This book in the Kent's Untold History series looks at the evolution and growth of smuggling throughout Kent from as early as the 13th century and right through to the 21st century, as well as identifying the measures employed by English kings and governments over many years, to seize smuggling vessels and their illicit goods, either out in the English Channel or when arriving somewhere along a section of a deserted Kentish shore for unloading. In the very early days of the smuggling activities in Kent it was largely taken-up as a means of evading what were regarded as unfair export duties and taxes imposed on wool, hides, leather and grain. Later it became a two-way trade, with the Kent, and foreign, smugglers illicitly importing all kinds of luxury goods into the county. This included brandy, rum, gin, red and white wines, smoking tobacco, cigars, snuff, lace, spices, tea, as well as a rising trade in opium and cannabis. Even many day-to-day staple goods came to be smuggled into Kent during the 1700s as all kinds of new products became subject to excise duty, with butter, cheese, lard and grease a frequent element of a smugglers cargo. Even fairly basic items like salt, candles, soap, starch and reams of papers became taxable ̶ were found to be worth smuggling. The more products subject to excise duties, the more opportunities for Kent and continental smugglers to transport them from across the Channel and illicitly into the county, where they found ready public house and consumer customers only too happy to purchase cheap, duty-free, goods, with the subsequent generation of good smuggling profits significantly enhanced. Towards the end of the 1700s, right through to the early and middle 1800s, Great Britain experienced a massive expansion of global trade, with all kinds of new and exciting luxury goods ̶ especially new spices, silks and calicos ̶ arriving in Europe from Southeast Asia, the East Indies and, later, goods from North and South America, all bringing with them further quite lucrative new opportunities for smugglers, particularly the frequently well-organized and well-financed, cross-Channel smugglers from around the Kent and Sussex coasts, as well as for numerous French, Belgian and Dutch smuggling vessels. Much of what has been previously written in books, magazines, websites, etc., about the Kent snuggling fraternity has conjured a somewhat romanticised picture of the smugglers and their local supporters. But this was not always the case. There are many references to the, often quite ruthless and brutal, Kentish smuggling gangs in the county's newspapers of the 1700 and 1800s, with frequent reports that mention Customs or Revenue Officers being assaulted, fired upon or obstructed by a gang or group of smugglers from such Deal (many times), from Margate, from Folkestone, Deal, Dungeness, Hawkhurst, New Romney or Lydd. By the late 1800s and into the early 1900s, smuggling in and out of Kent started to enter a new era, with smuggling moving away from localised gangs and communities to a new generation of international crime gangs involved in the smuggling of animals, people, arms and armaments, drugs, counterfeit cigarettes and vapes, and perhaps becoming even more ruthless and brutal than in the past. This book in Kent's Untold History series looks at many of these changes in the evolution, development, and rapid expansion of smuggling in and out of Kent over hundreds of years, from the early 1300s right through to the mid 1900s. It was undoubtedly an interesting period in the history of smuggling.