Smuggling

The wind blew wild on the coast of Kent as I went to join my father. It was bitterly cold where he waited on the promontory out of Dungeness. The work my father put into selling his wool to weavers in France was threatened by the duties imposed by the government, and danger lurked everywhere now. My father and his friends vainly sought the help of the local squire, and now they could lose all they'd worked for.

But recently, they learned that some of their fellow wool-growers had formed a group known as the 'Owlers'. They'd banded together to smuggle their wool across the English Channel to France, paying no duties at all. They'd felt guilty at first but the duties kept increasing, and so, in desperation, Father joined them.

Then things got worse. The government brought in maiming as a punishment for smugglers. Yesterday an Owler caught off Romney Marsh, died, when the shock of losing his hand killed him. But risks had to be taken just to survive. The weather and the sea could be their enemies, bales were lost overboard and sailors, sometimes. Why, Owlers had even been betrayed in France.

As Father and I waited together on that wild Kent coast, he told me of James Darlington, excise man, who was new to the district. He'd been responsible for capturing smugglers in Cornwall and had begun boasting that he'd do the same here.

'A man with a passion for doing his duty is fine when England's at war'; said my father to me. 'But when it means the ruin of working folk, it's wrong. I only hope I don't come across Mrs Darlington's lad, James, on these marshes, 'cause one of us won't be going home.'

They did meet; years ago now. But it was Father who died that terrible night in the battle that ensued, and our family eventually lost the farm as well. James Darlington, excise man, retired with a pension and lived handsomely atop the cliffs overlooking Shepway.

Yes, life was hard then. I remembered Father's words: ‘Justice is fine for those who have no need of it.’

Dennis Crompton © 1998
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Smuggling: information from www.smuggler.co.uk

The wool smugglers of Kent generally, and Romney Marsh in particular, were called 'Owlers'. There has long been debate about how they acquired this name, and people have advanced various romantic theories, mostly centred around owls — the smugglers hunted at night, so they took the name of the nocturnal bird; or they signalled to each other by hooting like owls. The most prosaic explanation, and probably the most likely, is that 'owler' is just a corruption of 'wooler', which was a common name for anyone processing wool.