COPING WITH SMUGGLING IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The history of smuggling dates back to the Middle Ages. Smuggling reached its peak in the reign of James I. The illegal business was easy because the Customs officers were unable to cope with it adequately – they were far too few on land, and at sea their ships were slow and less easy to handle. Besides, many of smugglers worked in large armed gangs.
With the passing time methods of smuggling were changing, and the smugglers no longer relied mainly on large armed ships fighting their way through, handing over their contraband to the armed gangs. Instead they sank their goods near the shore when the danger threatened, and picked them up later, or stored them in caves. When contraband was landed, it had to be hidden until it could be safely disposed of.
Many of the old inns were very convenient for both hiding the smuggled goods and disposing of them.
The “White Horse” Inn at Gorleston, Norfolk, was the headquarters of a smuggling gang. Customs officer Hacon who was newly appointed in the Yarmouth area, got to know about it and went straight to the Inn. He announced there that he was going to put down smuggling with a firm hand. There was some good-natured talk and Captain Legatt waged fifty guineas that he would deliver a hundredweight of tobacco at the officer’s house without his knowledge and within fourteen days. Hacon accepted the challenge and put on extra guards. There was much interest among the townspeople.
Several days passed and nothing happened. Ships came and went, but there was no sign of tobacco.
Once a little schooner came in, flying a foreign flag. Three men came ashore in a boat, but only one of them spoke English a little. It seemed that a man on the ship was very ill and needed a doctor. The doctor went aboard and found his patient lying. The next day a message was sent ashore that the man was dead. A funeral procession was formed, and the curate met it at Gorleston Church, but it appeared that the dead man had wished to be buried at Yarmouth, so the curate led the way, saying he would help to arrange things.
Meanwhile the fourteenth day was drawing to a close. The Captain appeared, shook hands with Hacon, and said. “Well, you owe me fifty guineas, I think.” “The boot’s on the other leg,” said Hacon with a smile.
“I think you’ll find the tobacco ready for you at home,” said Legatt. “That poor dead sailor who whished to be buried at Yarmouth – well, go home and have a look – and keep the coffin as a small present,” and roared with laughter.
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TASKS
Task 1. Comprehension questions.
1. What time does the history of smuggling date back?
2. Why was smuggling easy at that time?
3. What difficulties did the customs officer have in coping with smuggling in old days?
4. What methods did smugglers use?
5. What arrangement was made between officer Hacon and Captain Legatt?
6. How did Captain Legatt win fifty guineas?
Task 2. Say what you can remember about:
a) difficulties the Customs officers had in coping with smuggling adequately in old days;
b) the methods the smugglers used;
c) how Captain Legatt win fifty guineas.
Task 3. Use a dictionary to translate the following idioms:
1. to be at a loss for work;
2. to beat about the bush;
3. to get into hot water;
4. to give someone stick;
5. to pass the buck;
6. to sink or swim.
Task 4. Retell the story using as many idioms (see Task 3) as you can.
Task 5. Problems questions.
1. What are the methods of smuggling nowadays?
2. What methods of detecting smuggled goods do you know?
A TRUE STORY
Basle/Mulhouse airport.
On the left side, a sign says “France.” On the right side, a sign says “Switzerland.” A large glass partition runs right through the middle of the airport, dividing it in half.
From the luggage racks I can see the rent-a-car counter located on the French side.
“Bonjour.” I say to the French Customs officer. He nods, takes my passport, checks the mugshot, and asks. “Anything to declare?” I say. “Nothing to declare.” So he waves me through.
But the lady at the French rent-a-car counter says. “Sorry, your reservation is at our Swiss rent-a-car counter. You’ll have to go back through French Customs and out through Swiss Customs.”
“Still nothing to declare,” I smile at the Frenchman on the wrong way past his little booth.
“Where are you going?”
“Switzerland.”
“Passport, please.”
“I just showed you my passport.”
“That was to enter France. Now you are leaving France.”
“It was only thirty seconds ago.”
He doesn’t want to know. “What have you been doing in France?”
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“Not renting a car.”
He thumbs through my passport, checks the mugshot, and asks me, “Anything to declare?”
“Yes,” I say. “I want to declare that I went to the wrong side of the airport.”
He waves me through.
Literally two seconds and three steps later, I smile, “Guten Tag.” Now the Swiss Customs officer thumbs through my passport. “Where are you coming from?” I tell him London. He checks my mugshot and asks, “Anything to declare?” I say. “Nein.” Then he wants to know, “Where are you going?”
“Mulhouse, France.”
He hands me the passport and shakes his head. “Wrong way. You’ve got go through Customs over there.”
“No. You see. I’ve just gone through Customs there and…”
“But you told me you were coming from London. Now you say you are coming from France. You also say you want to go to France.” He isn’t going to let me through. “Nein. Nein. Nein. France is over there.”
“Tell you what,” I say. “I think I want to go to Basle instead, the weather looks better on your side of the airport.”
He shakes his head. “Make up your mind,” stamps the passport, and waves me on.
The lady at the Swiss rent-a-car counter promises it is merely a twenty-minute drive across the Rhine to Mulhouse. She even shows me which road to take: “Just follow the signs.” Except the signs leading to a road of the Swiss side of the airport that doesn’t go directly to Mulhouse.
It takes you all the way into Basle.
Twenty minutes become forty minutes. And another Customs check.
I tell him Basle. The French inspector wants to know where I am going. I tell him Mulhouse. My passport gets looked at.
The mugshot is checked. The Frenchman glances at the empty back seat and waves me through.
A few hours later I try to retrace my steps. Now the signs point to Basle but take me onto an autoroute, which is not the same road I’d taken that morning.
After another twenty-minutes ride that takes forty minutes there is another Customs check.
I hand my passport to a Frenchman, who looks at it, goes through the usual mugshot inspection, and waves me on to the next officers, thirty feet ahead.
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The man there takes my passport, studies it, checks my name in his book of names, and asks. “How long will you be staying in Germany?”
“Germany?” I gasp.
“Where did Switzerland go?”
He promises that Basle somewhere straight ahead.
Two-times twenty minutes later, and sure enough, there is yet another border. A German guard looks at my passport and, almost as if he personally reluctant to do so, agrees to let me leave Germany.
Then the Swiss Customs inspector who checks my passport demands 100 Swiss francs before he lets me enter the country.
“Road tax.” He points to a vacant spot on my windshield where some sort of sticker should have been.
“It’s rented car,” I protest.
And he answers, “This is not my problem.”
I whine, “I want to go to Basle.”
“If you don’t want to pay the road tax,” he gestures to show this isn’t any skin off his nose, “You can’t use this road.” He points toward Germany.
“You’ve got to go back.”
I ask to speak to his supervisor.
The supervisor isn’t very helpful, so I ask his supervisor. Within no time a senior supervisors conference evolves. Six humorless men in uniforms and within arm’s length of the offending road-tax-less wind-shield, planning my fate. It ends when one of the tribal elders comes forward and confides, as if it were a state secret. “There’s a small road. It will be your first turning on the right and it will take you to Basle. Follow me.”
“Thank you.” I say. “Thank you very, very much.”
But I’d been too grateful too soon.
He walks into the middle of the motorway, hands up his hands, and waves me straight across six lanes of oncoming traffic. U-turning me back to Germany.
“Passport, bittle.”
It is the same Customs inspector who’d let me through ten minutes before.
“Hi, remember me? I’m the guy who wants to go to Basle…”
He studies my passport as if his memory extended only nine minutes.
“Where are you coming from?”
I take a chance on “Switzerland?”
“And where are you going?”
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I figure, what the hell, and say “Basle?”
“But Basle is back there …”
I meant Berlin. Did I say Basle? No, I meant Munich. Or Mulhouse.
“Any place but Basle,” I stammer.
That only makes him all the more suspicious. He checks and rechecks my mugshot, looks for my name in his book of names, and this time asks me to open the car’s trunk.
“But I was just here …”
He stares at the empty trunk, then wants to know how I will be staying in Germany.
I am beginning to think it could be for the rest of my life. “Only until the first turning on the right.”
As reluctant as he’d been to let me leave. He is just as reluctant to allow me back.
Without any reluctance I take the first turning on the right and follow that road … until I come to another border.
“Switzerland? Is it Switzerland? Please, please, tell me this is Switzerland. And how far is Basle?”
“Basle?” The officer says, “You mean Bale. No, this is France.”
Tears well up in my eyes as visions of the Twilight Zone enter my brain.
I beg, “Sir, you’ve got to believe me … Switzerland was here someplace when I left it this morning.”
He makes me turn back, telling me about yet another “first turning on the right” that he faithfully promises will take me to Bale.
In fact in does.
But not before I go through German Customs to get out of Germany and Swiss Customs to get back into Switzerland. Seven borders and twelve Customs checks later …
Now I eagerly await my first meeting with any Customs inspectors who might have read this. And add, in humble exasperation. “Please, believe me, I have nothing to declare!!”
TASKS
Task 1. Answer the following questions.
1. Where does the scene open at?
2. Where is Basle situated?
3. What do you know about this country?
4. Why did the author have to go back through French Customs?
5. What did the lady at the Swiss rent-a-car counter promise him?
6. Was it a long way to Mulhouse?
7. How many Customs checks did the author go through?
8. What experience did he get?
9. Do you believe that it is a true story? Give your argument.
10. What would you recommend that a passenger should do before going abroad?
Task 2. Say if it is true or false.
1. The author arrived in Paris/Mulhouse.
2. The lady at the French rent-a-car counter helped him with the car.
3. The lady at the Swiss rent-a-car counter showed him which road to take.
4. The French Customs officer demands 100 Swiss francs as road tax.
5. Six humorless men in uniform are planning the fate of the author.
6. Seven borders and twelve Customs checks before setting back into Switzerland.
Task 3. Look up in the dictionary the idioms “It’s no skin off somebody’s nose.”
Do you know any idioms with the same meaning?
Task 4. Summarize the text.
A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE
U.S. Customs Inspector Harry Standish was trying to clear up a tiresome problem. Most of the passengers who arrived aboard a Scandinavian Airplane DC – 8 from Copenhagen, had cleared Customs and had left. Only this well-dressed American woman posed a problem insisting that all she had bought in Europe was some perfume, costume jewelry, and shoes. The total declared value was ten dollars less than the free exemption she was allowed.
“Madam,” he said quietly to the woman whose several suitcases were spread open on the Customs inspection table between them, “are you quite sure you don’t wish to change your story?”
She snapped back, “I suppose you’re suggesting I should lie, when I’ve already told you the truth. Really! – you people are so officious, so disbelieving, I sometimes wonder if we’re not living in a police state.”
Harry Standish ignored the second remark, as Customs officers were trained to ignore the many insults they received, and answered politely, “I’m not suggesting anything, madam. I merely asked if you wished to amend your statement about these items – the dresses, the sweaters, and the fur coat.”
The woman, whose American passport showed that she was Mrs. Hariet Du Barry Mossman who lived in Evanston, and had just returned from a month in England, France, and Denmark, replied acidly, “No, I don’t. Furthermore, when my husband’s lawyer hears of this interrogation…”
“Yes, madam,” Harry Standish said. “In this case, I wonder if you’d mind signing this form. If you like, I’ll explain it to you.”
“Why should I sign anything?” Mrs. Mossman demanded.
“To make things easier for yourself, madam. We’re merely asking you to conform in writing what you’ve already told us. You say the dresses were purchased…”
“How many times must I tell you? They were bought in Chicago and New York before I left for Europe; so were the sweaters. The coat was a gift – purchased in the United States. I received it six months ago.”
Why, Harry Standish wondered, did people do it? All the statements just made, he knew with certainty, were lies.
To begin with, the dresses – six, all of good quality – had had their labels removed. No one did that innocently, women were usually proud of the labels in quality clothes. More to the point, the workmanship of the dresses was unmistakably French; so was the styling of the fur coat – though a Saks Fifth Avenue label had been sewn unskillfully in the coat lining. What people like Mrs. Mossman failed to realize was that a trained Customs man didn’t need to see labels to know where garments originated. Cutting, stiching – even the way a zipper was put in – were like familiar handwriting, and equally distinctive. All this, and much else, Customs officers learned as part of their training.
Mrs. Mossman asked, “What happens if I signed the form?”
“Then you may go, madam.”
“And take my things with me? All my things?”
“Yes.”
“Supposing I refuse to sign?”
“Then we shall be obliged to detain you here while we continue the investigation.”
There was the briefest hesitation, then “Very well. You fill out the form I’ll sign.”
“No, madam, you fill it out. Now here, please, describe the items, and alongside where you say they were obtained. Please give the name of the stores, also from whom you received the fur coat as a gift.”
He waited while Mrs. Mossman completed the form and signed it. Commencing tomorrow, an investigation officer would begin checking out the statement Mrs. Mossman had just made. The garments would be requisitioned and taken to the stores where she claimed they are purchased.
Mrs. Mossman – though she didn’t know it yet – was in for a great deal of trouble, including some heavy duty to be paid and almost a stiff fine.
(by A. Hailey)
TASKS
Task 1. Answer the following comprehension questions.
1. What problem was U.S. Customs Inspector Harry Standish trying to clear up?
2. Why did the American woman insist that she had bought in Europe only some perfume, jewelry, and shoes?
3. How much time had the woman spent in Europe?
4. Why did H. Standish ask her to confirm in writing what she had already told the Customs?
5. Why did Mrs. Mossman lie that she had purchased the dresses in Chicago and New York before leaving for Europe?
6. How did she try to prove it?
7. What were the real proofs that those things were unmistakably French?
8. Where had she got the fur coat from?
9. What did Customs officers learn as part of their training?
10. Why did she sign the form?
11. Did she know that checking of the given information would start the next day?
12. What penalty might await her?
Task 2. Say what you can remember about:
1. Mrs. Mossman’s story about the things she had brought in.
2. The tricks she used, not to pay duties.
Task 3. Problem questions.
1. Why were Mrs. Mossman’s things detained?
2. How is a U.S. Customs officer trained?
3. Do you know the current Customs Regulations in respect of the total value of goods bought abroad?
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