How extensive the smuggling trade was about this period and even a little later may be gathered from the fact that more than a hundred large vessels (luggers and cutters chiefly) were engaged in it upon the south and south-west coasts alone. They varied in tonnage from about 80 to 150 tons, and were not infrequently supplied with means for armed resistance. They were built chiefly at Cornish ports, Polperro, Falmouth, Mevagissey amongst the number, the boats of the last-named port being especially noted for their speed. So much so that they were frequently bought by the Sussex and east coast smugglers, notwithstanding the fact that both Hastings and Shoreham enjoyed some considerable reputation for the building of smuggling craft. Not a few, too, of the larger luggers were during the French Wars fitted out as privateers either by their smuggling owners, or merchants who had purchased them for the purpose. The carrying capacity of the vessels engaged in the trade may be somewhat gauged from the fact that on June 10, 1823, a cutter of twenty-five tons of East Looe took in a cargo of “within a few tubs of 700” of spirits at St Brelade’s Bay, Jersey, for transhipment to the Cornish coast. An interesting light is thrown, by the following recorded incident, upon the life of the revenue men of the district, and the rivalry which existed between them in the period which immediately preceded the decline of the smuggling industry. During February, 1827, “the commander of the _Lion_, revenue cutter, was reprimanded for allowing his boat’s crew to take by force part of a ‘seizure’ made by the coastguard boats of the Looe and Polperro stations.” The _Lion’s_ men, either for gain or glory, the historian does not state definitely which, upon coming up with the Polperro revenue boat, which was towing a string of tubs, set to work to detach some of the latter from the sinking rope. This attempt of the _Lion’s_ men to take possession of spoil belonging by right of capture to the Polperro “preventives” was stoutly resisted, and during the struggle the knives used by the aggressors to sever the tubs came in contact with the fingers of the commander of the Polperro boat, who appears to have suffered considerably in consequence. In the records of the coastguard service are many entries which show how busy a part the “two Looes” played in the hazardous enterprises of voyages to and from Roscoff, or Rusco as most smugglers called it, in those distant times. In August, 1833, there were taken “One hundred and fifteen tubs belonging to the _Dove_ (a rather favourite name, by the way, amongst smugglers) by the Looe coastguard.” Then in the following month there is an entry which conjures up visions of an only partially successful “run,” for we find “Five tubs washed ashore at Looe, and a boat marked _Fox_ (a much more suitable name than _Dove_ for smuggling craft one would think) of Plymouth found on the beach a mile or so west, and another tub in the cliff hard by.”