 This is a portrayal of the ancient Rambler Inn .... although I do not know the date of the picture. Do not going looking for it today because it is no more. All we are left with is a sketch. It was once situated in West Street in Worthing. |
THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.
SMUGGLING IN THE 1800s
Copyright Valerie Martin 2006
In the early nineteenth century the lot of smugglers was not a very happy one as a major crackdown was launched on their occupation in spite of the fact that the government had their hands full fighting Napoleon. Perhaps it is best not to know the full share that Findon folk took in eighteenth century smuggling.
The most lenient authorities would have agreed that smugglers in our area had become too unscrupulous and the situation was getting out of hand. Obviously, the mouth of the nearby River Adur at Shoreham was a favourite landing spot for the "free traders". On numerous occasions, the Customs and Excise preventative men had been left bound hand and foot, or gagged in a ditch to enable the booty to be smuggled inland.
It is, therefore, hardly surprising, that it was at nearby Shoreham that the authorities launched one of their earliest enterprising "sting" operations in a valiant attempt to bring smuggling to an end. Even in those days there were informers..... and these told that contraband was still coming in through Shoreham.
The local excise officers decided they would plant an officer (one unknown locally to the inhabitants) into the smuggling fraternity. It was decided that he should not only be unconnected with the Revenue Service but also have had no dealings at all with the High Constable of Shoreham nor communicate with the Coastguards or the Justice of the Peace. This was because far too many persons in high positions had previously benefited from the contraband trade. If this plan was to succeed, no outsiders would be trusted with information.
It was, therefore, decided that the infiltrator should pose as a sea-going man and be able to mingle with the local inhabitants and not cause concern. The chosen agent turned out to be a newly appointed middle-aged officer of the Excise who had been a merchant, a mariner and an officer in the Royal Navy. He duly took up lodgings at the Dolphin Inn in Shoreham. Rumours spread like wildfire that he had enough spare money to invest in a suitable enterprise.
The agent had been armed with a list of suspected local smugglers and keeping his ear to the ground he frequented the Shoreham public houses. One night at the Marlipins, he met the stocky built master mariner, Captain Albert Ross. In years past, this captain had owned his own little brig engaged in the East Pacific trade. He had lost much money but he was not quite ready to retire and call it a day. He now was the owner of a cutter, a sailing barge and several other river craft.
The agent and this old seadog were often seen meeting one another for a glass of their favourite grog and to smoke their long churchwarden pipes.
Captain Albert Ross had been on the Revenue's "suspect list" for quite a while. He had been rather clever and had not been caught to date. He manned a fast cutter, the SAUCY SALLY and was thought to carry bilge pieces or "bilge plates" (false sides fitted on the outside of his craft) below the water line. These were quite capable of holding big quantities of tobacco, lace, tea, eau-de-Cologne and other smuggled goods wrapped safely in oilskin.
On a certain night, as the SAUCY SALLY was making port to Shoreham, she was overhauled by a Revenue cutter and ordered to heave to.
Captain Albert Ross was conveniently not onboard, but his man, Martin, in the secure knowledge that he was not carrying smuggled goods, disregarded the order. After a while, he stopped the vessel and was boarded by the now angry Y was ordered into Shoreham Harbour and they had her hauled to the slipway and examined her suspect bilge plates. Still nothing untoward was discovered.
Later, back at the Marlipins (and maybe well under the influence of drink), Captain Albert Ross was boasting to the undercover customs agent, a plan he had contrived for smuggling a big quantity of smuggled goods up-river to Steyning in his barge. Before departing, Captain Albert Ross let slip that this was not merely a theoretical plan but one that was ripe to be put into action.
Once informed of the latest plot, the Excise authorities promptly put into action counter measures. They decided to let the smugglers work their cargo up the river and then entrap the barge.
On the night in question, their planned ambush succeeded brilliantly. The forces of law and order were hidden by the raised grassy riverbanks as the barge silently moved upstream with the water slapping at the banks. A Revenue gig, manned by a strong well armed crew, followed in the darkness just out of sight.
The barge quietly slid into a narrow creek and at that moment the Revenue men struck. They searched the barge but found nothing but barrels of water.... and more barrels of water.
The informant was dumbfounded. It was now gone 3 a.m. The Revenue force withdrew and marched back into Shoreham.
While they had been decoyed up the River Arun, the smugglers had not been idle. Lancing had been temporarily denuded of its coastguards in order to mound the big ambush and in the meantime, a large French ship had delivered a fine booty of French brandy that had been silently landed and worked inland without hindrance. This is how the Lancing signal house missed the French ship because the officers manning the post had been previously called over to Shoreham. Clever one that.
The name of a Findon smuggler now comes to mind — that of Mr. Lillywhite who lived at Gore Cottages at the foot of Bost Hill. How true this is, I do not know.
It is said that one day, some boys were playing "follow my leader" in a local graveyard and they decided to lift one of the top stones on a tomb. They had remembered that there was a legend that old women were interred with their jewellery — and they thought they might find something worth having. . The stone in question gradually rose to reveal ten large tubs in the tomb. The boys guessed that the cache contained contraband. They immediately struggled to return the stone as they did not want to face the wrath of the smugglers (nor their parents who would certainly be implicated with the smugglers in some way).
It was not until many years later that one of the lads learned that there were four tombstones that had been receptacles for contraband over the years.
In 1816 there was a flurry of interest in the area when word got around that the local Revenue men failed to prevent potential smugglers from landing on the coastline. They subsequently brought inland ....
"in the vicinity of Worthing"
a grand total of sixty kegs of brandy which were magically "spirited" away and worked up-country and completely vanished.
The last big fight between Sussex smugglers and the law was fought in Worthing in the early hours of a winter night on Tuesday 22nd February 1832. A vessel heavily laden with more than 300 kegs of lucrative contraband spirits had beached on the sand opposite Stafford's Library on the Worthing front. Despite the shore being bathed in bright moonlight, a crowd of 200 smugglers, helpers and bodyguards, unloaded their illegal cargo. The night ended with one man dead and many of the smugglers wounded.
This is a portrayal of the ancient Rambler Inn .... although I do not know the date of the picture. Do not going looking for it today because it is no more. All we are left with is a sketch. It was once situated in West Street in Worthing. |
If only walls could talk. The Rambler Inn was said to be a particular haunt of the local fishermen and also of the most unscrupulous smugglers. It was here in the corners of the bar that many devious contraband plans were plotted in hushed whispers.
This photograph shows a derelict inn and it was eventually demolished at the end of the 1800s. I wonder what stands on the site today.
| "When my grandfather was only eleven he sometimes carried a lantern through the back streets of Worthing to light the way for his father and other men working with him. Not until later did he realise they were smuggling and that they could have been hanged for it". |
His grandfather also informed him many years later when he was older that Worthing smugglers stashed their smuggled spirits in an old cottage "by the Bo-Peep" (long since renamed Winton Place). To cover their tracks from the excise men they had stripped the lathes from the walls and ceilings of the property in readiness for repair work — to pretend to the law if they came nosing around that they were renovating the property. They had good ideas even in those days.
Continue if you would like to read more about the smugglers in 1832 Were They Heading for Findon?
THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.
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E-mail: valeriemartin@findonvillage.com |
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