MARITIME HISTORY 



The hope of freedom which had caused resistance to impressment under the Common- 

 wealth had long died out into resignation, and we find few notices of the individual hardships and 

 subterfuges which accompanied the exercise of the custom. Occasionally a press-gang made a big 

 mistake, and then the incident comes under notice in official papers. In 1692 Mr. Jeremiah 

 Burlingham, an alderman of Dunwich, was pressed, but immediately released in virtue of a sharp 

 order from the Secretary of State to the Admiralty. Inquiry followed, and it was found that 

 Burlingham had been pressed by the procurement of Samuel Pacy, ' Esquire,' and John Benafile. 1 

 What sordid drama of self-interest or passion lies behind the bare facts cannot of course now be 

 discovered. On the other hand favourite captains had little difficulty at any time in obtaining 

 crews. Luttrell tells us ' two hundred seamen lately come out of Suffolk went in a body . . . and 

 voluntarily offered their services to the earl of Danby at St. James's to go on board the Resolution. 3 

 Danby, afterwards second duke of Leeds, was a man of intelligence and devoted to experiments in 

 improving shipbuilding, but he was a better captain than admiral. 



From the evidence before a committee of 1692 there seems to have been a flourishing local 

 trade with London, nine or ten hoys from Woodbridge going to and fro every week and double as 

 many from Ipswich and Aldeburgh. Defoe says that Ipswich still retained a large shipbuilding 

 trade during the reign of Charles II. chiefly in colliers built so strongly that their average life was 

 fifty or sixty years. 3 That trade, he says, was ruined by Parliament suspending the clauses of the 

 Navigation Act in favour of Dutch prizes, which could thus be obtained more cheaply than English 

 ships, so that instead of IOO belonging to the town as in 1668 there were hardly forty when he 

 visited the place. He notices that there was an ' inexhaustible ' store of timber round Ipswich, and 

 if there were many storms like that of 1692, when 140 out of 2OO light colliers going north 

 were wrecked on the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts, there must still have been a demand for the 

 especial Ipswich industry. Defoe's statement as to the extent of the Ipswich building trade at the 

 Restoration period is borne out by an order of January 1665-6 to press 134 shipwrights in nine 

 ports when we find Ipswich rated for more men than any of the other towns. 4 The rapid increase 

 of the Navy necessitated by the wars which followed the Revolution enforced the use of private 

 yards and Suffolk again built for the Admiralty, although on a small scale. William Hubbard of 

 Ipswich, and Isaac Belts and Andrew Munday of Woodbridge, were the builders employed. 



During the eighteenth century smuggling was a regular industry in Suffolk, success in which 

 must have compensated the inhabitants living near the coast for many a tad fishing season. In early 

 centuries smuggling had been mainly confined to the secret export of prohibited goods ; in 1592 the 

 customs officers at Ipswich complained to Burghley about the extent to which corn and butter were 

 secretly exported from Suffolk to Holland, the exciting cause of their general indictment at the 

 moment being the fate of a searcher at Harwich who had recently been thrown overboard while 

 examining a vessel. 6 Smuggling in the modern sense only arose with the heavy and indis- 

 criminate taxation rendered necessary by the wars of expansion which commenced with the 

 Commonwealth. As the government guard of the coast increased, so did the methods and combi- 

 nations of the smuggling associations, trading companies in organization, whose head offices were at 

 Ostend, Flushing, Calais, or Dunkirk. When the danger and expense grew greater it did not pay 

 these comoanies to run small cargoes that is to say, anything less than the lading of a 5O-ton 

 cutter, while they much preferred to use craft of from IOO to 200 tons, strong enough to fight if 

 overhauled. Eventually their vessels, built for speed and well armed, ran with almost the regularity 

 of a cargo liner of to-day and sometimes engaged revenue smacks and even man-of-war cutters. 

 The Suffolk coast was a favourite one on which to run cargoes, for it offered facilities in landing 

 absent in Essex while it was little farther from the continental ports. The institution of revenue 

 sloops about 1698 was not of much avail, if only because the Customs Commissioners and the 

 Admiralty disputed as to which body was to provide them, and the latter department had quite 

 enough on its hands without having to protect the revenue. 



The government alternated between sloops and riding officers ashore, or a combination of the 

 two, and with equally little success. The Peace of Utrecht threw many seamen out of employ- 

 ment, of whom a large proportion naturally took to smuggling, and when the spirits and tea were 

 landed they were taken inland by gangs of farm labourers and others, sometimes 300 strong. A 

 witness before a parliamentary committee of 1746 confessed that about 1720 his vessel was one of 

 six which ran their cargoes in a single night on Aldeburgh beach and had 300 men waiting for 

 them. Many of the customs officers were amenable to threats ; more still had their price, and in 

 1722 the Commissioners of Customs obtained a schedule of the rates paid to the officers by smugglers 



1 S. P. Dom. Will, and Mary, 2 Sept. 1692 ; Admir. Sec. Min. viii, 10 March, 1692-3. The 

 Admiralty was always very careful to confine its action to the poor and helpless and never, if possible, allowed a 

 case in which the right of impressment was likely to be argued to come into court. 



1 Luttrel], Diary, 24 Feb. 1690-1. * Defoe, Tour Through Great Britain, Lond. 1724, i, 57. 



4 Add. MSS. 931 1, fol. 94. * Cecil MSS. iv, 570. 



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