By Graham Smith, 172 pp., published 1989. Countryside books.
Out of print but several copies available from Amazon for around £3-4. This short book details the many strands of smuggling in the Bristol Channel, including references to smuggling elsewhere and a brief introduction to earlier times. The earliest smuggling was outbound, to avoid the export duty on wool. Smuggling wasn’t just in Cornwall as popularly depicted. Some of the legends are dubious, such as that of Copinger in Devon. The loss of revenue was substantial and legislation in the late 1700s created ferocious penalties. Some coastal towns were essentially under gang control. The islands technically outside the boundary of legislation, the Isle of Man and Lundy, offered good bases for organised smuggling. The Revenue responded with fast cutters, around 45 altogether, which made large hauls. Whilst organised small boat smuggling gradually declined when duties on some goods were reduced, tobacco became a lead item, and more smuggling was undertaken by crew members on regular ships, and picked up in ports. Crews took advantage of the hot spaces in the new steamships, which were hard to search. There is some detail on the quantities seized at different times. The Coastguard, set up to patrol the coasts to prevent smuggling, was originally part of the Revenue before being transferred to the Navy in the mid nineteenth century, a time when the Revenue had begun to get on top of the smugglers One topic that has a very contemporary ring is people smuggling from Ireland, especially after the Great Famine. Wretched individuals in small boats were left to their own devices, or carried in overloaded ships. The draw was booming industry in South Wales. Written by the archivist to the Customs and Excise, this is a realistic, documented account of an often brutal trade, without the romanticism that too often distorts accounts. It made an interesting read for the son of a Customs officer!
Jonathan Seagrave