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 in th