Fishermen, smugglers and the Fleet

Hutchins, the county historian, wrote that fishing was the main trade of the village, with rope-making, basket-making from the withy beds and the knitting of cotton stockings on the side. The London Journal in the 1750s was less polite and called the villagers thieves, smugglers and plunderers of wrecks. It had a point. In 1720 Abbotsbury fishermen hauled up 23 casks of brandy and two barrels of wine that had been sunk offshore on ropes weighted with stones. The bailiff, William Bradford, seized the lot, and troops had to come out from Dorchester to settle who kept it. In 1832 Moses Cousins, a basket maker in the village, was sent to Dorchester gaol for a year for not paying a £100 fine over four gallons of brandy; the vicar and Lord Ilchester got him out after sixty days. The trade only died when the government cut the duty and there was no longer anything in it.

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