugglers, a large quantity of MSS. of remarkable incidents connected with smuggling, miscellaneous notes collected on the subject in the Library of the Customs House, instructions issued at different times to Customs officers and commanders of cruisers, General Orders issued to the Coastguard, together with a valuable precis (unpublished) of the existing documents in the many Customs Houses along the English coast made in the year 1911 by the Librarian to the Board of Customs on a round of visits to the different ports for that purpose.  These researches have been further supplemented by other documents in the British Museum and elsewhere.

This volume, therefore, contains within its pages a very large amount of material hitherto unpublished, and, additional to the details gathered together regarding smuggling methods, especial attention has been paid to collect all possible information concerning the Revenue sloops and cutters so frequently alluded to in those days as cruisers.  I have so often heard a desire expressed among those interested in the literature of the sea to learn all about the King’s cutters, how they were rigged, manned, victualled, armed, and navigated, what were their conditions of service at sea, and so on—­finally, to obtain accounts of their chasing of smuggling craft, accounts based on the narratives of eye-witnesses of the incidents, the testimony of the commanders and crews themselves, both captors and captives, that I have been here at some pains to present the most complete picture of the subject that has hitherto been attempted.  These cutters were most interesting craft by reason both of themselves and the chases and fights in which they were engaged.  The King’s cutters were employed, as many people are aware, as well in international warfare as in the Preventive Service.  There is an interesting letter, for instance, to be read from Lieutenant Henry Rowed, commanding the Admiralty cutter Sheerness, dated September 9, 1803, off Brest, in which her gallant commander sends a notable account to Collingwood concerning the chasing of a French chasse-maree.  And cutters were also employed in connection with the Walcheren expedition.  The hired armed cutter Stag was found useful in 1804 as a despatch vessel.