What a difference a week makes:
For want of anything else to talk about besides the beautiful weather we’re having this week, I thought I’d simply pass on something from the Annual Register for 1816. The Annual Register was sort of like an Almanac, printing all the important events from the previous year. You can view this 1816 Annual Register on Google Books.
This is from the Chronicles section of the Annual Register, which gives important or interesting news events from each month. This is dated March 30 (because most of the other March articles were about shipwrecks, murders, and fires)
The following particulars of the Woolwich smuggling have been published in a morning paper —On the voyage home, a carpenter employed in securing the packages discovered the secret. Immediately on arrival he gave information at the Customhouse, but it was ten days more before the ship was inspected ; in the mean time much of the smuggled goods for certain persons were got away, and only those were left for men of less note. There were to the value of 7,OOOl. for one man, packed up as—”Return Congreve rockets.” There were many rare things which were got out of the way. In the mortars were laces, gloves, cambrics, etc. and in the tumbrils were claret, champagne, etc. Many people have long supplied themselves and friends with wine in this way, and their wives with finery. This is the only vessel which has been detected, but the trade has long and successfully been carried on to a great extent. The man who informed got about 1,000l.
Woolwich is in the borough of Greenwich on the Thames; it is about 3 miles east of Greenwich and 10 miles east of London, which goes to show that smuggling didn’t only take place in Cornwall!
Are you familiar with the Annual Registers? I have copies from 1810 to 1820 but if you can find them online you can search them so easily.
Be sure to visit my website for sneak peeks of my Undone, The Unlacing of Miss Leigh, and my novella, Justine and the Noble Viscount in The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor. There’s a new contest, too!
Isn’t that typical? It takes them ten days to search, all the while the goods are being removed from the ship!!! Bet they made him fill out the info in triplicate, too. 😉
Cara
What a contrast in your weather!
Ten days?! My question is why was anything found at all? One would think that in that amount of time, everything could have been off loaded! How spoiled we are with our instant everything. 🙂
~Judy
It’s been a crazy March, hasn’t it? Last Monday we had 2 inches of snow. Today it is 80 degrees!
Weird!
Well, duh! Ten days?
And yeah, the weather is crazy! This weekend we were out without jackets on, and last Monday we were sledding in 8+ inches of snow. It is just weird, and well worth discussing.
I received a fresh half a foot of snow today. I’m assuming the photo on the left is your “before” picture…although it’s the one most resembling my present environs!
I meant to say “photo on the right” in my previous comment.
Right, Margaret. Last Monday I couldn’t blog because of snow and no internet.
The ten day delay seemed suspicious to me. Like which Duke or Marquis had stuff on that ship? Some banker or shopkeeper, “men of less note,” probably wound up in jail.
Weren’t the amounts staggering? 7000 pounds is a lot of money in those days.
Ten days? You could smuggle an elephant out in ten days. Good grief! I do love this kind of information though!
We had snow a week ago Sunday. Yesterday I spent hours out in the yard playing with the dogs in 80 degree weather. March is a wild one and we are only nine days in !
Can you tell I’m on the opposite coast? I’m having the opposite weather. Last week, we had sunny and upper 50s; today, we had snow and now the temp is in the teens.
Ten days?! Doh! 🙂 I’m likewise amazed that the ship was stripped off its mast and ropes, much less, the goods.
The fact that even the leftovers were worth 7000 pounds makes it clear why people smuggled. The profits must have been enormous, if you didn’t get caught.
Todd-who-wondered-for-a-long-time-why-snuggling-was-outlawed-but-then-read-it-more-carefully