mind that of course this probably represented the value of the goods
when they were put on board. What they actually realised after they
were smuggled into the English market must have been something
considerable.

Hanning was followed by a certain Captain Joseph Cockburn, who had a
very instructive story to tell, which must have amazed even the
Commissioners. This gallant skipper was now commanding one of his
Majesty's sloops, but prior to that he had been engaged in
privateering, and before that had commanded several vessels employed
in smuggling. From his very infancy he had been concerned in the
practice of running goods, and his apprenticeship had been served to
a smuggler at Rochester, who was nominally a fisherman. Consequently,
with an accumulated knowledge obtained first as a smuggler and
subsequently as a pursuer of smugglers, there was not much, if
anything at all, in connection with the work which could have missed
his attention. He proved himself a veritable encyclopædia of smuggling
information, and even the following brief summary will show that his
experience was something exceptional.

First of all, he instanced the case of five cutters which he knew were
constantly employed in running tea and brandy from Boulogne into Kent
and Sussex. They imported at least six tons of tea and two thousand
half-ankers of brandy _every week_. He estimated that the six tons of
tea would be purchased abroad for £1920. The two thousand half-ankers
of brandy, even if they cost but ten shillings apiece, would represent
the sum of £1000; so altogether there was a total of nearly £3000
being carried out of the country in specie every week by these five
cutters alone. But he also knew of five other cutters which were
constantly employed in fetching brandy and tea from Middleburgh and