be invaluable, have long since perished. The burning down of the
Customs House by the side of the Thames in 1814 and the inappreciation
of the right value of certain documents by former officials have
caused so desirable a history to be impossible to be written. Still,
happily, there is even now a vast amount of material in existence, and
the present Commissioners of the Board of Customs are using every
effort to preserve for posterity a mass of data connected with this
service.

Owing to the courtesy of the Commissioners it has been my good fortune
to make careful researches through the documents which are concerned
with the old smuggling days, the Revenue cutters, and the Preventive
Service generally; and it is from these pages of the past and from
other sources that I have been enabled to put forth the story as it is
here presented; and as such it represents an attempt to afford an
authentic picture of an extremely interesting and an equally exciting
period of our national history, to show the conditions of the
smuggling industry from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and
the efforts to put a stop to the same. We shall soon find that this
period in its glamour, romance, and adventure contains a good deal of
similarity to the great seafaring Elizabethan epoch. The ships were
different, but the courage of the English seamen was the same. Nor
must we forget that those rough, rude men who ran backwards and
forwards across the English Channel in cutters, yawls, luggers, and
sometimes open boats, stiffened with a rich ballast of tea, tobacco,
and brandy, were some of the finest seamen in the world, and certainly
the most skilful fore-and-aft sailors and efficient pilots to be found
anywhere on the seas which wash the coasts of the United Kingdom. They
were sturdy and strong of body, courageous and enterprising of nature,
who had "used" the sea all their lives. Consequently the English