A Book of the West/Volume 2/17
CHAPTER XVII.
SMUGGLING
A cache—Smugglers' paths—Donkeys—Hiding-places—Connivance with smugglers—A baronet's carriage—Wrecking—"Fatal curiosity"—A ballad—Excuses made for smuggling—Story by Hawker—Desperate affrays—Sub-division of labour—"Creeping"—Fogous—One at Porth-cothan.
THE other day I saw an old farmhouse in process of demolition in the parish of Altarnon, on the edge of the Bodmin moors. The great hall chimney was of unusual bulk, bulky as such chimneys usually are; and when it was thrown down it revealed the explanation of this unwonted size. Behind the back of the hearth was a chamber fashioned in the thickness of the wall, to which access might have been had at some time through a low walled-up doorway that was concealed behind the kitchen dresser and plastered over. This door was so low that it could be passed through only on all-fours.
Now the concealed chamber had also another way by which it could be entered, and this was through a hole in the floor of a bedroom above. A plank of the floor could be lifted, when an opening was disclosed by which anyone might pass under the wall through a sort of door, and down steps into this apartment, which was entirely without light. Of 
MOUNT'S BAY
what use was this singular concealed chamber? There could be little question. It was a place in which formerly kegs of smuggled spirits and tobacco were hidden. The place lies some fourteen or fifteen miles from Boscastle, a dangerous little harbour on the North Cornish coast, and about a mile off the main road from London, by Exeter and Launceston, to Falmouth. The coach travellers in old days consumed a good deal of spirits, and here in a tangle of lanes lay a little emporium always kept well supplied with a stock of spirits which had not paid duty, and whence the taverners along the road could derive the contraband liquor, with which they supplied the travellers. Between this emporium and the sea the roads—parish roads—lie over wild moors or creep between high hedges of earth, on which the traveller can step along when the lane below is converted into the bed of a stream, also on which the wary smuggler could stride whilst his laden mules and asses stumbled forward in the concealment of the deep-set lane.
A very curious feature of the coasts of the West of England, where rocky or wild, is the trenched and banked-up paths from the coves along the coast. These are noticeable in Devon and Cornwall and along the Bristol Channel. That terrible sea-front consists of precipitous walls of rock, with only here and there a dip, where a brawling stream has sawn its course down to the sea ; and here there is, perhaps, a sandy shore of diminutive proportions, and the rocks around are pierced in all directions with caverns. The smugglers formerly ran their goods into these coves when the weather permitted, or the preventive men were not on the look-out. They stowed away their goods in the caves, and gave notice to the farmers and gentry of the neighbourhood, all of whom were provided with numerous donkeys, which were forthwith sent down to the caches, and the kegs and bales were removed under cover of night or of storm.
As an excuse for keeping droves of donkeys, it was pretended that the sea-sand and the kelp served as admirable dressing for the land, and no doubt so they did. The trains of asses sometimes came up laden with sacks of sand, but not infrequently with kegs of brandy.
Now a wary preventive man might watch too narrowly the proceedings of these trains of asses. Accordingly squires, yeomen, farmers, alike set to work to cut deep ways in the face of the downs, along the slopes of the hills, and bank them up, so that whole caravans of laden beasts might travel up and down absolutely unseen from the sea, and greatly screened from the land side.
Undoubtedly the sunken ways and high banks are some protection against the weather. So they were represented to be, and no doubt greatly were the good folks commended for their consideration for the beasts and their drivers in thus, at great cost, shutting them off from the violence of the gale. Nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that concealment from the eye of the coastguard was sought by this means quite as much as, if not more than, the sheltering the beasts of burden from the weather.
A few years ago an old church house was de molished. When it was pulled down it was found that the floor of large slate slabs in the lower room was undermined with hollows like graves, only of much larger dimensions, and these had served for the concealment of smuggled spirits. The clerk had, in fact, dug them out, and did a little trade on Sundays with selling contraband liquor from these stores.
The story is told of a certain baronet, who had a handsome house and park near the coast. By the way, he died at an advanced age only a couple of years ago. The preventive men had long suspected that Sir Thomas had done more than wink at the proceedings of the receivers of smuggled goods. His park dipped in graceful undulations to the sea, and to a lovely creek, in which was his boathouse. But they never had been able to establish the fact that he favoured the smugglers, and allowed them to use his grounds and outbuildings.
However, at last, one night, a party of men with kegs on their shoulders was seen stealing through the park towards the mansion. They were observed also leaving without the kegs. Accordingly, next morning the officer in command called, together with several underlings. He apologised to the baronet for any inconvenience his visit might occasion—he was quite sure that Sir Thomas was ignorant of the use made of his park, his landing- place, even of his house—but there was evidence that "run" goods had been brought to the mansion the preceding night, and it was but the duty of the officer to point this out to Sir Thomas, and ask him to permit a search—which would be conducted with all the delicacy possible. The baronet, an exceedingly urbane man, promptly expressed his readiness to allow house, cellar, attic—every part of his house and every outbuilding—unreservedly to be searched. He produced his keys. The cellar was, of course, the place where wine and spirits were most likely to be found—let that be explored first. He had a cellar-book, which he produced, and he would be glad if the officer would compare what he found below with his entries in the book. The search was entered into with some zest, for the Government officers had long looked on Sir Thomas with mistrust, and yet were somewhat disarmed by the frankness with which he met them. But they ransacked the mansion from garret to cellar, and every part of the outbuildings, and found nothing. They had omitted to look into the family coach, which was full of rum kegs, so full that to prevent the springs being broken, or showing that the carriage was laden, the axle-trees had been "trigged up" below with blocks of wood.
Wrecking was another form of sea-poaching. Terrible stories of ships lured to destruction by the exhibition of false lights are told, but all belong to the past. I remember an old fellow—the last of the Cornish wreckers—who ended his days as keeper of a toll-gate. But he never would allow that he had wilfully drawn a vessel upon the breakers. When a ship was cast up by the gale it was another matter. The dwellers on the coast could not believe that they had not a perfect right to whatever was washed ashore. Nowadays the coastguards keep so sharp a look-out after a storm that very little can be picked up. The usual course at present is for those who are early on the beach, and have not time to secure—or fear the risk of securing—something they covet, to heave the article up the cliff and lodge it there where not easily accessible. If it be observed—when the auction takes place—it is knocked down for a trifle, and the man who put it where it is discerned obtains it by a lawful claim. If it be not observed, then he fetches it at his convenience. But it is now considered too risky after a wreck to carry off anything of size found, and as the number of bidders at a sale of wreckage is not large, and they do not compete with each other keenly, things of value are got for very slender payments.
The terrible story of the murder of a son by his father and mother, to secure his gold, they not knowing him, and believing him to be a cast-up from a wreck—the story on which the popular drama of Fatal Curiosity, by Lillo, was founded—actually took place at Boheland, near Penryn.
To return to the smugglers.
When a train of asses or mules conveyed contraband goods along a road, it was often customary to put stockings over the hoofs to deaden the sound of their steps.
One night, many years ago, a friend of the writer—a parson on the north coast of Cornwall—was walking along a lane in his parish at night. It was near midnight. He had been to see, or had been sitting up with, a dying person. As he came to a branch in the lane he saw a man there, and he called out "Good-night" He then stood still a moment, to consider which lane he should take. Both led to his rectory, but one was somewhat shorter than the other. The shorter was, however, stony and very wet. He chose the longer way, and turned to the right. Thirty years after he was speaking with a parishioner who was ill, when the man said to him suddenly, " Do you remember such and such a night, when you came to the Y? You had been with Nankevill, who was dying."
"Yes, I do recall something about it."
"Do you remember you said ' Good - night ' to me?"
"I remember that someone was there; I did not know it was you."
"And you turned right, instead of left?"
"I dare say."
"If you had taken the left-hand road you would never have seen next morning."
"Why so?"
"There was a large cargo of 'run' goods being transported that night, and you would have met it."
"What of that?"
"What of that? You would have been chucked over the cliffs."
"But how could they suppose I would peach?"
"Sir! They 'd ha' took good care you shouldn't a' had the chance!"
I was sitting in a little seaport tavern in Cornwall one winter's evening, over a great fire, with a com pany of very old "salts," gossiping, yarning, singing, when up got a tough old fellow with a face the colour of mahogany, and dark, piercing eyes, and the nose of a hawk. Planting his feet wide apart, as though on deck in a rolling sea, he began to sing in stentorian tones a folk-song relative to a highway- man in the old times, when Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate at Westminster, put down highway robbery.
The ballad told of the evil deeds of this mounted robber of the highways, and of how he was captured by "Fielding's crew" and condemned to die. It concluded:—
"When I am dead, borne to my grave,
A gallant funeral may I have;
Six highwaymen to carry me,
With good broad swords and sweet liberty.
"Six blooming maidens shall bear my pall,
Give them white gloves and pink ribbons all;
And when I 'm dead they'll tell the truth,
I was a wild and a wicked youth."
At the conclusion of each verse the whole assembly repeated the two final lines. It was a striking scene ; their eyes flashed, their colour mounted, they hammered with their fists on the table and with their heels on the floor. Some, in the wildness of their excitement, sprang up, thrust their hands through their white or grey hair, and flourished them, roaring like bulls.
When the song was done, and composure had settled over the faces of the excited men, one of them said apologetically to me, "You see, sir, we be all old smugglers, and have gone agin the law in our best days."
There is something to be said in extenuation of the wrongfulness of English smuggling.
The customs duties were imposed first in England for the purpose of protecting the coasts against pirates, who made descents on the undefended villages, and kidnapped and carried off children and men to sell as slaves in Africa, or who waylaid merchant vessels and plundered them. But when all danger from pirates ceased, the duties were not only maintained, but made more onerous.
It was consequently felt that there had been a violation of compact on the side of the Crown, and bold spirits entertained no scruple of conscience in carrying on contraband trade. The officers of the Crown no longer proceeded to capture, bring to justice, and hang notorious foreign pirates, but to capture, bring to justice, and hang native seamen and traders. The preventive service became a means of oppression, and not of relief
That is the light in which the bold men of Cornwall regarded it; that is the way in which it was regarded, not by the ignorant seamen only, but by magistrates, country gentlemen, and parsons alike. As an illustration of this, we may quote the story told by the late Rev. R. S. Hawker, for many years vicar of Morwenstow, on the North Cornish coast:—
"It was full six o'clock in the afternoon of an autumn day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above high-water mark. "The stranger, a native of some inland town, and entirely unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a landing was coming off. It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but to dazzle and surprise.
"At sea, just beyond the billows, lay a vessel, well moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the ship and the shore boats laden to the gunwale passed to and fro. Crowds assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore.
"On the one hand a boisterous group surrounding a keg with the head knocked in, into which they dipped whatsoever vessel came first to hand; one man had filled his shoe. On the other side they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore.
"Horrified at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command and, oblivious of personal danger, he began to shout: 'What a horrible sight! Have you no shame? Is there no magistrate at hand? Cannot any justice of the peace be found in this fearful country?'
" ’No, thanks be,' answered a hoarse, gruff voice; ’none within eight miles.'
" 'Well, then,' screamed the stranger, 'is there no clergyman hereabouts? Does no minister of the parish live among you on this coast?'
"'Aye, to be sure there is,' said the same deep voice.
"'Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?'
" ’That's he, sir, yonder with the lantern.' And sure enough, there he stood on a rock, and poured, with pastoral diligence, 'the light of other days' on a busy congregation."
It may almost be said that the Government did its best to encourage smuggling by the harsh and vexatious restrictions it put on trade. A prohibitory list of goods which might under no conditions whatever be imported into Great Britain included gold and silver brocade, cocoanut shells, foreign embroidery, manufactures of gold and silver plate, ribbons and laces, chocolate and cocoa, calicoes printed or dyed abroad, gloves and mittens.
Beside these a vast number of goods were charged with heavy duties, as spirits, tea, tobacco. The duties on these were so exorbitant, that it was worth while for men to attempt to run a cargo without paying duty.
To quote a writer in the Edinburgh Review, at the time when smuggling was fairly rife:—
"To create by means of high duties an overwhelming temptation to indulge in crime, and then to punish men for indulging in it, is a proceeding wholly and completely subversive of every principle of justice. It revolts the natural feelings of the people, and teaches them to feel an interest in the worst characters, to espouse their cause and to avenge their wrongs."
Desperate affrays took place between smugglers and the preventive men, who were aware that the magistracy took a lenient view of the case when one of them fell, and brought in "murder" when an officer of the Crown shot a "free-trader."
One of the most terrible men on the Cornish coast, remembered by his evil repute, was "Cruel Coppinger." He had a house at Welcombe on the north coast, where lived his wife, an heiress. The bed is still shown to the post of which he tied her and thrashed her with a rope till she consented to make over her little fortune to his exclusive use.
Coppinger had a small estate at Roscoff, in Brittany, which was the headquarters of the smuggling trade during the European war. He was paid by the British Government to carry despatches to and from the French coast, but he took advantage of his credentials as a Government agent to do much contraband business himself.
I remember, as a boy, an evil-faced old man, his complexion flaming red and his hair very white, who kept a small tavern not in the best repute. A story of this innkeeper was told, and it is possible that it may be true—naturally the subject was not one on which it was possible to question him. He had been a smuggler in his day, and a wild one too.
On one occasion, as he and his men were rowing a cargo ashore they were pursued by a revenue boat. Tristram Davey, as I will call this man, knew this bit of coast perfectly. There was a reef of sharp slate rock that ran across the little bay, like a very keen saw with the teeth set outward, and there was but one point at which this saw could be crossed. Tristram knew the point to a nicety, even in the gloaming, and he made for it, the revenue boat following.
He, however, did not make direct for it, but steered a little on one side and then suddenly swerved and shot through the break. The revenue boat came straight on, went upon the jaws of the reef, was torn, and began to fill. Now the mate of this boat was one against whom Tristram entertained a deadly enmity, because he had been the means of a capture in which his property had been concerned. So he turned the boat, and running back, he stood up, levelled a gun and shot the mate through the heart; then away went the smuggling boat to shore, leaving the rest of the revenue men to shift as best they could with their injured boat.
The most noted smuggling centre between Penzance and Porthleven was Prussia Cove, and there, to this day, stands the house of John Carter, "The King of Prussia," as he was called, the most successful and notorious smuggler of the district. His reign extended from 1777 to 1807, and he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Captain William Richards, under whom Prussia Cove maintained its old celebrity.
The story goes that John Carter, as a boy, playing at soldiers with other boys, received the nickname of "The King of Prussia." Formerly the cove was called Porthleah, but in recollection of his exploits it is now known as Prussia Cove.
On one occasion, during his absence from home, the excise officers carried off a cargo that had lately arrived for Carter from France. They conveyed it to the custom-house store. On his return. Carter summoned his men, and at night he and they broke into the stores and carried off all that he held to be his own, without touching a single article to which he considered he had no claim. On another occasion, when Carter was pursued by a revenue cutter, and sore pressed, he ran through a narrow passage in the reefs, and fired on the cutter's boat sent after him. The fire was continued till night fell, and Carter was then able to effect his escape.
Three classes of men were engaged in the smuggling business. First came the "freighter"—the man who entered on the business as a commercial speculation. He engaged a vessel and purchased the cargo, and made all the requsite arrangements for the landing. Then came the "runners," who transported the goods on shore from the vessels. And lastly the " tub-carriers," who conveyed the kegs on their backs, slung across their shoulders, up the cliff to their destination.
The tub-carriers were usually agricultural labourers in the employment of farmers near the coast.
These farmers were in understanding with the smugglers, and on a hint given, supplied them with their workmen, and were repaid with a keg of spirits.
The entire English coast was subjected to blockade by the Government to prevent the introduction into the country of goods that had not paid duty, and the utmost ingenuity and skill had to be exercised to run the blockade. But after that was done the smuggler still ran great risk, for the coast was patrolled.
Smuggling methods were infinitely varied, depending on a great variety of circumstances. Much daring, skill, and cleverness were required. The smuggler and the preventive man were engaged in a game in which each used all his faculties to overreach the other. One means employed where the coast was well watched was for the kegs to be sunk. A whole " crop," as it was called, was attached to a rope, that was weighted with stones and fastened at both ends by an anchor. When a smuggling vessel saw no chance of landing its cargo, it sank it and fixed it with the anchors, and the bearings of the sunken "crop" were taken and communicated to the aiders and abettors on land, who waited their opportunity to fish it up.
But the revenue officers were well aware of this dodge, and one of their duties was to grope along the coast with hooks—"creeping" was the technical term—for such deposits. A crop that had been sunk in a hurry, and not in very deep water, was likely to suffer. The ropes chafed and broke, or a floating keg, or one washed ashore, was a certain betrayal of the presence of a crop not far off.
As a rule the contents of the sunken kegs suffered no deterioration from being under water for some time ; but if submerged too long the spirits turned bad. Such deteriorated spirits were known amongst coastguardsmen as "stinkibus."
Every barrel of liquor as provided by the merchants at Roscoff and elsewhere was furnished with a pair of sling ropes ready for attachment to the cord in the event of sinking, and for carrying by the tub-men when safely worked on shore.
Very often when a rowboat, towing a line of kegs after it, was pursued, the smugglers were forced to let go the casks. Then the coastguard secured them, but found the magistrates loath to convict, because they could not swear that the kegs picked up were identical with those let go by the smugglers. Accordingly they were ordered, whenever such an event happened, to mark the line of kegs by casting to them a peculiarly painted buoy.
In order to have information relative to the smugglers, so as to be on the alert to "nab" them, the Government had paid spies in the foreign ports, and also in the English ports.
Woe betide a spy if he were caught! No mercy was shown him. There is here and there on the coast a pit, surrounded on all sides but one by the sea, that goes by the name of "Dead Man's Pool," in which tradition says that spies have been dropped.
Mr. Hawker, who has already been quoted, had as his man-of-all-work an ex-smuggler named Pentire, from whom he got many stories. One day Pentire asked Mr. Hawker:—
"Can you tell me the reason, sir, that no grass will ever grow on the grave of a man that's hanged unjustly?"
"Indeed! How came that about?"
"Why, you see, they got poor Will down to Bodmin, all among strangers; and there was bribery and false swearing, and so they agreed together and hanged poor Will. But his friends begged the body and brought the corpse home here to his own parish, and they turfed the grave, and they sowed the grass twenty times over, but 'twas all of no use, nothing would grow; he was hanged unjustly."
"Well, but, Pentire, what was he accused of? What had Will Pooly done?" "Done, your honour? Oh, nothing at all—only killed an exciseman."
There are around the coast a great number of what are locally called Vougghas, or Fogous (Welsh Ogofau), caves that were artificially constructed for the stowing away of "run" goods.
There is one at Stoke Fleming, near Dartmouth. All along both south and north coasts they are fairly common. On Dartmoor there are also some, but these were for the preparation of spirits, most likely, and the stowing away of what was locally " burnt." They are now employed for turnip cellars.
At one of the wildest and most rugged points of a singularly wild and rugged coast, that of the north of Cornwall, are two tiny bays. Forth Cothan and Forth Mear, in the parishes of S. Merryn and S. Eval, at no great distance from Bedruthan, which has the credit of being the finest piece of cliff scenery on this coast. Here the cliffs tower up a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet above the sea ; the raging surf foams over chains of islets formed by the waves, which burrow among the slaty, quartzose rocks, form caves, work further, insulate crags, and finally convert into islands these nodes of more durable rock. At Forth Cothan the cliffs fall away and form a lap of shore, into which flows a little stream, that loses itself in the shifting sands. A manor-house, a mill, a farm- house or two are all the dwellings near Forth Cothan, and of highways there is none for many miles, the nearest being that from Wadebridge to S. Columb. About a mile up the glen that forms the channel through which the stream flows into Forth Cothan, is a tiny lateral combe, the steep sides covered with heather and dense clumps and patches of furze.
Rather more than half-way down the steep slope of the hill is a hole just large enough to admit of a man entering in a stooping posture. To be strictly accurate, the height is 3 ft. 6 in. and the width 3 ft. But once within, the cave is found to be loftier, and runs for 50 feet due west, the height varying from 7 ft. 6 in. to 8 ft. 6 in., and the width expanding to 8 ft. 3 in. Immediately within the entrance may be observed notches cut in the rock, into which a beam might be thrust to close the mouth of the cave, which was then filled in with earth and bramble bushes drawn over it, when it would require a very experienced eye to discover it. As it was, though the mouth was open, my guide was in fault and unable to find it, and it was by accident only that I lit upon it.
At 7 feet from the entrance a lateral gallery branches off to the right, extending at present but 17 feet, and of that a portion of the roof has fallen in. This gallery was much lower than the main one, not being higher than 3 feet, but probably in a portion now choked it rose, at all events in places, to a greater height. This side gallery never served for the storage of smuggled goods. It was a passage that originally was carried as far as the little cluster of cottages at Trevethan, whence, so it is said, another passage communicated with the sands of Forth Mean The opening of the underground way is said to have been in a well at Trevethan. But the whole is now choked up. The tunnel was not carried in a straight line. It branched out of the trunk at an acute angle, and was carried in a sweep through the rocks with holes at intervals for the admission of light and air. The total length must have been nearly 3500 feet. The passage can in places be just traced by the falling in of the ground above, but it cannot be pursued within. At the beginning of this century this smugglers' cave was in use.
There is still living an old woman who can give information relative to the use of this cave.
"Well, Genefer, did you ever see smugglers who employed the Vouggha?"
Vouggha, as already stated, is the old Cornish word for cave.
"Well, no, sir. I can't say that; but my father did. He minded well the time when the Vouggha was filled wi' casks of spirits right chuck-full."
"But how were they got there?"
"That was easy enough. The boats ran their loads into Forth Cothan, or, if the preventive men were on the watch, into Forth Mear, which is hidden by the Island of Trescore, drawn like a screen in front. They then rolled the kegs, or carried 'em, to the mouth of the Vouggha or to Trevemedar, it did not matter which, and they rolled 'em into the big cave, and then stopped the mouth up. They could go and get a keg whenever they liked by the little passage that has its mouth in the garden."
"Did the preventive men never find out this place?"
"Never, sir, never. How could they? Who 'd be that wicked as to tell them? and they wasn't clever enough to find it themselves. Besides, it would take a deal of cleverness to find the mouth of the Vouggha when closed with clats of turf and drawn over with brambles; and that in the garden could be covered in five minutes—easy." After a pause the old woman said, "Ah! it 's a pity I be so old and feeble, or I could show you another as I knows of, and, I reckon, no one else. But my father he had the secret. Oh, dear! oh, dear! what is the world coming to—for education and all kinds o' wickedness? Sure, there 's no smuggling now, and poor folks ha'n't got the means o' bettering themselves like proper Christians."
There are other of these smugglers' resorts extant in Cornwall, usually built up underground—one such at Marsland, in Morwenstow; another at Helliger, near Penzance. The Penrose cave is, however, cut out of the solid rock, and the pickmarks are distinctly traceable throughout. At the end, someone has cut his initials in the rock, with the date 1747.