Tuesday Talk - A Little Bit about The Smuggler

So where does the word ‘smuggle’ come from?

‘Smuggler’ was a general term the same as ‘thief’ or ‘crook’. ‘To Smuggle’ as with many of our nautical-based words, comes from Low German ‘schmuggeln’, or the Dutch, ‘smokkelen’, both of which have an original meaning of something like ‘to transport illegally’. It is believed that the word ‘smuggle’ entered into the English language during the 1600s, possibly during the era when the eldest son of Charles I, himself to become crowned as Charles II, was in exile with many of his supporters in the Netherlands. One of his assistants was Samuel Pepys, of the Diary fame, whose day job was to oversee various organisation policies of the Royal Navy. He would have kept a sharp eye on any illicit trading, although I would wager he occasionally took advantage of anything offered at a reasonable price – no questions asked. During the rage of the Great Fire of London in 1666, one of the things he buried in case the fire spread to his house, was a parcel of expensive cheese. Smuggled French Brie, Devon Blue or Cornish Yarg perhaps? (My favourite cheeses!) Master Pepys, however, preferred to bury his Italian Parmesan. 

Smugglers did not call themselves ‘smugglers’. The ‘Trade’ could be associated with gentlemen, bootleggers, contrabandists, moonshiners, rum runners and traffickers among other general descriptions. Smugglers were not merely the men who brought illicit cargo ashore and hurried it away on the backs of ponies. The term could apply to almost anyone involved in obtaining goods illegally: from the thug with his heavy cudgel protecting an inbound cargo, to the local squire who financed the deal or supplied the ship and horses to transport the goods. 

It is estimated that as much as half of the alcohol consumed throughout England in the mid-eighteenth century was smuggled in by various notorious gangs. They were virtually unopposed as the coasts and estuaries were rarely guarded, let alone patrolled. Not until the late 1700s did the excise men, backed by local militia troops, start being effective.

In 1724, the author of novels and political pamphlets (and castaway sailors), Daniel Defoe, wrote about Lymington in Hampshire on the English south coast:

 ‘I do not find they have any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smuggling and roguing; which I may say, is the reigning commerce from the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End in Cornwall.’

Annoyingly for writers of fiction or informative textbooks, there is a marked absence of facts recorded about smuggling. The trouble with secretive activities – they remained secret. Most of the knowledge we have gleaned today is from archived news sheets, both local and national, from letters and reports penned by revenue officers safely stored, again in archives, or from court records. These snippets of information give only the bare facts and intriguing names, with maybe an occupation listed alongside. They are also only about those smugglers who were caught, tried and sentenced (or reprieved). There is an enormous lack of evidence and information about the clever smugglers. The ones we do not know about – those who did not get caught. It is these mysterious men who have given us the romantic concept of their lives, glossing over the fact that in reality they were rebels against law and order, and were nothing short of thieves defrauding the government of revenue.

When did smuggling start? Smuggling – the ‘Free Trade’ – reached its height in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, peaking in the early 1800s, which is the era we think of for our image of the Free Traders, but importing goods, whatever they were, illegally and under the noses of law enforcement officers and tax gatherers was nothing new… 

The term ‘Customs and Excise’ came from paying a customary toll on imported wine at selected ports in the late tenth century.

Tolls were imposed on wine imports by the Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelred II (966–1016) his name meaning ‘noble-counselled’, but was soon changed to Æthelred Unraed – ‘ill-counselled’, which then became corrupted to ‘Unready’. When he desperately needed money (Danegeld) to pay for holding off the invading Danes, led by Sven Forkbeard and his son Cnut (King Canute of holding back the tide fame,) he invented the idea of ‘tax’ via import duty to be paid on bringing foreign wine into England. This was a clever way to raise funds: in order to continue trading, vintners had to surrender a portion of their cargo, and therefore their profit. Paying the enforced toll soon becoming a ‘custom’. These ‘Custom Tolls’, however, only applied to specific ports, so to land wine at an exempt harbour was not illegal. Of course, this meant that the wine traders used any port or harbour except the toll ports, although that entailed carting barrels of wine across country, which was neither cheap nor easy to do, so rather defeated the object. It is extraordinary what lengths people will go to in an attempt to avoid paying tax though!

In England, smuggling contraband, as we think of it, started to become an annoying problem in the thirteenth century after King Edward I created his unpopular concept for a customs collection system in 1275. Smuggling in the 1200s had tended to lean towards exported goods rather than those imported, wool and hides in particular, both of which carried a high tax in order to finance various expensive wars. The wool business was one of England’s most profitable trades, making the kingdom one of the wealthiest in the known world. But grain, especially when there was an embargo between England and what is now Europe, (although, usually confined to France and/or Spain,) for one reason or another was a lucrative smuggler’s choice. Grain export was regularly prohibited because of concerns that the price would rise, thereby causing a shortage and then a famine which would, in turn, escalate to riots and unrest. The simple answer of not fighting lengthy and unnecessary wars did not seem to have occurred to anyone.

Romney Marsh sheep
...the means to many a smuggler's handsome profit!

Those early days of smuggling in the pre-fourteenth centuries were relatively hassle-free, for only the ports, harbours and estuaries were patrolled by revenue cutters, leaving elsewhere along coast, creeks or rivers unguarded. But even secretive landings were not regarded as necessary, for it was simpler to pay the customs officers to look away. Poor pay meant that honest officials were as rare as unicorns. 

Smuggling was successful because of the law-enforcers inability to uphold the law. The revenue officers faced an almost hopeless task, at least until they eventually improved efficiency, increased their numbers and were able to do their job properly, assisted by rigid enforcement of the law of the land. Although, even then, smuggling persisted. Smuggling, for all its romantic imagery however, evolved around sharp-witted opportunists who saw a way of getting rich quickly and easily. 

From Life of a Smuggler - buy on Amazon 

Some smuggling terms

Bill of Landing: a shipmaster’s receipt detailing the cargo.
Boiled Man: someone who has bribed the excise men to be left alone.
Bit of red: a soldier.
Chatter broth: tea.
Composition: a fine for smuggling, calculated according to the value of goods seized and the smuggler’s financial status.
Cousin Jacky: brandy.
Creeping: the act of dragging the seabed to recover temporarily hidden contraband.
Creeping Irons: grappling irons or hooks used for creeping.
Crop: a cargo of contraband.
Darks: moonless nights.
Donkey: a one-legged stool used by coastguards. In later years called a shooting stick.
Drawback: the official refund of excise duty.
Dry Goods: non-liquid contraband.
Funt: a smuggler's warning light.
Genever: gin.
Guineaboat: a fast galley used for carrying guineas to France.
Hollands: Dutch gin.
Rummage: to search: especially for contraband.
Run: a smuggling operation.
Sowing the crop: sinking contraband in the sea with weights and markers in order to hide it.
Stinkibus: spirits which have gone off after prolonged submersion in the sea.
Tub: a small cask, flat on one side, oval on the other. Used in pairs to be carried by ‘tubmen’.
Vizard: a cloth facemask worn across the mouth and nose.
Working the crop: recovering sunken casks that have been temporarily hidden in the sea.

Even if you do muddle a real donkey and a stool – you can sit on both!

Available from Amazon