E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 17563-h.htm or 17563-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/5/6/17563/17563-h/17563-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/5/6/17563/17563-h.zip) Two obvious typographical errors were corrected in transcribing this text. For a complete list, please see the Transcriber's note at the end of the file. KING'S CUTTERS AND SMUGGLERS 1700-1855 by E. KEBLE CHATTERTON Author of "Sailing Ships and Their Story," "The Romance of the Ship" "The Story of the British Navy," "Fore and Aft," Etc. With 33 Illustrations and Frontispiece in Colours [Illustration: REVENUE CRUISER CHASING SMUGGLING LUGGER. Before firing on a smuggler the cruiser was bound to hoist his Revenue colours--both pennant and ensign--no matter whether day or night. (_from the original painting by Charles Dixon, R.I._)] London George Allen & Company, Ltd. 44 & 45 Rathbone Place 1912 [All rights reserved] Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh PREFACE I have in the following pages endeavoured to resist the temptation to weave a web of pleasant but unreliable fiction round actual occurrences. That which is here set forth has been derived from facts, and in almost every case from manuscript records. It aims at telling the story of an eventful and exciting period according to historical and not imaginative occurrence. There are extant many novels and short stories which have for their heroes the old-time smugglers. But the present volume represents an effort to look at these exploits as they were and not as a novelist likes to think they might have occurred. Perhaps there is hardly an Englishman who was not thrilled in his boyhood days by Marryat and others when they wrote of the King's Cutters and their foes. It is hoped that the following pages will not merely revive pleasant recollections but arouse a new interest in the adventures of a species of sailing craft that is now, like the brig and the fine old clipper-ship, past and done with. The reader will note that in the Appendices a considerable amount of interesting data has been collected. This has been rendered possible only with great difficulty, but it is believed that in future years the dimensions and details of a Revenue Cutter's construction, the sizes of her spars, her tonnage, guns, &c., the number of her crew carried, the names and dates of the fleets of cutters employed will have an historical value which cannot easily be assessed in the present age that is still familiar with sailing craft.