Smugglers, Secret Cargoes and a Very Stubborn Village: The Smuggling Stories of Staithes

Brandy hidden in houses, contraband abandoned on country roads, armed smugglers who refused to be arrested, and a village that gave the authorities no end of trouble. Discover the real stories behind Staithes’ smuggling past.

There are few things more likely to set the imagination working than the thought of smugglers on a dark Yorkshire night. Picture a boat slipping towards the shore, its crew watching for the glimmer of a lantern. Somewhere above the cliffs, a horse is waiting. Barrels are unloaded, passed from hand to hand and hurried away along narrow tracks before the Revenue men can arrive. By morning, the boat has vanished, the cargo has disappeared, and the only evidence that anything happened at all is a suspiciously well-stocked cupboard.

It sounds like the beginning of an adventure story. But for the people of Staithes, smuggling was not simply an exciting tale to be told beside the fire. For generations, it was part of the complicated business of making a living in a coastal village where the sea could provide a livelihood one day and take it away the next.

And if the records of the Customs authorities are anything to go by, the smugglers of Staithes and the surrounding Cleveland coast were a persistent, resourceful and occasionally violent lot. They knew the coastline, understood the law, had friends and family willing to help them, and were not particularly keen on letting the authorities interfere with their business.

Their opponents, meanwhile, had a difficult job. Revenue officers had to patrol a long and often inhospitable stretch of coast, investigate suspicious houses, chase people on horseback, search boats, seize contraband and somehow find witnesses prepared to testify against their neighbours. In Staithes, that last task could be particularly challenging.

John Tindale’s wonderfully characterful book Owlers, Hoverers and Revenue Men, published in 1986, draws on historical Customs and Excise records, contemporary newspapers and earlier local histories to reveal a world in which smugglers and Revenue officers were engaged in a prolonged game of cat and mouse. The records contain tales of hidden brandy, suspicious fishing boats, violent encounters and determined attempts to outwit the authorities.

They also reveal something more interesting than a succession of daring escapes: the extent to which smuggling became woven into the life of the local community.

So let us travel back to the days when a boat coming ashore after dark might be carrying something rather more valuable than fish, and when the appearance of a Revenue officer could cause considerable inconvenience to an otherwise peaceful village.

A village with a very useful coastline

To understand why Staithes became associated with smuggling, it helps to begin with the geography.

The village sits in a narrow valley where Roxby Beck meets the North Sea. Its steep sides, winding lanes and sheltered harbour make it an instantly recognisable place today. In the past, the same landscape offered practical advantages to people who wanted to move goods without attracting too much attention.

The Yorkshire coast was dotted with small fishing settlements, coves and landing places. A vessel did not necessarily need a large commercial harbour to come close to shore, and a small boat could carry goods between a ship waiting offshore and a landing place that larger vessels could not easily reach.

Staithes had another advantage: its people knew the sea. The fishing community was accustomed to working in small boats, reading the weather and making difficult journeys along the coast. Fishermen understood the tides and the local waters in ways that an officer arriving from elsewhere might struggle to match. They also knew the land behind the village: the roads, tracks and paths that connected the coast to inland settlements and markets.

A cargo landed successfully was only half the job. It then had to be transported, concealed and sold. That required people who could carry barrels, provide horses, offer storage and distribute goods to customers further inland.

Smuggling was therefore rarely just the work of a single daring boatman. It depended on networks. Tindale makes the scale of this involvement clear when he describes the smuggling trade as an enterprise in which “virtually everyone was involved”—from shipbuilders and fishermen to farmers, innkeepers and workers in the alum industry.

The authorities were not simply trying to catch a few men with suspicious cargoes. They were confronting a system supported by people with different occupations, different interests and, sometimes, a shared determination not to cooperate with the law.

And in Staithes, as we shall see, that determination could be formidable.

What exactly were they smuggling?

The word smuggling tends to conjure up images of brandy barrels and tobacco bales, and both feature prominently in the history of the Yorkshire coast. But the trade was not limited to spirits and tobacco.

Tea, coffee, wine, prunes, textiles and other goods could all be smuggled into Britain to avoid the duties imposed on imported products. These taxes could make legally imported goods considerably more expensive, creating an attractive market for anyone prepared to bring them in without paying.

The incentive was straightforward. If a smuggler could buy goods abroad and land them in Britain without paying the full duty, they could sell them at a lower price than a legitimate trader while still making a profit. The buyer benefited from the cheaper price. The smuggler benefited from the difference. The Treasury, naturally, was less enthusiastic. 

Smuggling was not always confined to bringing goods into the country, either. Wool was another important part of the story. Tindale explains that people who smuggled wool and sheep out of Britain were known as “Owlers”, while those who brought taxable goods into the country were known as “Hoverers”.

The origin of the word Owler is uncertain. Tindale suggests, with a characteristic question mark, that it might have developed from “Wooller”. Whatever its origins, the distinction is a useful reminder that smuggling was not one single trade. It covered different activities, driven by different markets and shaped by changing laws.

On the Yorkshire coast, however, it was the importation of goods such as brandy, gin and tea that repeatedly brought local fishermen into conflict with the Customs authorities. Spirits were especially attractive cargoes. They were valuable, relatively easy to transport in barrels and could be divided into smaller quantities for distribution. The records repeatedly refer to half-ankers, a traditional measure used for casks of spirits. The word may be unfamiliar today, but to a Revenue officer in eighteenth-century Yorkshire it was a familiar unit of evidence.

A few half-ankers could be seized from a house or a field. Larger quantities might arrive in a boat or be discovered concealed aboard a vessel. Either way, each seizure represented only the part of the trade that the authorities had managed to uncover. And that was the central difficulty. The officers could record what they found, but they could not record everything that passed unseen.

The early evidence: brandy in a field and contraband in a house

Some of the most revealing evidence of Staithes’ smuggling activity comes not from dramatic newspaper stories but from the dry, practical lists kept by the Customs service.

Tindale reproduces a selection of seizures recorded in the Whitby Customs Letter Book for the early eighteenth century. These entries offer a glimpse of the trade as it actually operated: small quantities of spirits found in houses, barrels discovered in fields, and goods abandoned by people who preferred to escape rather than explain themselves.

In 1722, for example, six half-ankers of brandy were recorded as having been found “in a field at Staithes”. The entry is brief. We are not told who owned the brandy, who had landed it, who was supposed to collect it or whether the officers had arrived just in time to interrupt a delivery. We are left with the barrels and the location.

But even this small entry tells us something important. The movement of contraband did not necessarily end at the water's edge. Goods were being transferred to places where they could be collected, concealed or carried onwards. A field could become a temporary warehouse, and the absence of an identifiable owner was a considerable advantage to anyone hoping to avoid prosecution.

The same records contain another telling incident. In June 1722, the Customs officer A. Macdonald reported the seizure of three half-ankers of brandy concealed in a hole in the house of William Bridekirk at Staithes. The record also refers to three further half-ankers discovered during the night on the road near Staithes. The people carrying them, when approached, “threw them off horseback and rode away”.

It is an almost cinematic image: a Revenue officer appearing in the darkness, the sudden clatter of hooves, and a load of contraband abandoned by riders who decide that the best way to avoid an awkward conversation is to get as far away as possible. The goods were left behind, but the people who had been carrying them escaped. It is also a reminder that the smugglers did not always have to defend their cargo. Sometimes, if a barrel could be sacrificed in order to save its carrier, the calculation was simple enough.

The Customs records go on to mention tea among the goods seized in the wider area, including Bohea tea and green tea. These were valuable imported commodities, and their presence alongside spirits illustrates the variety of goods moving through the coastal smuggling network. The entries are not especially romantic. They are concerned with quantities, locations, names and the practical business of seizure. But read together, they reveal a trade that was happening repeatedly, in different places and through different methods. A barrel in a field. Another hidden in a house. Goods abandoned on a road. Each incident is a small fragment of a much larger story.

The problem of catching people

Seizing contraband was one thing. Proving who was responsible for it was another. The early records show how often people disappeared before the authorities could identify them, let alone bring them before a court. In the case of the brandy abandoned on the road near Staithes, the riders escaped. The goods could be taken, but the people who had been carrying them were not necessarily available to answer questions.

This was a recurring difficulty for the Customs service. The Revenue officers were expected to enforce the law, but they had to do so in communities where the people they suspected might be related to, employed by or well known to those around them.

An officer might know perfectly well that a particular individual was involved in smuggling. Knowing it and proving it were different matters. A cargo could be found in a house, but who had put it there? A boat could be seen meeting a vessel offshore, but could anyone identify the men involved? A witness might have seen something important, but would they be willing to say so in public?

The authorities could issue warrants and pursue suspects, but the whole system depended on people being prepared to cooperate. In Staithes and the surrounding villages, that cooperation was not always forthcoming.

Staithes against the Revenue: a dangerous business

By the later eighteenth century, the conflict between smugglers and the authorities could become violent.

One of the most serious incidents described by Tindale involved a confrontation at Staithes in which a soldier, Trooper Casseldine, died from his injuries. The background to the affair lay in the wider campaign against the smuggling gangs operating along the coast.

In May 1776, Customs officers from Whitby and Redcar, supported by soldiers of the 1st Regiment of Dragoons, seized a large quantity of contraband at Redcar. The goods included 130 half-ankers of brandy and gin, together with considerable quantities of coffee and fine tea.

The seizure was not accomplished without opposition. The smuggling cutter's crew numbered fifteen and were armed with firearms, hatchets and other weapons.

The following month, another confrontation took place at Runswick. A smuggling cutter's boat laden with Geneva—a name commonly used for gin—went ashore there. The local Customs officer and the Dragoons took possession of the boat.

The smugglers then approached the officer and soldiers with a proposal. They would allow the authorities to have the liquor if the boat were relinquished and the soldiers persuaded to discharge their pistols. It was an extraordinary bargain. The smugglers appeared to be offering a surrender, but only on terms that would leave them free to recover their vessel.

The account records that, as soon as the soldiers had discharged their pistols, the smugglers turned on them and beat them severely. One soldier died the following morning. He had served for nineteen years in his regiment and had fought in four campaigns in Germany. The Customs officer escaped by fleeing.

A coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against the smugglers. The men involved were associated with the crew of the Kent, a smuggling vessel commanded by the notorious George “Stoney” Fagg. A reward of £100 was offered for their capture. The Kent and its crew were eventually taken off Filey the following year.

But the story did not end there. A further affray took place at Staithes, and Trooper Casseldine died from his injuries. The evidence against the men involved was troubling. According to Tindale, there was no doubt that Casseldine had been struck on the head by Richard Curtis of Staithes with a stick while the trooper was lying on the ground.

A surgeon who examined the dead man described numerous bruises across his body and a large quantity of congealed blood beneath the ribs on his left side. A serious fracture above the left eye was considered sufficient to have caused death within four or five days. The evidence suggested that the men had used bludgeons and the butts of pistols rather than cutlasses.

This was not a romantic tale of clever smugglers outwitting a pompous official. It was a violent encounter with fatal consequences.

Yet the case also demonstrated the difficulties faced by the authorities when they attempted to secure convictions. At the trial in York the following July, the murder charge failed. The surgeon, Mr Leonard, had given evidence that differed significantly from what he had previously told the Customs solicitor. As a result, Curtis was found not guilty of murder. He was, however, compelled by the judge to enter the Royal Navy's service because of his involvement in smuggling.

The episode is a stark reminder that the risks of the trade extended beyond losing a barrel of brandy or having a boat seized. Smuggling could bring people into armed conflict, and the consequences could be devastating. It also raises a question that runs through the entire history of the Yorkshire coast: if the authorities were so determined to suppress smuggling, why did they find it so difficult to do so?

“There is no possibility” of arresting them

The answer can be found in another extraordinary episode involving Staithes men John Wastell and Thomas Crispin. Following the affray in which Casseldine died, the authorities attempted to pursue people suspected of smuggling in the village. But issuing a warrant was not the same as executing it.

The sheriff's bailiff responsible for serving writs had to travel from Pickering, some twenty-one miles away. He spent two days and a night at Staithes and returned with a dispiriting assessment of the situation.

Tindale records his conclusion that:

“there is no possibility of taking either of the above persons without the assistance of soldiers”

The reason was not that the men were particularly difficult to locate. It was that they were “resolute and always armed”. Wastell, in particular, was reported to have threatened to shoot the first person who attempted to arrest him.

It is difficult to imagine a more discouraging report for a bailiff expected to carry out the law. The suspects were known, the warrants existed, and the authorities knew where they were likely to be found. What they lacked was the force needed to arrest them safely.

In February 1781, the Collector of Customs again referred to these men as “notorious rascals”, explaining that he could not execute the writs without assistance from soldiers. A party of militia subsequently arrived in the area, and the Collector requested updated writs, promising that the authorities would then “exert every effort in our power to apprehend them”. 

But the troops did not remain. By November, the Collector was reporting that the men were believed to have returned to live in Staithes. He again sought authority to proceed against them, only to face the same difficulty: the soldiers were no longer there.

By the following June, another name had been added to the writ: Mary Newton, described in the records as “a very old woman and maintained by the Parish”. She was the only person the authorities could find. The others, the Collector explained, were “common smugglers and not known where to be found”.

It is a wonderful illustration of the practical problems of policing the coast. The authorities could spend months preparing legal proceedings, but the suspects could disappear, return, or simply remain beyond reach until the military support needed to arrest them had moved elsewhere.

And if a bailiff did turn up in Staithes, he might reasonably wonder whether his visit would achieve anything beyond making himself unpopular. For the smugglers, meanwhile, the system offered opportunities to frustrate the law. If the authorities could not safely make an arrest, a warrant might amount to little more than a piece of paper.

Why Staithes was so difficult to police

Tindale is particularly clear that the problems faced by the authorities were not confined to a handful of notorious individuals. Staithes and the surrounding district had developed a reputation for organised smuggling. The people involved knew the law and understood how to exploit it.

Nearby Loftus had a strong smuggling presence of its own. Tindale describes how members of the gang would counter an informer's accusation by bringing a charge of perjury against him. This was more than a simple act of intimidation. The accusation could create a legal obstacle: while the charge was pending, the informer could not give evidence. In other words, the person who might have helped the authorities prosecute the smugglers could be rendered legally incapable of doing so. The system could be turned against itself.

There were also strong community ties. Tindale notes that if a member of the gang was convicted and imprisoned, his family would be supported by friends. A sentence of imprisonment did not necessarily leave a smuggler's wife and children destitute. That support mattered. It meant that the cost of a conviction could be shared by the community, rather than borne entirely by the individual caught.

It also helps explain why the authorities struggled to recruit local men to serve aboard their own vessels. The Collector complained that he “could not find one man or boy willing to go to sea” in the Revenue service, whether in Whitby or nearby. The men preferred the smuggling ships.

From the authorities' point of view, this was an astonishing state of affairs. They needed local sailors to help enforce the law, but the local population was reluctant to join them. From the point of view of a coastal community, the situation may have looked rather different. Smuggling could offer opportunities for income, while working for the Revenue service meant risking the hostility of neighbours and friends.

The choice was not simply between law and lawlessness. It was also a choice between competing loyalties, livelihoods and risks.

The fish curer and the 5,037 pounds of tobacco

Smuggling did not disappear with the end of the great eighteenth-century gangs. The records show that Staithes and its surrounding coastline continued to feature in Customs investigations well into the nineteenth century.

One particularly intriguing case dates from 1853.

The story begins in Whitby, when the John & Susannah, a vessel from Lowestoft, approached the harbour mouth behaving erratically. The Customs authorities boarded her. The crew consisted of the master, the mate and a boy. The master and mate were both very drunk. The vessel was taken into the harbour and moored at the official Customs quay at St Ann's Staith. When the officers searched her, they discovered 5,037 pounds of leaf and stalk tobacco concealed behind bulkheads.

That was no small quantity.

The master swore violently, declaring, “I have been sold”, before rushing to the deck, jumping overboard and attempting to drown himself. He was rescued with considerable difficulty. The master and mate were fined £100 each and committed to York Prison when they failed to pay.

The case subsequently became more complicated. Both men petitioned the Customs authorities for their release, claiming that their families were suffering hardship. They promised that in future their lives would be “loyally and morally correct”. The petition was refused because they would not reveal where the tobacco had come from or where it was to be delivered. Eventually, the master and mate tried another approach. The master claimed that he had merely been acting as a carrier of goods and attempted to implicate a man from Staithes in the arrangement.

The local man was described in the account as a fish curer. The records do not give his name, and Tindale is careful to note that no conviction or trial took place. The master also attempted to suggest that Customs coastguards were involved in the arrangement. After nine months' imprisonment, the Treasury ordered the man's release because the evidence was insufficient to bring proceedings against him. The tobacco was destroyed by burning.

There is an obvious temptation to wonder what the Staithes fish curer knew about the cargo. Was he genuinely involved in an arrangement to receive smuggled tobacco? Was his name offered up by the master in an attempt to secure his own release? Or had he been drawn into the affair through circumstances the surviving records no longer reveal? We cannot know.

Tindale explicitly notes that the Customs records do not establish the man's guilt. It would therefore be wrong to turn an allegation into a proven fact. But the episode is fascinating because it shows how smuggling could involve people whose everyday occupations seemed far removed from the stereotypical image of a smuggler.

A fish curer was part of the ordinary commercial life of a coastal village. Such a person might have contacts with fishermen, merchants and boat owners. That made him a potentially useful link in a distribution network—but it does not, in itself, prove that he was involved in one.

The tobacco case also demonstrates that the authorities were still confronting familiar problems. They could seize a large cargo, imprison the men aboard the ship and destroy the goods, yet still fail to establish who had organised the operation or where the contraband was intended to go.

The cargo was gone. The men had suffered punishment. The wider network remained elusive.

The sea as a smuggler's highway

One of the most revealing aspects of the records is the relationship between smuggling and ordinary fishing. For much of the period described by Tindale, fishermen depended on small sailing boats. Their income relied on being able to put to sea and catch fish. A prolonged spell of bad weather could mean a fortnight without earnings. The winter months were particularly difficult, and the period around Christmas could be financially precarious.

Tindale reminds readers that, for fishermen, smuggling was one of several possible ways to supplement an uncertain income. He writes that a fortnight of bad weather might mean no income at all, and that, in the worst conditions, “Christmas house” could be difficult to keep.

The point is not that poverty made smuggling inevitable, or that every fisherman who struggled financially turned to contraband. Rather, the economic circumstances help explain why the trade could be attractive and why the authorities encountered so much local resistance. A fisherman already accustomed to working at sea possessed skills that smugglers needed. He knew how to handle a boat, where to land it and how to move along the coast. A small fishing boat could also be useful precisely because it looked ordinary. There was no need for a suspicious-looking vessel to arrive in broad daylight carrying a conspicuous cargo. Goods could be transferred between a larger ship offshore and a smaller boat, which then returned to shore as though it had been engaged in its usual work. In some cases, the fishing activity itself provided cover.

The Customs authorities understood this problem. Their records describe vessels waiting offshore and boats going out to meet them. A suspicious boat might be seen approaching a ship, but proving what had passed between them could be difficult. There was also a practical limitation on the authorities' ability to watch the coast. Their vessels could not communicate instantly with one another, and the coastline was too long to be observed continuously. Smugglers who knew the local waters could exploit these gaps.

The sea was not simply the boundary they crossed to bring goods into Britain. It was the highway on which their business depended.

What happened when the Revenue men arrived?

The records are full of the language of seizures, writs and prosecutions, but behind the official terminology lay a great deal of confusion, danger and occasional farce. A Revenue officer arriving at a house might find contraband concealed in a hole. A rider carrying brandy might abandon it on the road and disappear into the darkness. A boat might be captured, only for its crew to attempt to recover it by force.

The officers could not assume that a seizure would be peaceful. The confrontation at Runswick in 1776, followed by the death of Trooper Casseldine at Staithes, shows how quickly an attempt to enforce the law could become a violent struggle.

But the smugglers also faced risks. They could lose their boats, their horses, their goods and their freedom. A successful cargo might produce a handsome profit, but an unsuccessful one could leave its owners with little to show for their efforts.

And the authorities had their own financial complications. Tindale explains that the Collector of Customs depended on successful prosecutions to receive certain dues. If a case failed, the financial consequences could fall upon the official pursuing it. That created an awkward situation. The officer was expected to enforce the law, but the process could cost money and time without producing a conviction. The smugglers, meanwhile, could use delay, intimidation and legal manoeuvres to frustrate proceedings. The whole affair could become an expensive exercise in chasing people who knew how to make themselves difficult to catch.

The smugglers were not always popular with the authorities—but were they popular with everyone else?

It is tempting to imagine that a coastal community must have regarded its smugglers as local heroes. The reality was probably more complicated. Smuggling could provide work and income. It could also support a network of people who supplied horses, storage and transport. In a village where livelihoods were precarious, the additional money might be welcome.

Yet the historical records show that the trade was not harmless. The death of Trooper Casseldine, the violence at Runswick and the threats made against officials demonstrate that some smugglers were prepared to use force. The goods themselves were often part of a trade that depended on evading taxes and undermining legitimate commerce. The authorities, for their part, were not simply interfering with a harmless local tradition. They were charged with enforcing the law, and some of the cargoes they seized represented substantial sums of lost revenue.

But the official perspective also has its limitations. Customs records were created to document the activities of the service, and they naturally tend to focus on the things that went wrong: the goods seized, the officers assaulted, the prosecutions that failed and the people who escaped. They tell us much less about the everyday conversations, informal arrangements and personal relationships that allowed the trade to continue. Nor do they tell us precisely what everyone in the village thought about it.

Some residents may have participated directly. Others may have helped friends or relatives without being involved in the smuggling itself. Some may have disapproved, while others may simply have preferred not to become entangled in a dangerous dispute. What the evidence does show is that the authorities found it difficult to secure local assistance, and that smugglers could rely on a degree of support that made enforcement much harder.

A coastline full of possibilities—and a few legends

Once a place acquires a reputation for smuggling, it rarely loses it. Stories begin to circulate about hidden tunnels, secret chambers, forgotten cargoes and barrels buried in places where nobody would think to look. Some may preserve genuine memories of smuggling activity. Others grow through repetition, embellishment and the irresistible attraction of a mystery.

The Yorkshire coast has its share of such tales.

Tindale records a legend that somewhere along the coast near Staithes there lies a huge store of smuggled goods that has never been found, despite numerous searches.

It is a tantalising idea. Somewhere beneath the cliffs, behind a wall or in a forgotten hollow, a cargo might have been concealed and then abandoned when its owners could not safely retrieve it. But Tindale is careful not to present the story as established fact. It might be true, he suggests, but it might equally be another version of the familiar tales of buried pirate treasure. That uncertainty is part of the attraction. A hidden cargo would be an extraordinary discovery. Yet the historical records already provide something more valuable than a treasure story: evidence that contraband really was being concealed, transported and abandoned along this coastline.

We know of brandy hidden in a house at Staithes. We know of spirits found in a field. We know of riders who abandoned their cargo and escaped. We know of men who were difficult to arrest, and of officials who struggled to find witnesses. Tindale reckons that we do not need to uncover a secret tunnel to make the history interesting. The real stories we already know are remarkable enough.

The long life of the smuggling trade

The great period of organised smuggling along the Yorkshire coast gradually declined during the early nineteenth century, but the temptation to evade duties did not disappear. The 1853 tobacco case demonstrates that the authorities were still dealing with substantial quantities of concealed goods decades after the notorious eighteenth-century gangs had made their names.

Tindale also describes how, later in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, foreign vessels could remain offshore under the guise of fishing craft while trading with local boats. The pattern was familiar: a larger vessel waited at sea, smaller boats went out to meet it, and goods were transferred under the cover of ordinary maritime activity.

In his account, Tindale notes that it was an open secret among fishing ports along the coast that some supposed fishing activity was being used as a cover for the trade in contraband. The methods had adapted to changing circumstances, but the underlying principle remained the same. Goods could be brought ashore without passing through the official channels where duties would be collected.

For a place such as Staithes, with its longstanding fishing traditions and intimate relationship with the sea, the line between ordinary maritime work and suspicious activity could be difficult for outsiders to interpret. The Revenue men might arrive with their records, their warrants and their suspicions. The people they were investigating knew the boats, the coast and the local community. It was an unequal contest in some respects, but not necessarily one that favoured the authorities.

What the records leave us with

The smuggling history of Staithes is full of characters who seem almost too extraordinary to be real. There is Richard Curtis, implicated in the fatal assault on a soldier but acquitted of murder. There are John Wastell and Thomas Crispin, whose reported determination and willingness to resist arrest left the authorities reluctant to proceed without military assistance. There are the unnamed riders who abandoned their brandy and galloped away into the night.

There are also the people who remain frustratingly indistinct: the owners of the barrels found in fields, the people who hid spirits in houses, the fishermen who might have met a vessel offshore, and the men who carried goods inland. Their stories survive only in fragments. A Customs officer records a seizure. A Collector complains that a warrant cannot be served. A surgeon gives evidence at a trial. A man petitions for his release from prison. A cargo is destroyed. The official record is often dry, but the human story is unmistakable.

Smuggling depended on people who were willing to take risks, on communities that could provide support, and on a coastline that offered opportunities to those who understood it. It flourished where there was a market for untaxed goods and where the authorities could not reliably prevent them from arriving. And it survived because catching a smuggler was rarely as simple as finding a barrel of brandy.

The goods might be seized, but the people could escape. The people might be identified, but witnesses could be difficult to find. A warrant might be issued, but the authorities might not have enough soldiers to execute it safely. Even a prosecution could fail.

For the smugglers, every weakness in the system was an opportunity. For the Revenue men, every successful seizure was only one small victory in a much larger struggle.

Remembering Staithes’ smuggling past

Today, Staithes is celebrated for its harbour, its fishing heritage, its winding streets and its remarkable setting. Visitors come to enjoy the village's history and atmosphere, often without realising quite how much of its past was shaped by the struggle to control the movement of goods along the coast.

The smuggling stories remind us that coastal history is not simply a story of fishing boats and picturesque harbours. It is also a history of trade, taxation, poverty, ingenuity, conflict and the ways in which communities responded to the opportunities and pressures around them.

The people of Staithes lived in a world where the sea was both livelihood and highway. Their knowledge of the coastline gave them advantages, while the uncertainty of fishing made additional sources of income attractive. The authorities, meanwhile, struggled to enforce laws that could bring them into direct conflict with the people they were supposed to police.

Some smugglers were undoubtedly skilled seamen and resourceful operators. Some were also violent men prepared to threaten or assault anyone who stood in their way. Others have left us little more than a name, a seized barrel or a brief entry in a letter book.

That is why the surviving records matter so much. They allow us to move beyond the familiar romance of the smuggler and encounter the real people and circumstances behind the stories.

And they leave us with some wonderful questions. Who owned the brandy found in that field at Staithes in 1722? Who were the riders who abandoned their cargo and disappeared into the night? What really happened during the confrontation that led to Trooper Casseldine's death? And what, if anything, did the unnamed Staithes fish curer know about the enormous tobacco cargo discovered aboard the John & Susannah in 1853?

The documents do not answer everything. But they tell us enough to know that Staithes was no stranger to the smuggling trade. Perhaps there is still a forgotten story waiting to be uncovered in an old letter, a family memory or an overlooked document in an archive.

Until then, the records leave us with a picture of a village whose people knew the coast intimately, whose smugglers could be remarkably difficult to catch, and whose history is all the richer for the stories they left behind.

And somewhere along the Yorkshire coast, if the old legend is to be believed, there may even be a forgotten cargo still waiting to be found.

This article draws on John Tindale, Owlers, Hoverers and Revenue Men: Smuggling, the Press Gang and Murder Most Foul in North Yorkshire (Whitby Publishers, 1986), which uses Whitby Customs and Excise records and other contemporary sources to explore the history of smuggling on the Yorkshire coast. Thanks to David Tindale for letting me have a copy for the museum's archive!