SMUGGLING ON THE ENGLISH COAST.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1924, 24 April 1880, Page 3

SMUGGLING ON THE ENGLISH COAST.

(Prom the "Echo.") Precisely as the sun sets every night throughout the year, a belt of light surrounds the shores of Great Britain and Ireland. Visitors from towns to the watering-places, in their strolls along the shore, often enter the lighthouses, and admire the orderly method by which the friendly gleam is sustained all through the darkness, to indicate the locality to ships at sea, and warn them of possible dangars. In such a walk the townsman sometimes comes upon a row of low houses, bright with whitewash, with trim gardens or greensward in front, and a flagstaff. This is a station of the coastguard, and the o:.ly sign of lifo on a hot summer day is an old salt who tries by his glass to deaory ships quite undiscernible to the naked eye. But the work of the coastguard is not in the townsman's holidays, and how re&l it is indicated by the report just publ'ahed by the House of Commena, in which Vice-Actmiral Phillimore, the late Superintendent of Naval Reßsrvos, gives an account " of the important duties they perform on shore." In the first place, they keep a vory sharp look out for smugglers. In the threo years ending November list they made 120 seizures ; and Admiral Phillimore thinks that is " some guide to the numerous attempts that are checked ;" since where the Coastguard stations have been abolished fcr many years, as in the North of Scotland, struggling has greatly increased. During tho y( »r 1878 the Coastguard rendered assistance at 178 wrecks, and in the two years ending October, 1879, they guarded wrecked property of the value of £1,620,719. The Coastguard havo almost the entire superintendence and the working of the life-saving apparatus on the coast, which number 298. They also assist materially in manning the lifeboats of the Boyal National Society. Besides this portion'of the Naval Reserve, whose

duties are mainly ashore, there are 23 Coastguard cruisers ; and tl e Admiral thinks it *as a great mistake to sell 26 of these Teasels in 1869 and in 1870, because the result has been that Bjstematio smuggling is carried on, " principally by foreign fishing vessels, off the Shetland's, the Orkneys, and the Northern Coast of Scotland," and there iB also clandestine shipment of tobacco and spirits from the Channel Islands. Cruisers are also much required for visiting the outlying islands off the coast of Ireland and on the West and North of Scotland.