Mini route five
Smugglers’ Haunts Ride - 6km (3.5 miles)
An opportunity to discover the darker side of our coastal heritage! 26 miles of coastline, seventeen sandy beaches and bays and numerous caves and underground tunnels, it’s little wonder that the Isle of Thanet was a favourite haunt of smugglers.
Joss Bay
Joss Snelling the notorious smuggler is named after this bay. He was born in 1741 and plied his ‘trade’ in Thanet. Active till late in his life, he was fined £100 for smuggling at the age of 89! However, despite the deportations and hangings of many of his accomplices, Snelling avoided either fate, and by the time of his death, aged 96, he had achieved celebrity status for his dangerous deeds. He was even introduced to the future Queen Victoria as “the famous Broadstairs smuggler”!
Botany Bay
Thanet’s numerous rocky bays, with their own networks of caves, made the area a perfect haven for smugglers, and for hundreds of years smuggling was a common way for local men to support themselves and their families. It is believed that Botany Bay was so named because the common fate of a captured smuggler was deportation to Botany Bay in Australia, on a convict ship.
Captain Digby Pub
In 1769 the Battle of Botany Bay took place, when Revenue men ambushed Joss Snelling and his gang as they unloaded their contraband on the beach. In the struggle, Snelling and four accomplices escaped through an opening in the cliffs. A Riding Officer accosted them at the cliff-top, but they shot him and fled. He was taken to the Captain Digby Inn, where he died. Snelling escaped, but the others were caught and hanged at Gallows Field in Sandwich.
Margate Museum
Margate Museum contains displays on Margate’s smuggling history. The smugglers exerted great influence in the town. This can be seen from the harassment suffered by anyone involved in trials of suspected traders in contraband. Accounts tell how one Margate solicitor, John Boys, was “the object of general hatred in the town”. He was attacked, his property was destroyed and he was placarded as “an informer and a hunter after blood money”.
Margate Harbour
The building of Margate Harbour, by John Rennie in 1810, signified the beginning of the end for Thanet’s smugglers. By the mid 19th century, an enlarged revenue service and the expansion of trade had all but eliminated sales of contraband, with fast cutters and steamships replacing the traditional sailing hoys. Coastguards were now stationed at regular intervals along the coast, and the days of smugglers such as the infamous Joss Snelling were numbered.
