Some idea of the number of his Majesty’s ships and vessels which were employed in the prevention of smuggling in the year 1819 may be gathered from the following list.  It should, however, be mentioned that these did not include the numbers of Custom House cruisers which the Admiralty had begun to control, but were actually the Naval ships which aided those of the Revenue:—­

Plymouth supplied 10 ships and 4 tenders
Portsmouth  "      8   "       3    "
Sheerness   "      8   "       2    "
Leith       "      7   "       1 tender
Ireland     "     12   "       1    "

at a total cost of L245,519.  But it should also be borne in mind that these ships of the Navy, or at any rate by far the greater number of them, would have been in commission whether employed or not in the prevention of smuggling, and in certain cases these ships were employed in the Preventive service for only a part of the year.  Without the Revenue cutters the Navy could not possibly have dealt with the smugglers, and this was actually admitted in a Treasury Minute of January 15, 1822.  The total number of Revenue cruisers employed in Great Britain and Ireland during the year 1819, as distinct from the ships of the Royal Navy, amounted to 69.  The following year this number had increased to 70.  These were apportioned thus:—­

    20 under the Commander-in-Chief at Sheerness
    11 " " " " Portsmouth
    14 " " " " Plymouth
    12 " " " " Leith
    11 were employed in Ireland
     2 were employed by the Commissioners of Customs
    —­
    70
    ==

To sum up then with regard to the Preventive Water-guard, let us state that this had been constituted in 1809 to supplement the efforts of the cruisers and Riding officers, the coast of England and Wales being divided into three parts, and placed under the control of Inspecting Commanders.  Under this arrangement were included the Revenue cruisers themselves.  Then in 1816 the Admiralty had taken over these cruisers from the Preventive Water-guard, and the following year the Coast Blockade had taken over that portion of the coast between the Forelands, to be extended in 1818 to Shellness and Seaford respectively.

The sphere of activity on the part of the Preventive Water-guard was thus by the year 1819 considerably curtailed, and from the instructions which were now issued to the Inspecting Commanders we can see how the rest of the coastline other than that section just considered was dealt with.  Each station consisted of one chief officer, one chief boatman, two commissioned boatmen, and four established boatmen.  There was a six-oared boat with her rudder and wash-boards—­“wash-streaks” they are officially called—­a five-fathom rope as a light painter, eight good ash oars, two boat-hooks.  She was a sailing craft, for she was provided with a fore-mast, main-mast, and mizzen-mast, with “haul-yards,”