A SUSSEX MARSH 



ankers of spirits in the Marsh dykes, or hid them in 

 stacks or other convenient places. All this coastline 

 seems to have been, like that of Romney Marsh, pecu- 

 liarly adapted for running contraband cargoes. The 

 Sussex smugglers were bold and desperate fellows, and 

 were little inclined to stick at trifles. They were accus- 

 tomed to oppose force by overwhelming force, and 

 usually got the better of the preventive officers. So 

 recently as the year 1822, on the nth February, three 

 hundred of them, says Mr. W. D. Cooper, in an inter- 

 esting paper printed in the Suss. Arch. Coll., ''went to 

 Crow Link, near East-Bourne, to land a cargo, but 

 were stopped by a signal from the sentinel ; four nights 

 afterwards they landed at Cliff Point, Seaford, three 

 hundred half-ankers, losing only sixty-three and a horse. 

 On the 13th (two days later) they attacked the sentinel 

 at Little Common (near Pevensey Marsh) with bats 

 (thick ash poles about six feet long) ; he, however, 

 shot a smuggler with his pistol. The boat made sail 

 from the land, and a coach and six, which was waiting 

 at the back of the beach, drove off empty to Pevensey." 

 The last of these encounters seems to have occurred in 

 this neighbourhood in 1833. "The smugglers, having 

 killed the chief boatman of the local Blockade Service, 

 formed two lines on each side till their cargo was run, 

 and then left, not, however, without several of their 

 party having received wounds. All escaped capture." 



Sussex longshoremen seem to have shared with 

 Cornishmen an evil reputation for wrecking as well 

 as smuggling. Congreve says of them in some of his 

 least elegant verse : — 



" Sussex men that dwell upon the shore 



Look out when storms arise and billows roar, 

 Devoutly praying, with uplifted hands, 

 That some well-laden ship may strike the sands, 

 To whose rich cargo they may make pretence." 



II 



