The wreckers and smugglers of Seaford during the latter half of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century were scarcely less notorious than those of Hastings, Rye, and other places on the Sussex coast. Many a vessel was lured to destruction, and many a cargo run almost in sight of the authorities who existed to put down these malpractices. From a letter of a gentleman of Stafford, Sussex, to one of the newspapers on September 18, 1783, we extract the following account of smuggling as it then existed. “There is,” he writes, “a most convenient port, about a mile from Seaford, for smugglers to land their goods, and so daring are they become, that a dozen or more cutters may frequently be seen laying-to in open day.” On Tuesday evening, between two and three hundred smugglers on horseback came to Cookmere, and received various kinds of goods from the boats, “till at last the whole number were laden, when, in defiance of the King’s officers, they went their way in great triumph. About a week before this upwards of three hundred attended at the same place, and though the sea ran mountains high, the daring men in the cutters made good the landing, to the surprise of everybody, and the men on horseback took all away.” It is chiefly from such extracts as that which we have just made that any clear idea can be obtained regarding the prevalence of smuggling and the daring tactics of the smugglers of those times. The prospect of a French invasion in 1803 and 1804 made Seaford and the immediate neighbourhood a scene of unwonted activity. We are told that the Commander-in-Chief, His Royal Highness the Duke of York, and Major-General Lennox issued orders, which were received by the colonel commanding in the district, to the effect “that the French, should they succeed in crossing the British Channel (not English Channel, mark you), would certainly attempt a landing in Seaford Bay,” and the orders went on to say that a strict and vigilant watch was to be kept up in consequence. The conduct of the farmers in the neighbourhood in putting up and “finding for” large numbers of troops for a lengthy period was greatly commended by one Lieutenant-Colonel Frith in the following year (1804), and the officers of His Majesty’s First or North Battalion of Hampshire Militia, which had been concentrated in Sussex, on leaving Alfriston. The letter from the lieutenant-colonel in question expresses that “They feel that they have been received as brethren engaged in one common cause, the defence of their country, and all that it contains most near and dear.”