Testimony to the Qualities of the Seafaring Smugglers—Adam Smith on Smuggling—A Clerical Counterblast—Biographical Sketches of Smugglers—Robert Johnson, Harry Paulet—William Gibson, A Converted Smuggler

Care has already been taken to discriminate between the hardy, hearty, and daring fellows who brought their duty-free goods across the sea and those others who, daring also, but often cruel and criminal, handled the goods ashore. We now come to close quarters with the seafaring smugglers, in a few biographical sketches: premising them with some striking testimony to their qualities as seamen.

Captain Brenton, in his “History of the Royal Navy,” pays a very high, but not extravagant, compliment to these daring fellows: “These men,” he says, “are as remarkable for their skill in seamanship as for their audacity in the hour of danger; their local knowledge has been highly advantageous to the Navy, into which, however, they never enter, unless sent on board ships of war as a punishment for some crime committed against the revenue laws. They are hardy, sober, and faithful to each other, beyond the generality of seamen; and, when shipwreck occurs, have been known to perform deeds not exceeded in any country in the world; probably unequalled in the annals of other maritime powers.”

Such men as these, besides being, in the rustic opinion, very much of heroes, engaged in an unequal warfare, against heavy odds, with a hateful, ogreish abstraction called “the Government,” which existed only for the purpose of taxing and suppressing the poor, for the benefit of the rich, were regarded as benefactors; for they supplied the downtrodden, overtaxed people with better articles, at lower prices, than could be obtained in the legitimate way of traders who had paid excise duties.

There was probably a considerable basis of truth to support this view, for there is no doubt that duty-paid goods were largely adulterated. To adulterate his spirits, his tea, and his tobacco was the nearest road to any considerable profit that the tradesman could then make.

Things being of this complexion, it would have been the sheerest pedantry to refuse to purchase the goods the free-traders supplied at such alluringly low prices, and of such indubitably excellent quality; and to give retail publicans and shopkeepers and private consumers their due, as sensible folk, untroubled by supersensitive consciences, they rarely did refuse.Adam Smith, in the course of his writings on political economy, nearly a century and a half ago, stated the popular view about smuggling and the purchase of smuggled goods:

“To pretend to have any scruple about buying smuggled goods, though a manifest encouragement to the violation of the revenue laws, and to the perjury which almost always attends it, would in most countries be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of gaining credit with anybody, seems only to expose the person who affects to practise it to the suspicion of being a greater knave than most of his neighbours.”

From even the most charitable point of view, that person who was so eccentric as to refuse to take advantage of any favourable opportunity of purchasing cheaply such good stuff as might be offered to him, and had not paid toll to the Revenue, was a prig.

Smith himself looked upon the smuggler with a great deal of sympathy, and regarded him as “a person who, though no doubt blamable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been in every respect an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so.”

Very few, indeed, were those voices raised against the practice of smuggling. Among them, however, was that of John Wesley, perhaps the most influential of all, especially in the West of England. The clergy in general might rail against the smugglers, but there were few among them who did not enjoy the right sort of spirits which, singularly enough, could only commonly be obtained from these shy sources; and there was a certain malignant satisfaction to any properly constituted smuggler in using the tower, or perhaps even the pulpit, of a parish church as temporary spirit-cellar, and in undermining the parson’s honesty by the present of a tub. Few were those reverend persons who repudiated this sly suggestion of co-partnery, and those few who felt inclined so to do were generally silenced by the worldly wisdom of their parish clerks, who, forming as it were a connecting link between things sacred and profane, could on occasion inform a clergyman that his most respected churchwarden was financially interested in the success of some famous run of goods just notoriously brought off.

Among those few clergy who actively disapproved of these things we must include the Rev. Robert Hardy, somewhat multitudinously beneficed in Sussex and elsewhere in the beginning of the nineteenth century. He published in 1818 a solemn pamphlet entitled: “Serious Cautions and Advice to all concerned in Smuggling; setting forth the Mischiefs attendant upon that Traffic; together with some exhortations to Patience and Contentment under the Difficulties and Trials of Life. By Robert Hardy, A.M., Vicar of the united parishes of Walberton and Yapton, and of Stoughton, in Sussex; and Chaplain to H.R.H. the Prince Regent.”

The author did not by any means blink the difficulties or dangers, but was, it will be conceded, far too sanguine when he wrote the following passage, in the hope of his words suppressing the trade:

“The calamities with which the Smuggler is now perpetually visited, by Informations and Fines, and Seizures, and Imprisonments, will, I trust, if properly considered, prevail upon the rich to discountenance, and upon the poor to forbear from, a traffic which, in addition to the sin of it, carries in its train so many evils, and mischiefs, and sorrows.”

His voice we may easily learn, in perusing the history of smuggling at and after the date of his pamphlet, was as that of one crying in the wilderness. Its sound may have pleased himself, but it was absolutely wasted upon those who smuggled, and those who purchased smuggled goods.

“Smugglers,” he said, “are of three descriptions:

“1. Those who employ their capital in the trade;

“2. Those who do the work;

“3. Those who deal in Smuggled Articles, either as Sellers or as Buyers.

“All these are involved in the guilt of this unlawful traffic; but its moral injuries fall principally upon the second class.“Smuggling,” he then proceeds to say, “has not been confined to the lower orders of people; but, from what I have heard, I apprehend that it has very generally been encouraged by their superiors, for whom no manner of excuse, that I know of, can be offered. I was once asked by an inhabitant of a village near the sea whether I thought there was any harm in smuggling. Upon my replying that I not only thought there was a great deal of harm in it, but a great deal of sin, he exclaimed, ‘Then the Lord have mercy upon the county of Sussex, for who is there that has not had a tub?’”

Among the ascertained careers of notable smugglers, that of Thomas Johnson affords some exciting episodes. This worthy, who appears to have been born in 1772 and to have died in 1839, doubled the parts of smuggler and pilot. He was known pretty generally as “the famous Hampshire smuggler.”

As a captured and convicted smuggler he was imprisoned in the New Prison in the Borough, in 1798, but made his escape, not without suspicion of connivance on the part of the warders. That the possession of him was ardently desired by the authorities seems sufficiently evident by the fact of their offering a reward of £500 for his apprehension; but he countered this by offering his services the following year as pilot to the British forces sent to Holland. This offer was duly accepted, and Johnson acquitted himself so greatly to the satisfaction of Sir Ralph Abercromby, commanding, that he was fully pardoned.

The Escape of Johnson

He then plunged into extravagant living, and finally found himself involved in heavy debts, stated (but not altogether credibly) to have totalled £11,000. Resuming his old occupation of smuggling, he was sufficiently wary not to be captured again by the revenue officers; but what they found it impossible to achieve was with little difficulty accomplished by the bailiffs, who arrested him for debt and flung him into the debtors’ prison of the Fleet, in 1802. Once there, the Inland Revenue were upon him with smuggling charges, and the situation seemed so black that he determined on again making a venture for freedom. Waiting an exceptionally dark night, he, on November 29th, stealthily crossed the yard and climbed the tall enclosing wall that separated the prison from the outer world. Sitting on the summit of this wall, he let himself down slowly by the full length of his arms, just over the place where a lamp was bracketed out over the pathway, far beneath. He then let himself drop so that he would fall on to the bracket, which he calculated would admirably break the too deep drop from the summit of the wall to the ground. Unfortunately for him, an unexpected piece of projecting ironwork caught him and ripped up the entire length of his thigh. At that moment the slowly approaching footsteps of the watchman were heard, and Johnson, with agonised apprehension, saw him coming along, swinging his lantern. There was nothing for it but to lie along the bracket, bleeding profusely the while, until the watchman should have passed.

He did so, and, as soon as seemed safe, dropped to the ground and crawled to a hackney-coach, hired by his friends, that had been waiting that night and several nights earlier, near by.

Safely away from the neighbourhood of the prison, his friends procured him a post-chaise and four; and thus he travelled post-haste to the Sussex coast at Brighton. On the beach a small sailing-vessel was waiting to convey him across Channel. He landed at Calais and thence made for Flushing, where he was promptly flung into prison by the agents of Napoleon, who was at that time seriously menacing our shores with invasion from Boulogne, where his flotilla for the transport of troops then lay.

Johnson and others were, in the opening years of the nineteenth century, very busily employed in smuggling gold out of the country into France. Ever since the troubles of the Revolution in that country, and all through the wars that had been waged with the rise of Napoleon, gold had been dwindling. People, terrified at the unrest of the times, and nervous of fresh troubles to come, secreted coin, and consequently the premium on gold rose to an extraordinary height, not only on the Continent but in England as well. A guinea would then fetch as much as twenty-seven shillings, and was worth a good deal more on the other side of the Channel. Patriotism was not proof against the prospects of profits to be earned by the export of gold, and not a few otherwise respectable banking-houses embarked in the trade. Finance has no conscience.

Johnson putting off from Brighton Beach

It is obvious that only thoroughly dependable and responsible men could be employed on this business, for shipments of gold varied from £20,000 to £50,000.

Eight and ten-oared galleys were as a rule used for the traffic; the money slung in long leather purses around the oarsmen’s bodies.

Napoleon is said to have offered Johnson a very large reward if he would consent, as pilot, to aid his scheme of invasion, and we are told that Johnson hotly refused.

“I am a smuggler,” said he, “but a true lover of my country, and no traitor.”

Napoleon was no sportsman. He kept Johnson closely confined in a noisome dungeon for nine months. How much longer he proposed to hold him does not appear, for the smuggler, long watching a suitable opportunity, at last broke away, and, ignorant that a pardon was awaiting him in England, escaped to America.

Returning from that “land of the brave and the free,” we find him in 1806 with the fleet commanded by Lord St. Vincent, off Brest. Precisely what services, beside the obvious one of acting as pilot, he was then rendering our Navy cannot be said, for the materials toward a life of this somewhat heroic and picturesque figure are very scanty. But that he had some plan for the destruction of the French fleet seems obvious from the correspondence of Lord St. Vincent, who, writing on August 8th, 1806, to Viscount Howick, remarks, “The vigilance of the enemy alone prevented Tom Johnstone [sic] from doing what he professed.” What he professed is, unfortunately, hidden from us.

After this mysterious incident we lose sight for a while of our evasive hero, and may readily enough assume that he returned again to his smuggling enterprises; for it is on record that in 1809, when the unhappy Walcheren expedition was about to be despatched, at enormous cost, from England to the malarial shores of Holland, he once more offered his services as pilot, and they were again accepted, with the promise of another pardon for lately-accrued offences.

He duly piloted the expedition, to the entire satisfaction of the Government, and received his pardon and a pension of £100 a year. He fully deserved both, for he signally distinguished himself in the course of the operations by swimming to the ramparts of a fort, with a rope, by which in some unexplained manner a tremendous and disastrous explosion was effected.

He was further appointed to the command of the revenue cruiser Fox, at the conclusion of the war, and thus set to prey upon his ancient allies; who, in their turn, made things so uncomfortable for the “scurvy rat,” as they were pleased picturesquely to style him, that he rarely dared venture out of port. So it would appear that he did not for any great length of time hold that command.

But the reputation for daring and resourcefulness that he enjoyed did not seem to be clouded by this incident, for he was approached by the powerful friends of Napoleon, exiled at St. Helena, to aid them in a desperate attempt to rescue the fallen Emperor. It was said that they offered him the sum of £40,000 down, and a further very large sum, if the attempt were successful. The patriotic hero of some years earlier seems to have been successfully tempted. “Every man,” says the cynic, “has his price”; and £40,000 and a generous refresher formed his. For personal gain he was prepared to let loose once more the scourge of Europe.

Plans were actively afoot for the construction of a submarine boat (there is nothing new under the sun!) for the purpose of secretly conveying the distinguished exile away, when he inconsiderately died; and thus vanished Johnson’s dreams of wealth.

Some years later Johnson built a submarine boat to the order of the Spanish Government, and ran trials with it in the Thames, between London Bridge and Blackwall. On one occasion it became entangled in a cable of one of the vessels lying in the Pool, and for a time it seemed scarce possible the boat could easily be freed.

“We have but two and a half minutes to live,” said he, consulting his watch calmly, “unless we get clear of that cable.”“Captain” Johnson, as he was generally styled, lived in quiet for many years, finally dying at the age of sixty-seven, in March 1839, in the unromantic surroundings of the Vauxhall Bridge Road.

Another smuggler of considerable reputation, of whom, however, we know all too little, was Harry Paulet. This person, who appears in some manner to have become a prisoner aboard a French man-o’-war, made his escape and took with him a bag of the enemy’s despatches, which he handed over to the English naval authorities.

A greater deed was that when, sailing with a cargo of smuggled brandy, he came in view of the French fleet (we being then, as usual, at war with France), Paulet immediately went on a new tack and carried the news of the enemy’s whereabouts to Lord Hawke, who promised to hang him if the news were not true.

A somewhat interesting and curious account of the conversion of a youthful smuggler may be found in an old volume of The Bible Christian Magazine. The incident belongs to the Scilly Isles.

William Gibson, the smuggler in question, was a bold, daring young man, and he, with others, had crossed over to France more than once in a small open boat, a distance of 150 miles, rowing there and back, running great risks to bring home a cargo of brandy.

In 1820, the time when William was at his best in these smuggling enterprises, St. Mary’s was visited by a pious, simple-minded young woman, Mary Ann Werry by name, the first representative of the Bible Christian connexion to land on the island. The congregation were in the throes of a revival, and eager for more and more preaching, but the minister upon whom they principally relied was commercially minded, and demanded £2 for his services. The members refused to give it. “There is a woman here,” said they, “we will have her to preach to us”; and, being asked, she consented, and preached from 1 Tim. iv. 8, “For bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”

We have the well-known ruling of Dr. Johnson upon the preaching of women, that it in a manner resembles a dog walking on its hind-legs: it is not done well; you only marvel that it is done at all. [N.B.—Dr. Johnson would not have favoured, or been favoured by, modern Women’s Leagues.] But, at any rate, Miss Werry seems to have been a notable exception. She was eloquent and persuasive, and played upon the sensibilities of those rugged Scillonians what tune she would.

Tears of penitence rolled down the cheeks of many a stalwart man (to say nothing of the hoary sinners) that day. Among the number thus affected was William Gibson, of St. Martin’s, who from that hour became a changed person. No longer did he refuse to render unto CÆsar (otherwise King George) that which was CÆsar’s (or King George’s). He gave up the contraband trade, and, forswearing his old companions’ ways, turned to those of the righteous and the law-abiding, and became a burning and a shining light, and, as “Brother Gibson,” a painful preacher in the Bible Christian communion. And thus, and in lawful fishing, with some little piloting, he continued steadfast, until his death in 1877, in his eighty-third year.