An epitaph in the churchyard of All Saints, Hastings, bears witness to this incident:
This Stone Sacred to the memory of JOSEPH SWAIN, Fisherman was erected at the expence of the members of the friendly Society of Hastings
in commiseration of his cruel and untimely death and as a record of the public indignation at the need- lefs and sanguinary violence of which he was the unoffending Victim He was shot by Geo. England, one of the Sailors employ’d in the Coast blockade service in open day on the 13th March 1821 and almost instantly expir’d, in the twenty ninth Year of his age, leaving a Widow and five small children to lament his lofs.
England was subsequently put on his trial for wilful murder at Horsham, and was sentenced to death, but afterwards pardoned.
In short, in one way and another, much good blood and a great quantity of the most excellent spirits were spilt and let run to waste, along the coasts.
The affair of the _Badger_ revenue cutter and the _Vre Brodiers_, or _Four Brothers_, smuggling lugger was the next exciting event. It happened on January 13th, 1823, and attracted a great deal of attention at the time, not only on account of the severe encounter at sea, but from the subsequent trial of the crew of the smuggler. The _Four Brothers_ was a Folkestone boat, and her crew of twenty-six were chiefly Folkestone men. She was a considerable vessel, having once been a French privateer, and was, as a privateer had need to be, a smart, easily handled craft, capable of giving the go-by to most other vessels. She carried four six-pound carronades. In constant commission, her crew pouched a pound a week wages, with an additional ten guineas for each successful run.
On January 12th, of this momentous voyage, she sailed from Flushing with over one hundred tons of leaf-tobacco aboard, snugly packed for convenience of carriage in bales of 60 lb., and carried also a small consignment of brandy and gin, contained in 50 half-ankers, and 13 chests of tea—all destined for the south of Ireland. Ship and cargo were worth some £11,000; so it is sufficiently evident that her owners were in a considerable way of business of the contraband kind.
At daybreak on the morning of January 13th, when off Dieppe and sailing very slowly, in a light wind, the crew of the _Four Brothers_ found themselves almost upon what they at first took to be French fishing-boats, and held unsuspiciously on her course. Suddenly, however, one of them ran a flag smartly up her halliards and fired a gun across the bows of the _Four Brothers_, as a signal to bring her to. It was the revenue cutter _Badger_.