to put into harbours, roadsteads, and rivers, where they lay at anchor under pretence of waiting for orders.  Another method still, that was as simple as it was successful, consisted of landing their goods at outports on such holidays as the King’s birthday, &c., when the Revenue officers were absent.  Cockburn admitted that he had done this himself and had run great quantities of brandies, teas, and Spanish liquorice even as much as nearly a ton of the latter at a time.  But besides these two classes there was a third.  The whole of the coasting trade in those days was of course done in sailing ships; and inasmuch as there were no railways for carrying merchandise there was a good deal more encouragement for the sailing ship owner than there is to-day.  The methods of smuggling adopted by these coasters was a little more complicated, and this was done by such means as fraudulently obtaining permits, by cockets clandestinely obtained, by false entry of one sort of goods for another, and by corrupting the Customs’ officers.  To prove his case the captain gave the following examples, all of which he had himself employed since the year 1738!

As regards the obtaining of permits fraudulently, he said that he had gone to Dunkirk, taken aboard 2040 gallons of French brandy and cleared for North Bergen in Norway.  Of course he had no intention whatever of steering for that port, but in case he met any of the Custom House sloops as he approached the English coast, it would be convenient to show this clearance and so prevent his brandy being seized.  From Dunkirk, then, he sailed across the North Sea and ran up the river Humber.  There, by previous arrangement, one of those keels which are so well known in the neighbourhood of the Humber and Trent met him.  The keel had been sent from York down the Ouse with permits to cover the brandy.  The keel was cleared by a merchant at York, who obtained permits for conveying to Gainsborough a quantity of French brandy equal to that which Cockburn had on board his ship, though in fact the keel, notwithstanding that she obtained these permits, set forth with no brandy in her at all.

It was the point where the Ouse crosses the Trent at right angles that had been arranged as the trysting-place, and there the keel took on board from Cockburn the brandy which had come from Dunkirk.  Cockburn himself nailed the permits on to the heads of the casks, which in due course were taken by the keel, when the flood tide made again, to Gainsborough some distance up the Trent.  Arrived there the casks were properly taken into stock and entered in the Custom House books as if the brandy had been actually brought down from York and had previously paid duty.  On this one venture the garrulous skipper admitted that he cleared a profit by the brandy of L250 per cent., which was a remarkably handsome reward for so short a voyage as from Dunkirk.