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"Hold it there laddie. There's luggers hoverin' at Durdle Door and the gobblers are out.... A Stinkibus is better than a noose I says. Us smugsmiths need to know that much to save our skin.... Look quick laddie! There's a cutter behind! Row for your life or it's the devil for both of us!"
At that very moment, a many-fanged sea monster leapt from the gloomy depths and gobbled them up in one gollop. Such was the end of Pete Boggers and his gang.
Hmm, it's not exactly Masefield or Meade Falkner - two great scribes who wrote swashbuckling tales of the sea - but we couldn't resist a bit of smugglers banter, given that we'll never have our own bash at 'sowing the crop.'
Smugglers, also known as owlers, free traders and smugsmiths, were the scourge of the Dorset coastline 300 years ago. Matters got way out of hand in the 18th Century, when taxes were upped in a bid to fund foreign wars. Corruption cropped up on both sides of the law, with all kinds of chicanery resulting. Pitched battles became common scenes on the English coast, and conscientious officers often faced insuperable odds, with country folk closing ranks to protect the 'smugsmiths'. As it was, entire villages often became involved in the trade - the folk from the Scilly Isles nigh on depended on it. However, there were times when gangs went too far even for their own men. Whilst some smugglers might claim that they were just trying to make a living within the spirit of free trade, contraband goods attracted their fair share of rogues and rascals too. 
The Hawkhurst Gang
The Hawkhurst Gang was amongst the most notorious smuggling outfits of the 18th Century, with a web that stretched all the way from Kent to Dorset. They stormed customs houses and fought moonlit skirmishes, and after fourteen years of skullduggery, it seemed that the band was unstoppable. But in the end, the gang collapsed from within.
Following an especially notorious raid in 1747, the gang decided to lie low for a while, enjoying the fruits of its labours. Yet paranoia kicked in when one of the crew, one Chater by name, was spotted at a tavern, talking to a customs officer. Action was swift. The gang got both Chater and the customs officer royally drunk, and then had both men horse-whipped. The officer was then buried alive. Gang leader Arthur Gray dithered as to what to do with his own man. But the hapless Chater was bound for a sticky end too. After being chained to a shed for several days, he was stabbed and then thrown down a well, rocks weighted to his ankles.
This mafia style justice was supposed to serve as an example to informants. But ultimately, the brutality turned locals against the gang. Arthur Gray was captured soon afterwards and hanged. The Hawkhurst Gang was soon the stuff of little more than bedtime stories.
Isaac Gulliver: the Dandy Smuggler
After such a grisly tale, we thought it only fair to recall a less ferocious figure, and indeed one who's especially linked with Dorset. Isaac Gulliver, the so-called 'King of the Smugglers' made a fortune out of the trade. Yet it is said that he never killed a man. According to a contemporary, he "kept forty or fifty men constantly employed who wore a kind of livery, powdered hair, and smock frocks, from which they attained the name 'White Wigs'.
Although technically a landlord of Dorset pubs, Gulliver lived in a style far beyond such means. Yarns recount that on one occasion, when his house at Kinson was being searched, Gulliver feigned death by lying in a coffin, his face powdered with chalk. Others say that he evaded arrest by passing on information about the French fleet to Lord Nelson. Gulliver certainly cut some kind of deal with the crown following the 1782 amnesty for smugglers (when pardons were offered to those who could help find recruits for the Navy). Either way, he lived to a ripe old age, becoming a 'gentleman' of the district, and his daughters married into a wealthy Fryer family.
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