on board a man-of-war ; or, if landsmen, were sent to prison, and perhaps heavily fined. The captured boat was sawn in two, and placed in the "Condemned hole," a somewhat hollow place at the rear of the present " Beach Terrace."
Many of the old inhabitants of Hastings and other places where smuggling was carried on, can remember the heart-aches that followed these occurrences, can recollect the groups of sorrowing people standing at their doors as the waggons went wending their way along the streets, guarded by the heavily armed Coast blockade, scowling with a malicious pride on the sorrowing people.
The rough bull-dog sort of fashion in which the Coast-blockade men went about their work, at length roused a spirit of resistance among the smugglers, and they began to go armed, first with bats, stout ashen poles, six or eight feet long, and afterwards with fire arms. However wrong this might be, and undoubtedly it was wrong, one cannot wonder, after hearing what the Coast-blockade did in the execution of what they supposed to be their duty, that the smugglers adopted these lawless practices. I do not apologise for the smugglers ; it would have been better for them to have followed the example set by some of their leaders, and given up smuggling altogether. In a conversation I had some years ago, with a principal smuggler who resided in Hastings, he said "that when -
