That daring deeds were done more or less “outside the law of nations” there can be no question; but, save for an almost casual mention of the doings of the Looe lugger _George_ in the famous though somewhat traditional fight with “those hereditary enemies, the French,” little has come down to us concerning these adventurers, and only a memory has survived from the early years of the nineteenth century of the Looe privateer of small size but large courage which, whilst cruising off the mouth of the Channel about thirty miles south-west of the Lizard, fell in, not with the French merchantman of which she was in search, but with a famous St-Malo privateer “of much superior force both in guns and men, which she promptly engaged and forced to surrender after a running fight lasting well nigh seven hours.” Had the St-Malo lugger known that more than sixty per cent of the Looe boat’s crew were either killed or placed _hors de combat_ the result of the engagement might possibly have been different; but Cornish fisherfolk do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves, and one can well imagine that the survivors put on a “brazen front with no timidity shown,” just as one seems to catch an echo of the rousing cheers with which the striking of the tricolour was undoubtedly greeted. Both the Looes did their best to uphold the honour of England during the long struggle with our French neighbours at the end of the eighteenth and commencement of the nineteenth century. Possibly it was the same spirit which made the Looe men amongst the boldest and most successful of smugglers on the Cornish coast in the first quarter of the last century, and this although they were remarkably well looked after by the “preventives.” It is only right to add, however, that an inspection and study of many records of smuggling along the South Coast proves conclusively that Cornish “free traders” conducted their operations in a much less brutal and forceful manner than that which characterized the doings of the famous smugglers of the Sussex coast, and which so often led to outrages and scenes of an atrocious character. A well-known writer upon smuggling says in reference to this point: “As regards the skill and enterprise displayed by those who conducted the trade, it is difficult to award the palm to any one county, though, on the whole, perhaps, and after a careful consideration of all the circumstances of the case, the writer is inclined to give it to the Cornishmen. Not that the east countrymen were one whit behind them in point of courage or activity, but the very fact of having to travel a far greater distance for their goods exposed them to increased risks, and to many dangers from which the trade elsewhere was tolerably exempt, thus giving scope to the highest faculties, and developing seamanlike qualities of no mean order.”