West Lulworth

a Registered One-Place Study and part of the Dorset OPC network

News - 1777

Extract from The Western Flying Post, June 1777:

TEA AT ARISH MELL

Some days since a Dunkirk schooner landed near Arish Mills [Mell] on the Dorchester coast upwards of twenty tons of tea, in sight of and in defiance of the Custom House officers and others, as they were mounted twenty four-pounders, which she brought to bear on the beach. The smugglers on shore carried it off in three waggons and on horses, except twelve hundredweight, which the officers seized, and carried to a public house at West Lulworth, two miles from the place of landing; but thirty or forty of the schooner's people, well armed, followed after, and broke into the house, beating and cutting the people they found there in a cruel manner, and carried off the tea.







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