mate, and a
midshipman. They have each their tumbler before them, and are drinking
gin-toddy, hot, with sugar--capital gin, too, 'bove proof; it is from
that small anker standing under the table. It was one that they forgot
to return to the Custom House when they made their last seizure."

In 1786, by the 26 Geo. III. c. 40, section 27, it was made lawful for
any commander of any of his Majesty's vessels of war, or any officer
by them authorised, to make seizures without a deputation or
commission from the Commissioners of the Customs. Those were curious
times when we recollect that apart altogether from the men-of-war of
varying kinds, there were large numbers of armed smuggler-cutters,
Custom-House cutters with letters of marque, privateers, and even
Algerine corsairs from the Mediterranean, in the English Channel. It
is to-day only a hundred and fifty years ago since one of these
Algerine craft was wrecked near Penzance in the early autumn.

We mentioned just now the Act of George III. which required craft to
be licensed. This was another of the various means employed for the
prevention of smuggling, and since the passing of this Act those
luggers and cutters which engaged in the running of goods endeavoured
to evade the Act's penalties by possessing themselves of foreign
colours and foreign ship's papers. Now, as a fact, by far the greater
part of such craft belonged to Deal, Folkestone, and other south-coast
ports of England. Their masters were also from the same localities,
and very few of them could speak Dutch or French. But for the purpose
of evading the English law they got themselves made burghers of
Ostend, and notwithstanding that their crews were for the most part
English they designated their craft as foreign.

During the year 1785 it happened that two of these pseudo-foreign
smuggling craft were chased by an English frigate. Owing to the fact
that the frigate had no pilot on board, one of these vessels escaped,
but the other, after a chase lasting five hours, realised that she
would soon be overhauled. Her master, therefore, threw overboard his
cargo as the frigate fast approached, and in company with a number of
his crew took to his large boat. The lugger, after no fewer than
twenty shots had been fired at her, hove-to. On taking possession of
the lugger and examining her papers it appeared that her master's name
was the very English-sounding Thomas March, and yet he described
himself as a burgher of