A certain other French craft was boarded by the Revenue officers who, on measuring her range of deck and also under it including the bulkheads, found a greater difference than the rake would fairly account for. They were naturally highly suspicious and proceeded to take down part of the bulkhead aft, when they discovered that this bulkhead was not single but double, being between the cabin and the hold. This bulkhead was made of solid oak planking and was 2 feet 10 inches thick. It was securely nailed, and the cavity thus made extended from one side of the hull to the other, giving a breadth of 7 feet 2 inches, its length being about 2 feet 2 inches, and the height 3 feet 6 inches. It will thus be readily imagined that a good quantity of spirits, wine, and plums from France could easily therein be contained and brought ashore when opportunity presented itself.
At another port a vessel was actually discovered to have false bows. One might wonder how it was that the officer ever found this out, but he was smart enough to measure the deck on the port side, after which he measured the ship below. He found a difference of over a foot, and so he undertook a thorough search of the ship. He first proceeded to investigate the forepeak, but he was unable to discover any entrance. He therefore went to the hold, examined the bulkhead, and observed that the nails of the cleats on the starboard side had been drawn. He proceeded to force off the cleats, whereupon one of the boards of the bulkhead fell down, and a quantity of East India silk handkerchiefs came tumbling out. Needless to say, this proved a serious matter for the vessel's skipper.
Sometimes too, cases used to come over from France containing carton boxes of artificial flowers. These boxes, it was found, were fitted with false bottoms affording a space of not more than a quarter of an inch between the real bottom and the false. But into this space was squeezed either a silk gauze dress or some parcels "very nicely stitched in," containing dressed ostrich feathers. The flowers were usually stitched down to the bottom of the boxes to prevent damage, so it was difficult to detect that there was any false bottom at all. However, after this practice had been in vogue for some time it was discovered by the Revenue officers and the matter made generally known among the officials at all the ports, so that they could be on the alert for such ingenuity.
Sometimes when a Revenue officer was on her station she would come across a sailing craft, which would be found to have quite a considerable number of spirits in small casks together with a number of other prohibited goods. If the master of such a craft were told by the cruiser's officer that they would have to be seized as they were evidently about to be smuggled, the master would reply that they were nothing of the kind, but that whilst they were on the fishing grounds working their nets they happened to bring these casks up from the sinkers and warp which had kept them below water; or they had found these casks floating on the sea, and had no doubt been either lost or intentionally thrown overboard by some smuggling vessel while being chased by a Revenue cruiser. It became a very difficult matter to ascertain under such circumstances whether the master were speaking the truth or the reverse, for it was not altogether rare for the kegs to be picked up by fishermen in the manner indicated. So the only way out of this dilemma was for the commanders of the cruisers to bring such craft as the above to the nearest Custom House, where the master could be brought ashore and subjected to a cross-examination as to where they found these casks and what they proposed doing with them.
A seizure was made at Deal about the year 1818 consisting of thirty-three packages of China crape and silk. These had been very artfully concealed in the ballast bags of a lugger called the Fame, belonging to London. One package was found in each bag completely covered up with shingles or small stones, so that even if a suspicious officer were to feel the outside of these bags he would be inclined to believe that they contained nothing but ballast, and if he opened them he would think there was nothing else but stones, for the goods were carefully squeezed into the centre of the bags and surrounded with a good thickness of shingle. Another dodge which was discovered at Shoreham on a vessel which had come from Dieppe was to have the iron ballast cast in such a form that it was not solid but hollow inside. By this means a good deal of dutiable stuff could be put inside the iron and then sealed up again. There was a ship, also, named the Isis, of Rye, which fell into disgrace in endeavouring to cheat the Customs. She was a smack of 26-16/94 tons burthen, her master being William Boxhall. It was while she was lying at her home port that one of the Revenue officers discovered a concealment under her ballast, the entrance to which was obtained by unshipping two bulkhead boards forward. There was one concealment on each side of the keel, and each contained enough space to hold from twenty to twenty-four ankers of spirits.
Along the Kentish coast a good deal of smuggling used to go on by means of galleys which were rowed by six, ten, and even twelve oars. As these were navigated by foreigners and sailed under foreign papers, the Customs officers were a little puzzled as to what exactly could be done. Could such craft be seized even when found with no cargoes on board, when they were either hauled up the beach or were discovered hovering off the coast? After applying to the Board of Customs for guidance they were referred to the Act,[19] which provided that any boat, wherry, pinnace, barge, or galley that was built so as to row with more than four oars, if found within the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, or Essex, or on the river Thames, or within the limits of the Port of London, Sandwich, or Ipswich, or the creeks thereto belonging, should be forfeited together with her tackle. The object of this was clearly to prevent the shortest cross-Channel route being traversed from Holland or France by big, seaworthy but open, multiple-oared craft, with enough men to row them and enough space to carry cargo that would make the smuggling journey worth while.
The following fraud was detected at one of the out-ports in 1819. An entry had been made of twenty-seven barrels of pitch which had been imported in a ship from Dantzic. But the Revenue officers discovered that these casks were peculiarly constructed. Externally each cask resembled an ordinary tar-barrel. But inside there was enclosed another cask properly made to fit. Between the cask and the outside barrel pitch had been run in at the bung so that the enclosure appeared at first to be one solid body of pitch. But after the affair was properly looked into it was found that the inner cask was filled with such dutiable articles as plate glass and East India china.
Sometimes tubs of spirits were packed up in sacks and packs of wool and thus conveyed from the coast into the interior of the country; and in the seizing of some goods at Guernsey it was found that tea had been packed into cases to resemble packages of wine which had come out of a French vessel belonging to St. Malo. Nor was the owner of a certain boat found at Folkestone any novice at this high-class art. Of course those were the days when keels of iron and lead were not so popular as they are to-day, but inside ballast was almost universal, being a relic of the mediæval days when so much valuable inside space was wasted in ships. In this Folkestone boat half-a-dozen large stones were used as ballast, which was a very natural thing for such a craft. But when these stones came to be examined they were found to have been hollowed out and to have been fitted with tin cases which were filled with spirits. One cannot acquit the owner of any fraudulent intent, but one certainly can admire both his ingenuity and the great patience which must have been necessary to have hollowed a cavity from such an unyielding material as stone. This was equalled only by the cargo from Guernsey. Four sacks said to contain potatoes from the Channel Isles were opened by the Revenue officers at a certain port, and, on being examined, it was found that these were not potatoes at all. They were so many rolls of tobacco which had been fashioned to resemble the size and form of the vegetable, and then covered artfully over with a thin skin and finally clayed over so cleverly that they had every appearance of the potatoes they pretended to be.
But the Channel Isles were still notorious. In twelve sacks of flour imported from Jersey were found hidden in the middle twelve bales of tobacco weighing 28 lbs. each. A few weeks later three boxes of prunes also from Jersey were opened, when it was discovered that the prunes were not more than three inches deep at the top and three inches deep at the bottom. But between there was a space in which were concealed—in each box—a paper parcel of silk, some scarves and gloves, &c. But in order to make the total weight of the box approximate to that which would have existed had it been full of prunes a square piece of lead was placed above and another underneath these dutiable articles.
But to me the most ingenious method of all was that which was employed in 1820 for smuggling tobacco. The offending ship was one of the vessels employed in the transport service, and the man who thought of the device was not far from being a genius. He first of all obtained the quantity of tobacco which he proposed—no doubt with the assistance of more than one confederate—to smuggle ashore. He then proceeded to divide this into two, each of which formed one strand. Afterwards he made these strands into a rope, every bit of it being tobacco. But then he took a three-strand hawser and laid this over the tobacco, so that when the hawser was finished no one could suspect the tobacco without first cutting or unlaying the rope. I have not been able to discover how this trick was ever suspected. Nothing less than an accident or the information of a spy could possibly lead to detection in such a clever case.