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AMGOTIA

MMA OL

bars and shoals where a vessel is in constant jeopardy. There are salt marshes and muddy shores devoid of settlements and habitations where, even if a cargo were landed, it could not be transported to a market. But also there are innumerable coves, harbors, bays, deep creeks and estuaries; rivers and islets, which present ideal conditions to the smuggling fraternity. The Maine coast was a favorite haunt of these gentry. Massachusetts in the vicinity of Cape Cod and Buzzard's Bay was another. Long Island Sound, with its innumerable inlets and coves and its deserted islands, was quite famous as a smugglers' paradise, while most frequented of all were Chesapeake Bay and the extensive sounds and inlets of the Carolinas.

To watch and guard all these was a Herculean, an impossible task for the revenue officers, and our fleet of revenue cutters and coast guard boats were kept ceaselessly busy year in year out. Many smugglers and smuggling craft were captured; innumerable cargoes of contraband were seized, but with little result. For every smuggler caught a score got by and landed cargoes for, just as our entire "dry" fleet and our customs force cannot cope with the rum runners of today, the revenue department in the past found it a hopeless task to prevent contraband from being landed, and so centered its efforts on those localities most favored by the smugglers.

And it was due rather to outside causes than to the vigilance of the officials that smuggling on our coasts diminished and the smugglers gradually died out or disappeared. The telegraph, railway trains, rapid means of transportation, and the supplanting of sail by steam, all contributed to the result. Then came the Civil War and many of the smugglers, who were thoroughly honorable and intensely patriotic men in all matters aside from smuggling, joined the armies or the navies of North or South, or turned their talents and their vessels to blockade running.

Thoroughly familiar as they were with every inch of the coasts where they had plied their trade; possessing the fastest of vessels; in command of men thoroughly trained as sailors; reckless, brave and adventurous, the smugglers were most valuable adjuncts to the Federal or Confederate forces. They made excellent pilots, good commanders, splendid fighters and in many cases were given commissions as privateers. They were thoroughly organized and had innumerable friends ashore, for like their fellows of the French and English coasts and the Baratarians, in fact like smugglers of all lands, they were regarded as benefactors and heroes, rather than as criminals, by the inhabitants of the localities where they carried on their trade. As a result, they were ever cognizant of matters ashore as well as afloat, and the very conditions

which had enabled them to defy the government made them valuable in aiding it.

After the cessation of hostilities the smugglers never regained their past prestige. To be sure a few continued to ply their trade; smuggling in a sporadic way went on and is still going on, but the dashing, dare-devil, picturesque smuggler with his fast vessel, his crew of piratical rascals, his thousand and one accomplices ashore, and his vast organization, passed away forever as far as our Atlantic coast was concerned.

But he did not pass without leaving his imprint on our history and our shipping. The famous Baltimore clippers were the direct outcome of the smuggling industry; many settlements that have since grown to important communities had their beginning as smugglers' havens and resorts; many of our leading industries were the result of smuggling, and the seamanship, the skill of our coastwise pilots, and many other factors that helped build up our post-war merchant marine, were due in great measure to smuggling and the chase of smugglers. Many a young officer who distinguished himself in running down the swift smuggling vessels became, in later years, a prominent naval officer, and many a smuggler captain later turned his talents to account and raced our gallant clipper ships across the Atlantic.

Smuggling along our coasts was a very different

matter from smuggling along the shores of England and France, or in the Mediterranean or the West Indies. There, in circumscribed waters with only a few miles of sea separating two countries, the smugglers could act as their own cargo carriers even in comparatively small craft. But, with the exception of those localities adjoining Canada or Mexico or the West Indies, it was out of the question for smugglers along our coasts to transport their contraband from overseas to our seaboard. To traverse thousands of miles of open ocean required a large, well found ship and large vessels were not adapted to smuggling. They could not enter the tiny coves and inlets that afforded the smugglers refuge, they could not hope to escape notice, and to surreptitiously land a ship's full cargo was beyond the capabilities of even the most daring and accomplished smuggler. For their purposes small light draught vessels were essential. Craft that could dart into some narrow, shallow estuary or creek; that could find safe anchorage in an obscure cove or bay; that were small enough to hide behind a wooded islet or point; that could be moored among the coastwise vessels in a harbor without exciting comment, and that, withal, were exceedingly swift and handy" and could outsail and outpoint the revenue cutters which were themselves noted for their speed and sailing qualities.

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