The modern coastguard, known technically as the First Naval Reserve, is still under Admiralty control, but proposals are, it is understood, now afoot for entirely altering its status, and for reorganising it as a purely civil force, under the orders of the customs and excise authorities. At present the coastguard establishment numbers some 4,200 officers and men, and is understood to cost £260,000 a year. It is not, perhaps, generally understood that the coastguardman is really a man-o’-war’s man, attached to a particular ship, and liable at any moment of national emergency to be called to rejoin his ship, and to proceed on active service.
It is not really to be supposed that the coastguard succeed in entirely suppressing smuggling, even in our own times. Few are the articles that are now subject to duty, and the temptation is consequently not now very great. Also, the landing of such goods as tea, tobacco, and spirits in bulk would readily be detected; but smuggling of spirits and of tobacco in small quantities is commercially remunerative while the duties are as high as from 11_s._ to 17_s._ a gallon, and from 3_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ a pound in respect of tobacco and cigars; while large quantities of that entirely modern article, saccharine, on which there is a duty of one shilling and threepence an ounce (with a minimum legal weight on import of eleven pounds, designed to render clandestine traffic in it difficult), must, in the very nature of things, be illegally introduced.
That there will be a phenomenal increase of smuggling when the inevitable happens and protection of the country’s trade against the foreigner is instituted, seems certain. It will seem like old times come again.
(_Individual smugglers indexed only when mentioned at length_.)
ACTS OF PARLIAMENT, 7, 14, 17, 23, 27, 34–6
Borstal Hill (near Canterbury), Fatal conflict at, 80
Carter family, smugglers, of Prussia Cove, 165–82
Castle, Mr., excise officer, murdered, 68
“Dog and Partridge,” Slindon Common, 63–7
Ewhurst, Smugglers’ hiding-places at, 102–104
Four Brothers, smuggling lugger, Fatal conflict with, 87–92
Herstmonceux Castle, Ghostly drummer of, 84
Hove church-tower as smugglers’ store, 81–3
Hurstmonceux Castle, Ghostly drummer of, 84