A desperate affray took place in Rye Harbour so late as May 1826, when a ten-oared smuggling galley, chased by a revenue guard-boat, ran ashore. The smugglers, abandoning their oars, opened fire upon the guard, but the blockade-men from the watch-house at Camber then arrived upon the scene and seized one of the smugglers; whereupon a gang of not fewer than two hundred armed smugglers, who had until that moment been acting as a concealed reserve, rushed violently from behind the sandhills, and commenced firing on the blockade-men, killing one and wounding another. They were, however, ultimately driven off, with the capture of their galley, but managed to carry off their wounded.
On another occasion, four or five smugglers were drowned whilst swimming the Military Canal, with tubs slung on their backs, at a point on Pett Level called “Pett Horse-race.” They had, in the dark, missed the spot where it was fordable. Romney Marsh, and the wide-spreading levels of Pett, Camber, Guilford, and Dunge Marsh had—as we have already seen, in the account of the owlers given in earlier pages—ever been the smugglers’ Alsatia.
The Rev. Richard Harris Barham, author of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” has placed upon record some of his meetings with smugglers in “this recondite region,” as he was pleased to style it; and his son, in the life he wrote of his father, adds to them. Barham, ordained in 1813, and given the curacy of Westwell, near Ashford, had not long to wait before being brought into touch with the lawless doings here. One of the desperate smugglers of the Marsh had been shot through the body in an encounter with the riding-officers, and fatally wounded. As he lay dying, Barham was brought to convey to him the last consolations of religion, and was startled when the smuggler declared there was no crime of which he had not been guilty.
“Murder is not to be reckoned among them, I hope,” exclaimed the not easily shocked clergyman.
“Too many of them!” was the startling response of the dying man.
In 1817 Barham was collated by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the adjoining livings of Warehorne and Snargate, the first-named situated on the verge of the marsh; the second situated, moist and forbidding, in the marsh itself. The winding road between these two villages crossed the then newly made Royal Military Canal by a bridge. Often, as the clergyman was returning, late at night, to his comfortable parsonage at Warehorne, he was met and stopped by some mysterious horsemen; but when he mentioned his name he was invariably allowed to proceed, and, as he did so, a long and silent company of mounted smugglers defiled past, each man with his led horse laden with tubs. The grey tower of Snargate church he frequently found, by the aroma of tobacco it often exhaled, instead of its customary and natural mustiness, to have been recently used as a store for smuggled bales of that highly taxed article.
The Cinque Ports Herald of 1826 records the landing on a night in May, or in the early hours of the morning, of a considerable cargo of contraband hereabouts:
“A large party of smugglers had assembled in the neighbourhood of Dymchurch, and a boat laden (as is supposed) with tubs of spirits, being observed to approach the shore nearly opposite to Dymchurch, the smugglers instantly commenced cheering, and rushed upon the coast, threatening defiance to the sentinels of the blockade; who, perceiving such an overwhelming force, gave the alarm, when a party of marines, coming to their assistance, a general firing took place. The smugglers retreated into the marshes, followed by the blockade-men, and, from their knowledge of the ground, were indebted for their ultimate escape. We regret to state two of the blockade seamen were wounded; one severely in the arm, which must cause amputation, and the other in the face, by slug shots. There can be no doubt but that some of the smugglers must have been wounded, if not killed. One of their muskets was picked up loaded—abandoned, no doubt, by the bearer of it, on account of wounds. The boat, with her cargo, was obliged to put to sea again, without effecting a landing, and, notwithstanding the vigilance of Lieutenants Westbrook, Mudge, and McLeod, who were afloat in their galleys on the spot, from the darkness of the night, effected its escape. We have also heard that a run of five hundred tubs took place on the Sussex coast last week, not far from Hastings, the smugglers losing only eleven tubs. This was also effected by force, and with such a superiority in number that they completely overpowered the blockade force.”
The Brighton Gazette, of a few days later, contained the following: