THE SMUGGLER’S RETURN

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11652, 17 October 1923, Page 11

THE SMUGGLER’S RETURN

LIQUOR FOR ENGLAND. FISHING BOATS AT WORK. Smugglers’ tales are being told again in many a coast side inn in England, where fishermen and seafarers meet and exchange confidences when no strangers are about. The old-time smugglers have come back to Euglnnd once more. They are the real smugglers—not the people who try surreptitiously to land dutiable goods at a port, hidden in clothes or baggage, but men of the fisher craft who dump good brandy on a lonely shore in the dark of a summer night. Customs officials admit that smuggling is on the increase. They would bo glad to catch some of the men who are making a trade of it with tlieir fishing boats—a little side line more profitable than dropping a trawl net. A depreciated exchange in France and Belgium and a high Customs duty on spirits and cigars make the temptation to smuggle strong. The •‘stuff’ that is being brought into the country and landed at remote places on the south and cast coasts of England is chiefly brandy, obtained by arrangement from French or Belgian fishing smacks, and transferred at sea when the horizon is clear. There seems, however, to be nothing like an organised traffic, and only small quantities which can easily _be disposed of to private or publican customers are “run.” Risks of detection are small. The total number of the coast preventive force, which, for Customs protection, guards the whole line of England’s seaboard, is fewer than 500 men. They work unde* the orders of district officers of the waterguard. The waterguard is a form or preventive men at the ports, and has a strength of about 1700. It has the use of motor patrol boats and launches, and the solitary revenue cruiser Vigilant.