PAST CRIMESashore. After the restoration of Charles II Mucknell joined the Royal Navy,
received a knighthood and became a vice admiral.^7
Another ship found off south Devon could be the remains of a Barbary
corsair vessel. Found by amateur divers, it produced hundreds of gold pieces.
The corsair ships raided as far north as Scotland, taking people from seaside
villages and farms to be sold in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa as
slaves. One estimate suggests that, in 250 years, more than a million people
from Europe were captured and enslaved. The fabric of the ship has long since
disappeared, but its cargo remained on the seabed. There was a vast amount of
Islamic coin struck in Morocco, the latest being dated to 1631–6, as well as
jewellery and Dutch china and pipes. Much of the bullion had been chopped
up, possibly to share between the pirates. It is thought the ship was a xebec, a
fast, light galley rowed by slaves, with cannon at the bow and stern. Only one
piece of timber was found, which is thought to be from North Africa.^8
Smuggling as a major enterprise developed after the Black Death in the
fourteenth century. The lack of surviving labour for farming was met with an
increase in stock farming, particularly sheep, which required fewer men, and
English wool began to command high prices in Flanders and Italy. Exports
were taxed as early at the late thirteenth century, and King Edward I set up the
first customs service to collect the money. Later, a tax was imposed on wine
imports, and on a variety of other import and export commodities and
inevitably, people went to some effort to avoid paying the taxes. Mary I also
imposed taxes, and the rates kept climbing.
The customs service in its early days had no way of enforcing the tax, but
by the fifteenth century, this began to change. At that time, all trade was
supposed to come through one of thirteen official ports, and the customs
officers were supposed to patrol the stretches of coastline in between. A
controller was in charge at each port, with a collector of customs–a twopart
system meant to ensure the honesty of the officials; however, they were able
to make a charge when they seized smuggled goods, on production of a signed
and sealed receipt. It was easy enough to issue a blank receipt and allow
merchants to pay them off in return for filling in whatever they chose to
declare. So many customs officers became involved in this fraud that a new
post was created–the surveyor of customs, one based at each port, to monitor
the others.
At least one officer, however, seems to have been exemplary–William
Lowe, a‘searcher’at Poole in the mid 1400s. He was supposed to patrol the
coast from Sussex, around the Solent and into Dorset on horseback. He
managed to seize a large number of illicit cargos, but his greatest success