Two hundred years ago, smuggling between the Crouch and the Netherlands was so common it was almost an industry. Burnham’s answer was a small army of revenue men, and eventually a family of coastguards who lived on an old ship in the river.
The smugglers
Smugglers used quiet spots all along the coast. The worst fight came in October 1778, when the revenue cutter Bee chased the smuggling cutter Neptune and drove her aground on the sands. Two of Neptune’s crew were killed and three hurt before the rest gave up. Faster smugglers got away.
In 1714 Burnham had just two revenue men. By 1800 it had eight. They probably lived rather apart from the town: in a place this small, being friendly with the excise man could cost you dear.
Living on the river
The Coastguard was set up in 1829. Burnham’s coastguards and their families lived aboard an old ship, a hulk, moored where the Royal Corinthian clubhouse stands today.
The last of them was the Kangaroo. She came into the river around 1872, replacing the Chanticleer, and was broken up around 1890. Before that she had been a hospital ship in the Crimean War, carrying sick and wounded soldiers to the hospitals around Constantinople and Scutari.
Darwin’s ship, just round the corner
The Roach and Foulness had guard ships too. Moored off Paglesham for a while was the Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin round the world on the voyage that led to his theory of evolution.
The Coastguard Houses
When the Kangaroo was broken up, the families moved ashore into a row of terraced houses in Silver Road. Older locals still call them the Coastguard Houses, though no coastguards live there now.