Trafficking in Contraband

 At one time smuggling was big business in and around Gravesend and the purloined goods were transported through the local malarial marshland with regularity and enormous success.  It was rumoured that a number of families, previously of good character, felt it was not such a bad trade to be involved with.  One such enterprising group were the Roots brothers who formed a consortium to bring goods from Ostend during the 1720s albeit on a modest scale.  A mysterious Londoner called Thomas Pigmore put up the capital and the Roots boys provided the vessel, The Mermaid, which carried a mere 500 pounds of tea on each trip and occasionally small quantities of calico and silk.  Over one year, 1727 to 1728 they made ten regular voyages landing cargoes on the Hoo Peninsula.  They commonly used churches on the Chalk and Cliffe marshes as hides together with the basement of a house in Higham.   The contraband tea was then taken by horseback to the Duke of Montague's gardener at Blackheath who met them on Shooters Hill.  It was finally sold in the alehouses of Deptford at ten shillings a pound.  It is not altogether clear as to the final destination of the calico and silk but from time to time local ladies were said to have squabbled over whether or not they had reserved a place in the fabrics queue.  This was obviously a small scale but well-run local enterprise which as my mother would have said, undoubtedly kept the wolf from the door during times that were hard.

It was David Reynolds who first brought up the subject of smuggling at school one afternoon.  This was in response to Billy Elliot saying he might become a pirate when he grew up but only if he couldn't get into the Merchant Navy.  There was initially a silence, possibly because there did not seem to be a direct connection between these two career choices.  Maureen Barlow seized the opportunity to suggest that possibly the Merchant Navy was a Calling like Nursing but she only said that because she was hoping for a discussion about her becoming a nurse.  Everyone knew that since she was five years old and had her tonsils out her future had been mapped out.  Mr Clarke ignored her which was in itself unusual because her father was a teacher so she was normally treated just a little more seriously that the rest of us because of her presumed intellect.  He said that although smuggling was not to be entirely condoned, enough time had passed since the peak of its popularity for us to be more aware, although perhaps not exactly proud of the local families involved in it.

For example, one infamous individual had been one Joss Snelling who had not always been local because he originally hailed from Broadstairs but that Margaret Snelling in our class might very well be distantly related to him.  He said that Joss was so famous that he had eventually been presented to Queen Victoria when she was a young girl and before she became Queen.  He left Broadstairs after some years and moved into the Thames Estuary having recruited both his son and his grandson into the business.  He certainly was not afraid of hard work and was said to have still been active in the area when well into his nineties.   A day or two later Margaret reported that her father thought it unlikely their branch of the Snellings had anything to do with Joss but he liked the fact that he was a hard worker and so he would certainly keep his ear to the ground.

At St Botolph's that year we usually had poetry on Friday afternoons because Mr Clarke liked poetry.  On the Friday following the Joss Snelling discussion he introduced us to Rudyard Kipling's Smugglers' Song and nobody, not even the oldest boys, thought it was boring.   Furthermore, Alan Spooner did not fall asleep as was his usual habit on poetry day.  We were all captivated by the vision of five and twenty ponies as they trotted through the dark.  Some of us, well the girls at least, definitely envied the child who might be given a dainty doll all the way from France and I was one of them

My father was unquestionably more than keen on the local smuggler tales and went to great lengths to explain to me how the business had not only taken place outside the town but in many cases contraband goods were being moved around close to the heart of it, under everyone's noses.   The Three Daws supposedly had seven staircases at one time so that those involved might make a rapid getaway from their meetings if necessary.  Another famous haunt was The Ship & Lobster which back in the eighteenth century was some way out of town and squashed between a windmill and a sulphur mill.  Goods unloaded at far-off Folkestone were carried overland to Denton where cellars beneath the three buildings provided hiding places.  Confirmation comes from none other than Charles Dickens himself who featured The Ship & Lobster in Great Expectations, describing it to be a dirty place and the haunt of smugglers.

A recurring theme in the most sensational smuggling stories is that of secret tunnels and Molly from No 31 said that when you came to think about it, the same was true of the best Enid Blyton books because the most exciting part of the story was always the discovery of the secret tunnel.   We were both thrilled to learn that in the Gravesend area there were once quite of number of them and in fact several local landmarks were said to be tunnel linked.  Though much of this information is probably untrue, it is nevertheless notable, if only because it throws light on how smuggling tales in general become distorted and exaggerated over time.

Some local historians, however, think there are good reasons for believing that an extensive system of underground passageways did exist at one time all for illicit purposes.  Some of these have been supported by proof of a reasonably reliable kind during excavations over the years.  Apparently passages were cut through the chalk from Cobham Hall to Wombwell Hall and I certainly wish I had been aware of that particular piece of mythology when I was a student at the latter.   Others are said to have existed from Swanscombe Woods to Parrock Manor and from The Ship & Lobster to Perry Street.  It all seems highly unlikely but if any of this is accurate it would have required a great deal of effort and ingenuity when the local geology is taken into consideration.  One enthusiast admitted that the whole of Swanscombe Woods would have had to be demoloshed to provide sufficient pit props.  However, the very best of smuggling stories along with the very best of Enid Blyton generally fail to mention detail.

It's more likely that nothing as dramatic as these secret byways ever existed in the first place and that Gravesend back in its smuggling heyday was not so very different from the place it is today.   However the riverscape would undoubtedly have looked different if only because of the solid sea wall.   Not everybody likes it though as time passes more and more thoroughly enjoy walking on it.  It would be fair to say that it has changed our corner of the estuary giving it a hard edged outline and a more business like appearance.  Two hundred years ago plotting a course through the myriad of precarious river channels and mud banks required more than a modicum of attention to avoid an unscheduled stop.  Unplanned stops, however, were very often due to the business of contraband rather than on account of poor navigation.  An overnight wait for the tide at least meant that neatly parceled tea and tobacco could be off-loaded with ease and transferred effortlessly to the patiently waiting five and twenty ponies.   The smugglers themselves might then look forward to a pint of ale and a fish supper at The Three Daws.

Back then the Gravesend quayside itself was a busy, bustline place where customs officers boarded incoming vessels ready to provide safe escort to valuable cargo ensuring it reached London wharves intact.  True there had always been abuses to the system long before the business of smuggling reached its peak but generally these were on a less impressive scale.  The records document that in 1410 a monk was caught red handed at Gravesend hiding gold jewelery and a great deal of money on his person.  Not long afterwards a woman from Flanders was found to have twenty one gold rings and a number of books with coral encrusted bindings in her luggage.

These were incidents the officials were accustomed to because from time to time the rules were going to be broken.  Organised rule breaking was another matter altogether and it would be fair to say that not one of the riverside towns wholeheartedly welcomed ponies trotting through the dark no matter how exciting the pupils in Mr Clarke's poetry class in 1950 thought they were!