d officers. Meanwhile, the
Dutchman stood out to sea so that he might be able to draw off the
spirits from large casks into smaller ones, which were the better
fitted for running ashore. It was found afterwards that he had large
numbers of these lesser casks, and during that evening she put about
and crept stealthily in towards the shore again until she approached
within about a mile of the mouth of the Tees. Her intention was to run
the rest of her cargo under cover of darkness, and her skipper had
arranged for large numbers of men to be on that coast ready to receive
and carry off these casks. But Bowen was determined to head her off
this project. An exciting chase followed, during which--to quote an
official report of the time--the dogger did her best "to eat the
sloop out of the wind," that is to say sailed as close to the wind as
she could travel in the hope of causing her adversary to drop to
leeward. For seven hours this chase continued, but after that duration
the _Prince of Wales_ captured the _Young Daniel_ eight leagues from
the shore. This is not a little interesting, for inasmuch as the chase
began when the dogger was a mile from the mouth of the river, the
vessels must have travelled about 23 statutory miles in the time,
which works out at less than 3-1/2 miles an hour. Not very fast, you
may suggest, for a Revenue cutter or for the Dutchman either. But we
have no details as to the weather, which is usually bad off that part
of the coast in February (the month when this incident occurred), and
we must remember that the doggers were too bluff of build to possess
speed, and the time had not yet arrived when those much faster Revenue
cutters with finer lines and less ample beam were to come into use.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] A snow was a vessel with three masts resembling the main and
foremast of a ship with a third and small mast just abaft the
mainmast, carrying a sail nearly similar to a ship's mizzen. The foot
of this mast was fixed in a block of wood or step but on deck. The
head was attached to the afterpart of the maintop. The sail was called
a trysail, hence the mast was called a trysail-mast. (Moore's
_Midshipman's Vocabulary_, 1805.)

[6] It was the frequent custom at this time to speak of sloops as
cruisers.

[7] A dogger was a two-masted Dutch fishing-vessel usually employed in
the North Sea off the Dogger Bank. She had two masts, and was very
similar to a ketch in rig, but somewhat beamy and bluff-b