Smuggling in the British Isles

Book excerpt: The term 'smuggling' conjures up the image of a sailor in long boots and a striped jersey, rolling barrels of brandy up a moonlit Cornish beach and into a hidden cave, while the excise men fruitlessly search in the wrong places. Although romanticised, this picture is not entirely inaccurate, and, because of high and unpopular taxes, smuggling was quite common in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, it is estimated that at one point import duty had been paid on only 20 per cent of the tea drunk here, and there was so much illegally imported gin in Kent that people were using it to clean their windows. In Smuggling in the British Isles, maritime history specialist Richard Platt tells the full story of the smuggling trade, revealing who the smugglers were, why they did it, how contraband was transported and how they avoided detection. Anyone with an interest in the sea and its history will be drawn to this enlightening book.