It is improbable that the Polperro or indeed Cornish smugglers generally recognized smuggling as in any way dishonest, or if they did so, they certainly regarded it as a very trifling offence. And when one remembers that the better-class people and even the gentry frequently bought what spirits, tea and lace they required of the smugglers, and that the “preventive” officers and men not seldom connived at the running of cargoes, and were not above profiting from their laxness, it is not to be wondered at that these bold fishermen, in whose veins ran the blood of adventurers, and pirates of old, should engage in a calling to which their hereditary character would be most naturally adapted. Sometimes, however, as was the case of Robert Marks, a noted Polperro smuggler, who was killed in an affray with the revenue men on January 24, 1802, and whose epitaph expresses such Christian forbearance towards his slayer, and hope of being rewarded “with everlasting bliss,” serious encounters took place, and in the course of years “much good blood and spirits were spilt along the coast.” But however outwardly friendly the two opposing interests were, the _History of Polperro_ records the fact that “though active opposition on the part of the smugglers was not politic, the people determined, one and all, to offer as much passive resistance as was safe. No one would let a coastguardman a house to live in at any price, so the whole force was obliged to make a dwelling and guard house of the hull of a vessel which was moored to the old quay.” So lucrative and attractive was “the trade” at Polperro, and so uncomfortable and risky the “preventive” service, that there is a record of at least three men who “verted” from the revenue service and entered the ranks of active smugglers, one James Rowat, boatman coastguard, having been dismissed the service in 1827 for purchasing a boat “intended to be employed in smuggling.” The fate which overtook boats taken _in flagrante delicto_ and condemned was usually that of being sawn asunder in three pieces and broken up; and many a fine lugger and cutter shared this unkind fate, though occasionally very handy and swift sailers were not thus destroyed but were taken into the revenue service, sometimes to be repurchased later on by the smugglers for further illicit use.