This Stone
Sacred to the memory of
Joseph Swain, Fisherman
was erected at the expence of
the members of the friendly
Society of Hastingsin commiseration of his cruel and
untimely death and as a record of
the public indignation at the need-
lefs and sanguinary violence of
which he was the unoffending Victim
He was shot by Geo. England, one
of the Sailors employ’d in the Coast
blockade service in open day on the
13th March 1821 and almost instantly
expir’d, in the twenty ninth Year of
his age, leaving a Widow and five
small children to lament his lofs.
England was subsequently put on his trial for wilful murder at Horsham, and was sentenced to death, but afterwards pardoned.
In short, in one way and another, much good blood and a great quantity of the most excellent spirits were spilt and let run to waste, along the coasts.
The affair of the Badger revenue cutter and the Vre Brodiers, or Four Brothers, smuggling lugger was the next exciting event. It happened on January 13th, 1823, and attracted a great deal of attention at the time, not only on account of the severe encounter at sea, but from the subsequent trial of the crew of the smuggler. The Four Brothers was a Folkestone boat, and her crew of twenty-six were chiefly Folkestone men. She was a considerable vessel, having once been a French privateer, and was, as a privateer had need to be, a smart, easily handled craft, capable of giving the go-by to most other vessels. She carried four six-pound carronades. In constant commission, her crew pouched a pound a week wages, with an additional ten guineas for each successful run.
On January 12th, of this momentous voyage, she sailed from Flushing with over one hundred tons of leaf-tobacco aboard, snugly packed for convenience of carriage in bales of 60 lb., and carried also a small consignment of brandy and gin, contained in 50 half-ankers, and 13 chests of tea—all destined for the south of Ireland. Ship and cargo were worth some £11,000; so it is sufficiently evident that her owners were in a considerable way of business of the contraband kind.
At daybreak on the morning of January 13th, when off Dieppe and sailing very slowly, in a light wind, the crew of the Four Brothers found themselves almost upon what they at first took to be French fishing-boats, and held unsuspiciously on her course. Suddenly, however, one of them ran a flag smartly up her halliards and fired a gun across the bows of the Four Brothers, as a signal to bring her to. It was the revenue cutter Badger.
Unfortunately for the smuggler, she was carrying a newly stepped mainmast, and under small sail only, and accordingly, in disobeying the summons and attempting to get away, she was speedily outsailed.
The smuggler, unable to get away, hoisted the Dutch colours and opened the fight that took place by firing upon the Badger, which immediately returned it. For two hours this exchange of shots was maintained. Early in the encounter William Cullum, seaman, was killed aboard the Badger, and Lieutenant Nazer, in command, received a shot from a musket in the left shoulder. One man of the Four Brothers was killed outright, and nine wounded, but the fight would have continued had not the Badger sailed into the starboard quarter of the smuggler, driving her bowsprit clean through her adversary’s mainsail. Even then the smuggler’s crew endeavoured to fire one of her guns, but failed.
The commander of the Badger thereupon called upon the Four Brothers to surrender; or, according to his own version, the smugglers themselves called for quarter; and the mate and some of the cutter’s men went in a boat and received their submission, and sent them prisoners aboard the Badger. The smugglers claimed that they had surrendered only on condition that they should have their boats and personal belongings and be allowed to go ashore; but it seems scarce likely the Lieutenant could have promised so much. The Four Brothers was then taken into Dover Harbour and her crew sent aboard the Severn man-o’-war and kept in irons in the cockpit. Three of her wounded died there. The others, after a short interval, were again put aboard the Badger and taken up the Thames to imprisonment on the Tower tender for a further three or four days. Thence they were removed, all handcuffed and chained, in a barge and committed to the King’s Bench Prison. At Bow Street, on the following day, they were all formally committed for trial, and then remitted to the King’s Bench Prison for eleven weeks, before the case came on.
On Friday, April 25th, 1823, the twenty-two prisoners were arraigned in the High Court of Admiralty; Marinel Krans, master of the Four Brothers, and his crew, nearly all of whom bore Dutch names, being charged with wilfully and feloniously firing on the revenue cutter Badger, on January 13th, 1823, on the high seas, about eight miles off Dungeness, within the jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty of England.