TEA

On 22 September 1747, the privateer "Swift", captained by William Johnson, lay off the coast of Poole in Dorset on Watch for smugglers. His Majesty's customs had taken to licensing privateers to do their work for them, an innovation that would often backfire as the privateers took to smuggling themselves. At five in the afternoon, seeing a suspicious boat, the "three Brothers", to the east, the "Swift" moved to intercept it. The "three Brothers", put about to take advantage of the wind, and then sailed away at top speed. The "Swift" followed in pursuit. It took her six hours to draw level. The "Three Brothers" ignored instructions to stop, but after several shots from the privateer, finally surrendered.

Captain Johnson and his men went aboard the "Three Brothers" to find it carried a crew of seven. They also found it was carrying thirty nine casks of brandy and rum. These casks were slung with ropes ready for them to be loaded on horseback. More importantly, inside canvas bags and wrapped in oilskin, were eighty-two parcels. These were later weighed, and they totalled almost two tons. They contained tea. The "three Brothers", which had taken its illicit cargo on board at Guernsey, was escorted into Poole harbour. Pending legal proceedings, the tea was lodged on the quay in the customs house.

A fortnight later, sixty smugglers gather in Charlton Forest, close to Poole. Most were members of the Hawkhurst Gang, from the village of that name in Kent, which lay well inland, midway between Hastings and Maidstone. It was they who arranged for the contraband found on the "Three Brothers". They arrived on horseback armed with guns and other weapons. Half of them went positioned to keep a lookout over the roads approaching Poole. In the early hours, the remainder rode into town, where they smashed open the doors of the Customs house. Inside was thirty-seven hundredweight of tea, which they loaded on to their horses, leaving the rum and brandy behind. Then, unhurriedly, they rode off north.

Halfway towards Salisbury they came to the small Hampshire town of Fordingbridge. The townspeople came out to gawp. A shoemaker, Daniel Chater, recognised one of the smugglers, John Diamond, for they had once worked together at harvest time. The two shook hands, and Chater was given a small bag of tea before the smugglers rode on. At the next village the raiders stopped and divided their booty. There was some argument over splitting the tea fairly, since some had been spilt at the customs house. The smugglers reweighed the bags on scales, apportioned the tea parcels, and went their separate ways.

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Many other such incidents concerning tea smugglers had occurred in the 1740's and smuggling of tea was to continue and expand until the tax on tea was reduced from 119% to just 121/2% in 1784 by William Pitt the Younger. He had introduced a tax on Windows that allowed him to reduce the tax on tea.

Tea had come to Europe around 1559 and it was the Portuguese that brought back tea from the East for personal consumption, and the the Dutch who began to trade in tea in 1596. The British were very slow to discover tea and it wasn't until after 1650 that tea was consumed in Britain. Samuel Pepys in his diary entry for 25th September 1660 wrote: "And afterwards did send for a Cupp of Tee (a China drink) of which I had never drank before." Pepys spent a good deal of his time in taverns and coffee houses, so that suggests that tea was still very much a novelty.

Charles ll's wife Catherine of Braganza had made tea a fad in court with her dowry of tea. From the court its use rippled out across fashionable society.

In the seventeenth century, tea drinking of the middle class was done by men in the coffee houses which were the domain of men. In the eighteen century pleasure gardens restyled themselves as tea gardens and provided free tea at first. This introduced tea drinking to women and then tea drinking spread through society.

At this time around 1760 Wedgwood was experimenting with the use of ball clay in his ceramic ware and found a mix that allowed him to reduce his costs. He was able to provide affordable china-ware for the middle classes. Britain was to become a tea drinking nation and Purbeck was to supply one of the minerals required.

and well worth a read to find out what happened to those smugglers !