At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh





PREFACE


I have in the following pages endeavoured to resist the temptation to
weave a web of pleasant but unreliable fiction round actual
occurrences. That which is here set forth has been derived from facts,
and in almost every case from manuscript records. It aims at telling
the story of an eventful and exciting period according to historical
and not imaginative occurrence. There are extant many novels and short
stories which have for their heroes the old-time smugglers. But the
present volume represents an effort to look at these exploits as they
were and not as a novelist likes to think they might have occurred.

Perhaps there is hardly an Englishman who was not thrilled in his
boyhood days by Marryat and others when they wrote of the King's
Cutters and their foes. It is hoped that the following pages will not
merely revive pleasant recollections but arouse a new interest in the
adventures of a species of sailing craft that is now, like the brig
and the fine old clipper-ship, past and done with.

The reader will note that in the Appendices a considerable amount of
interesting data has been collected. This has been rendered possible
only with great difficulty, but it is believed that in future years
the dimensions and details of a Revenue Cutter's construction, the