The Smugglers

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Charles Harper’s description of smuggling and Canvey Island in 1909:-

• ‘Canvey Island, in the estuary of the Thames, off Benfleet, with its quaint old Dutch houses, relics of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Hollanders who settled there and carried on a more than questionable business, was reputedly a nest of smugglers. The ‘Lobster Smack’,  a quaint old weatherboarded inn built just within the old earthen sea-wall for which those Dutchmen were responsible, and standing somewhat below the level of high water, has legends of smuggling that naturally do not lose by age or repetition.’