Secondly, the district to the west of Plymouth embracing Polperro and Mevagissey.  The smuggling craft which brought goods to this locality were fast sailers of from 80 to 100 tons.  But the goods which came into the general district of Plymouth were not carried far inland.  Those whose work it was to carry the goods after being landed were known as “porters,” and were so accustomed to this heavy work that they could carry a cask of spirits six miles across the country at a good rate.  When it is remembered that these casks were made necessarily strong of stout wood, that they contained each from 5 to 7-3/4 gallons, making a total weight of from 70 to 100 lbs. at least, we can realise something of the rude physical strength possessed by these men.

During this same year the Collector at Dartmouth also reported that smuggling had increased a good deal recently in the counties of Devon and Cornwall.  The cutters and luggers from Guernsey carried their cargoes consisting of from 400 to 800 ankers of spirits each, with a few casks of port and sherry for the wealthier classes, who winked at the illicit trade, and some small bales of tobacco.  During the summer the goods were landed on the north side of Cornwall, between Land’s End and Hartland Point, and thence distributed by coasters to Wales and the ports of the Bristol Channel, or carried inland on the backs of twenty or thirty horses, protected by a strong guard.  But in the winter the goods were landed on the shores of the Bristol Channel, the farmers coming down with horses and carts to fetch the goods, which were subsequently lodged in barns and caves.  Clovelly, Bideford, Combe Martin, and Porlock were especially notorious in this connection.  These goods were also regularly conveyed across Exmoor into Somersetshire, and other goods found a way into Barnstable.  Coasters on a voyage from one part of England to another frequently broke their voyages and ran over to Guernsey to get contraband.  The Island of Lundy was a favourite smuggling depot in the eighteenth century.  From Ireland a good deal of salt was smuggled into Devonshire and Cornwall, the high duties making the venture a very profitable one—­specially large cargoes of this commodity being landed near to Hartland Point.  And this Dartmouth Collector made the usual complaint that the Revenue cruisers of that period were easily outsailed by the smugglers.

The reader will recollect those regrettable incidents on the North Sea belonging to the eighteenth century, when we had to chronicle the names of Captains Mitchell and Whitehead in that connection.  Unhappily there were occasional repetitions of these in the early part of the nineteenth century on the south coast.  It happened that on the 19th of March in the year 1807 the Swan Revenue cutter, a vessel of considerable size (for she had a burthen of 154 tons, a crew of twenty-three men, and was armed with twelve 4-pounders, two 9-pounders, and a chest of small arms) was cruising