The Brilliant Engineering of the Revenue Cutter

⚓ In September 1777 a smuggling cutter sailed into Saltburn Bay, struck the Revenue cutter Swallow at anchor and ordered her out to sea. She went. The smuggler who beat off the Revenue cruiser Eagle on that coast carried fourteen guns and more than forty men; the Swallow carried fourteen men in all. This is the engineering story of the Revenue cutter, told through the Badger and the smuggler Vree Gebroeders. Working from Falconer's Universal Dictionary of the Marine, Parliamentary evidence of 1746, the Customs spar tables and the 1838 building specification, and the smuggling trials, we follow a chain of problems: the chase, the canvas, a deep stern, the tide, the bowsprit, the law and iron. Smugglers and the Customs built the same boat in the same south-coast yards, and in the end the difference between a cutter and a sloop was found not in her rigging but in her hull. 🔧 Inside this video: • Smoker, the Kite and the gaff topsail that ran him down in 1788 • Joseph Cockburn's ten cutters and £303,680 of goods a year • Elm keel, English oak frames and copper bolts in the 1838 specification • A 75-foot mast and a 55-foot bowsprit on a 150-ton cutter • Six feet eight inches at the bow, twelve feet ten at the stern • Oak legs for the mud and a bowsprit that ran in along the deck • The iron bolt that tried to turn a cutter into a sloop • False bows, shingle boxes and the half-anker • Nazer's three-hour running fight off Étaples and a jury that acquitted Salt & Oak takes one object apart like this every week, built from primary sources and arithmetic. Subscribe if that is your kind of maritime history. ⚓ What really decided the chase of January 1823: the extra canvas of the Badger's gaff topsail, or the hours the smuggler spent trading shots instead of crowding on sail? Make your case in the comments and bring your source. #AgeOfSail #NavalHistory #MaritimeHistory #Smuggling #RoyalNavy #SaltAndOak 00:00 The Smuggler That Rammed the Swallow 01:24 Smoker, Caught by a Gaff Topsail 03:02 Born From an Argument About Money 04:34 Falconer's Two Kinds of Cutter 05:53 Gaff, Clinker and English Oak 07:37 The Kent and the Bigger Cruisers 09:29 Problem One: Mast Longer Than Hull 11:03 Problem Two: Twice as Deep Aft 12:17 Legs and a Running Bowsprit 13:33 Problem Five: The Cutter in Court 15:39 Ninepence a Day and a Petticoat 18:17 Rowed Galleys and False Bows 21:13 The Badger Chases a Stranger, 1823 22:44 Quarter Called Twice 24:07 Acquitted Against the Evidence 25:31 Coastguard, Steam and the Last Cutters 26:59 Outro: An Answer to a Problem