s frequently met with insults from French smuggling
luggers manned by armed crews, who carried on a brisk smuggling trade
by force and even dared the Revenue men to come aboard them.

But as the Revenue service afloat was assisted now by the Navy, so the
Revenue land guard was also aided by the Military. In 1713
arrangements had been made that dragoons should co-operate with the
riding officers in their operations against the owlers, and there are
plenty of skirmishes recorded showing that the dragoons were actually
so employed. Originally these soldiers were employed under the
direction of the riding officers, but, as can well be expected, there
was a good deal of jealousy and friction caused through the sharing of
the soldiers in the rewards for seizures, and after the year 1822 this
military assistance was not utilised to any great extent, although
legally Army officers can still be called upon to render assistance
against smuggling. And, in passing, one might mention that this
co-operation afloat between the Customs men and the Navy was equally
noticeable for a certain amount of ill-feeling, as we shall mention
on a later page.

Before the first quarter of the eighteenth century was completed,
smuggling between England and the Continent was proceeding at a brisk
pace, and by the middle of that century it had well-nigh reached its
climax for fearlessness. We have already alluded to the establishment
of hired smacks and sloops inaugurated towards the end of the
seventeenth century. The sloop rig, as I have shown in another
volume,[2] had probably been introduced into England from Holland soon
after the accession of Charles II., but from that date its merits of
handiness were so fully recognised that for yachts, for fishing craft,
for the carrying of passengers and cargo up and down the Thames and
along the coast as well as across to Ireland and the Continent, the
rig was adopted very readily in place of the lug-sails. The smack was
also a sloop-rigged vessel. We need not enter here into a discussion
as to the comparative merits of sloops and cutters and smacks. It is
enough if we state that when it was realised that a vessel of say 100
tons, sloop-rigged, with her one mast, mainsail, and two headsails and
square topsail (set forward of the mast on a yard) could be handled
with fewer men and therefore less expense than a lugger of similar
size; was also more suitable for manoeuvring in narrow channels,
and for enteri