Millions of pounds of tea were smuggled into England along the eastern and southern coasts

Source: Jane Pettigrew

English people supported smugglers by concealing, distributing, and purchasing untaxed tea English people supported smugglers by concealing, distributing, and purchasing untaxed tea

The East India Company imported tea to England, but it kept prices artifially high and controlled the supply of tea to keep tea in demand. Because of the company’s monopoly on tea and the prohibitively high taxes charged by the Crown, smugglers had every incentive to bring tea into the country illegally.

As the East India Company grew in size and power, it edged out competition from the East India companies of the Dutch, Swedish, French, and Danish. Those companies, in turn, survived by selling tea to English smugglers, who were very eager to bring tea inland to the middle and lower classes.

So many men were involved in smuggling that, at times, it was hard to find enough workers for English farms. Smuggling was more lucrative. Become a smuggler!

Tea smuggling mainly occurred along the southern coast of England, the Scottish borders, around the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight, and the Channel Islands.

To outsmart excise officers, smugglers had to rely on their ability to evade detection and operate in secrecy with the help of local citizens using light signals, coast watchers, and sheer trickery.

By 1775, smuggling flourished. As an illegal substance, exact amounts are not known, but it is estimated that smugglers brought 4-7 million pounds of tea to England, per year, which had a significant impact on the East India Company's profits.

The rivalry between the East India Company and smugglers ended up favoring the smugglers. The high price of tea and taxes on tea made it affordable for only a small amount of people, but cheaper, smuggled tea was relatively easy to acquire and available to the majority of people in England.

At times, the East India Company ended up with a surplus of expensive tea they could not sell. They attempted to dump the surplus on the American market, which eventually contributed to the in 1773 and to the American Revolutionary War in 1775.

As smugglers became more organized and their methods more sophisticated, they impacted the legal tea market and devastated the East India Company's profits. The simple formula to stop smuggling was to lower the taxes on tea and sell legal tea cheaper.

The Commutation Act of 1784 slashed taxes on tea from 119% to 12.5%, and smuggling stopped almost immediately.

The English Crown ignored illegal activities associated with smuggling tea, and many smugglers became legitimate tea dealers and shopkeepers.