The de'il's awa wi' the Exciseman
I've been researching smuggling for my soon-to-be-started WIP (a revenue officer, a governess, and a ghost in Orkney!) . Mostly what I'm discovering is how incredibly widespread and shameless smuggling was. It operated in many ways like our modern-day Mafia--but before the 80s mob trials. Revenue officers knew who the smugglers were. Often they even had advance knowledge of smuggling runs. But they were so badly outnumbered that in many cases, the officer or two (even if he was backed by half-a-dozen dragoons) had to simply watch as sixty or a hundred armed men rode by escorting huge cargoes. There were cases of small fleets of smuggling ships coming into an inlet where a Revenue cutter lay at anchor and saying, "Cut your anchor and take off or we'll sink you!" (But with worse language, my book made sure to clarify!) And the ship had really no choice but to do it. Even if smugglers could be arrested, it was rare to find a jury that would convict them. This was bot...