Another, and nearly the last of these bloodsheddings, took place on Jan. 3, 1828, near Bexhill. A lugger landed between that village and the little public-house at Bo-peep; a party of smugglers, armed with bats, rushed to the beach, landed the cargo, and made off with it in carts, on horses, and on men’s backs straight to Sidley Green; here they were come up with by the blockade, reinforced to about forty men; the armed portion of the smugglers drew themselves up in a regular line, and a desperate fight took place. The smugglers fought with such determination and courage that the blockade-men were repulsed, after many had been severely bruised and the Quartermaster Collins killed. In the first volley fired by the blockade, an old smuggler named Smithurst was killed; his body was found the next morning, with his bat still grasped in his hands, the weapon being almost hacked in pieces by the cutlasses and bayonets of the blockade-men. Here again, as was their invariable habit, the smugglers carried safely away all their wounded. At the spring assizes at Horsham, in 1828, Spencer Whiteman of Udimore, Thomas Miller, Henry Miller, John Spray, Edward Shoesmith, William Bennett, John Ford and Stephen Stubberfield, were indicted for assembling armed on this night, for purposes of smuggling, and were removed for trial to the Old Bailey, where, on April 10, they all pleaded guilty; as did Whiteman, Thomas Miller, Spray, Bennett and Ford, together with Thomas Maynard and Plumb, for a like offence on Jan. 23, 1828, at Eastbourne. Sentence of death was passed on all, but the punishment was commuted to transportation. They were, with three exceptions, young men under thirty years of age. Other, but minor affrays took place on Jan. 3, 1831, two miles east of Hastings, when two of the smugglers, William Cruttenden and Joseph Harrold, were shot dead; on Feb. 22, 1832, at Worthing, between two hundred and three hundred men there assembled, when one William Cowardson was shot dead, and several more were carried away wounded; and on January 23, 1833, at Eastbourne, when the smugglers, having killed the chief boatman, George Pitt, formed two lines on each side till the cargo was run, and then left--not, however, without having several of their party wounded; but on no one of these occasions was any of the gang discovered. The last occasion on which a life was sacrificed was on April 1, 1838, when Thomas Monk, a poor fiddler of Winchelsea, was shot by the coast-guard, in an affray at Camber Castle.[90]