Nearly eighty ships every year come out from England and Ireland, and a few ketches from New England, in defiance of the navigation laws, which the people of New England seem more willing to break than are the people of Virginia.

If Newgate would resolve itself into a committee of the whole Press-yard, with Jack Ketch at its head, aided by confidential persons from the county prisons or the Hulks, and would make a clear breast, some data might be found out to proceed upon; but as it is, the criminal mind of the country is a book sealed, no one has been able to penetrate to the inside!

That when he had said all he desired to say to them, he made a move to leave the ketch in his boat, intending to return to Mattapony House; but they who were in the cabin prevented him, and would not let him go.

In the afternoon of Midsummer's Day the Elector brought the ketch into Moonfleet, and there was a posse of constables to march the smugglers off to Dorchester Jail.

The day after they had sent them away, one Captain Benjamin Stacy, in a ketch of 6 guns fell into their hands.

Said Westley Keyts, "If it was raining whiskey, Potts wouldn't drink as much as he could ketch on a fork!"