Smuggling thrived in Deal throughout the eighteenth century, and tobacco, brandy and gin were still being seized by Deal coastguards as late as the 1880s. During the seventeenth century East Indiamen bringing luxuries from India and the Far East would anchor in the Downs, a sheltered area of water between the shore and the Goodwin Sands, to restock with supplies, and fishermen from Deal, Ramsgate and Broadstairs made use of the opportunity to ferry silks, tea and other taxable items ashore. It is estimated that as much as one sixteenth of the cargo was landed illicitly, and it was not uncommon for captains of East Indiamen toretire in their forties, having made their fortunes after only a few trips to the East.
Smugglers from Deal were particularly well situated for overnight crossings to the French coast and used their knowledge of the treacherous Goodwin Sands, three miles out to sea, to outwit the revenue officers. Early smuggling runs were made aboard boats called luggers with square sails, which were slow and could be caught by the revenue service's fast cutters,with their more efficient system of sails and more streamlined shape.
A SMUGGLER'S SONG
If you wake at Midnight, and hear a horse's feet. Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street, Them that asks no questions isn't told a he. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty poniesTrotting through the dark Brandy forthe Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk; Laces for a lady, letters for a spy. And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by! Running round the woodlump, if you chance to find Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy?wine, Don't you shout to come and look, nor use em for your play. Put the brushwood back again?and they'll be gone next day!
Five and twenty ponies ...If you see the stable?door setting open wide; If you see a tired horse lying down inside: If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore: If the lining's wet and warm ? don't you ask no more!
Five and twenty ponies ...If you meet King George's men, dressed m blue and red, You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said. If they call you 'pretty maid', and chuck you'neath the chin, Don t you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been'.
Five and twenty ponies...If you do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance, You'll be given a dainty doll, all the way from France, With a cap of pretty lace, and a velvet hood A present from the Gentlemen, along o being good!
Five and twenty ponies ...Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by! Kipling
The lugger's main advantage was its shallow keel, which enabled it to sail closer to the shore than the cutter,
Deal shipbuilders also developed a kind of speedboat, the galley, which was long and light, had only a small sail, but could carry up to twenty oarsmen. Galleys made high speed crossings of the Channel at night, taking five hours if the tide was
favourable. A galley could lose a pursuing cutter by turning into the eye of the wind and taking a course that it was impossible for the cutter to follow. Local men knew shallow channels through the Goodwin Sands that galleys could slip through, and it is said that smugglers would sometimes beach a galley and carry it over the sands at low water, leaving revenue cutters helpless on the seaward side. The pursuit of a galley by a cutter was said by one captain to be like 'sending a cow after a hare'.
The smugglers of Deal had great success, costing the government so much in lost revenue that, in 1784, William Pitt, the Prime Minister, ordered the destruction of all vessels to be found on the shore at Deal. The dragoons sent to execute this order in January 1785 found many boats beached to avoid the winter storms and burnt them all. When the blockade of the Kent coast was set up, in 1817, a semaphore station was erected at Deal, enablingthe fleet to keep in touch with armed reinforcements on shore.
English smugglers were encouraged by the French, as a useful source of income, and smuggling warehouses in French ports even supplied goods in handy waterproof packaging. Liquor was provided in special oval barrels, roped together in pairs for ease of transport. The climate of opinion in France in the early nineteenth century was so favourable that shipbuilders from Deal, Dover, Sandgate and Hastings set up businesses in France to supply galleys, which could be made for £40. When set against a profit of £450 for a load of spirits, this made a galley almost dispensable.
Smuggling was rife in Dover, one of the Cinque Ports, and by 1745 there were reported to be 400 men involved in the business, with no other obvious source of income. There hadbeen a Customs House in the town since the thirteenth century, and by
1822 a total of sixty two men were employed in the customs service.
In the early nineteenth century, the men of Dover, Folkestone and Hastings built up a trade in golden guineas (coins worth £1.05), which could be sold in Paris for thirty shillings (£1.50) apiece and were then used to pay Napoleon's armies. Galleys carrying the guineas across returned with silk kerchiefs, French lace, gloves and other luxuries. It is said that one galley, facing a strong northerly breeze, was given a tow out to sea by the Dover steam packet. Despite the wind, the strong rowers aboard the galley were able to reach the French coast ten minutes before the steamship.
English smugglers were useful to Napoleon in other ways too. They carried newspapers and reports from French spies based in England, and even took the spies themselves back and forth across the Channel, keeping them hidden in safehouses and helping them to disperse about the country.
Tea had become the English national drink by the end of the seventeenth century. Smuggled tea was brought into the country in parcels wrapped in waterproof oilskins, known as 'dollops'. It is said that at the height of the smuggling era, over twothirds of all the tea drunk in Britain was supplied by smugglers.
Before the mid eighteenth century most of the smuggled tea was brought to the south coast aboard Folkestone cutters of between forty and fifty tons. These vessels would be met two or three miles off the shore by smaller boats, and would carry between twenty and thirty cargoes to England in a week. Folkestone smugglers had such close ties with Flushing that local shipbuilders started businesses there.
Large numbers of men were involved in smuggling at Folkestone, supported by many members of the local community. When a Folkestone ship was captured and her crew thrown into Dover gaol in 1822, a group of relatives and friends gathered and began to march to Dover. At the gaol, the military commander decided not to open fire on the crowd, which then proceeded to climb onto the building, causing so much damage that the crew was able to escape.
Romney Marsh was used by owlers for many centuries, and it proved to be a valuable base for import smuggling too. The flat beaches in this area meant that smuggling boats had to anchor offshore when the tide was low to avoid being stranded. A small boat would be lowered into the sea, loaded with dry goods and rowed to shore, towing a strong line with pairs of tubs attached to it. As it reached the beach, tub?carriers would wade into the sea, cutting the pairs of tubs free from the towing?rope at high speed, while others unloaded the boat. Everything would be on its way across the beach to the marsh within a few minutes.
The most well?known smugglers of this area belonged to two notorious gangs, working at different periods to make full use of the secrecy offered by the less accessible areas of the marsh.
The village of Hawkhurst stands at the intersection of the north?south road from Chatham to Hastings and the east?west route from Folkestone to Tbnbridge, and was therefore an ideal base for a gang of smugglers. Hawkhurst is about thirteen miles north of Rye and Hastings, and parts of Romney Marsh come within three miles of the village, giving safe access from landing?places on the coast.
The Hawkhurat Gang was formed in the early 1740's by Arthur Gray, who gathered groups of tubcarriers to work in a wide area from Folkestone to Poole. It was claimed that 500 armed and mounted men could be gathered together in Hawkhurst within an hour when needed for a smuggling run. Most members of the gang were originally labourer., forced to work in their own parishes for low wages and tempted away from the land by the much greater rewards of smuggling.
In 1745 the duty on tea, which had become the main item smuggled at this time, was reduced, and the gang's profits were cut. One solution was to turn to highway robbery and other forms of crime to supplement their income, and this led to an increase in violence. By 1747 Arthur Gray had been replaced as leader by Thomas Kingsmill, who was to preside over a period of even greater brutality. Smuggling of tea continued, but tobacco, gin and brandy also became important sources of income,
and the smugglers were not averse to sampling the spirits themselves, with resulting effects on their behaviour.
Customs officers were thin on the ground and could not cope with the activities of a large gang. On one occasion officers who had seized smuggled goods were captured in their turn by the gang, who first flogged them unmercifully with heavy coachmen's whips, then put them aboard a smuggling vessel from which they were eventually landed in France. The officers were left to fend for themselves in a country that was at the time at war with England.
Virtually the whole of Kent and Susses were terrorised by the Hawkhurst Gang. Suspected informers were threatened and dealt with ruthlessly. Houses, haystacks and crops were burnt, cattle were slaughtered and individuals were attacked. People in the village of Goudhurst, five miles from Hawkhurst, suffered perhaps more than most until George Sturt, a soldier returning from the wars in 1747, came home to find the villagers discussing evacuation. The alternative seemed to be the formation of a village militia, which Sturt encouraged, putting all his military knowledge at the disposal of his friends and neighbours. In due course, a paper signed by 'The Goudhurst Band of Militia' produced expressing the villagers' feelings about smuggling and their determination to oppose the smuggling gangs.
Thomas Kingamill was incensed at the villagers' effrontery, vowing to slaughter them all and burn every house in the village. Using a captured member of the militia as a messenger, Kingsmill announced the day and time when the Hawkhurst Gang would wreak their vengeance. Sturt immediately began preparations for the defence of Goudhurst. Trenches were dug, arms were collected, and it is said that lead from the church roof was cast into bullets. On the appointed day, armed men hid on vantage points among the roofs waiting for Kingsmill to arrive.
When the Hawkburst Gang rode into Goudhurst they met determined opposition, with snipers firing on them from all sides. Fierce fighting took place near the church, until at last the intruderswere forced to retreat, leaving three men dead, including Kingsmill's brother, George. The defeated smugglers were chased out of the village by the triumphant militia.
Goudhurst had won its freedom from the tyranny of the Hawkhurst Gang, but other villages continued to suffer. Acts of brutality continued, culminating in two horrifying murders.
