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Penalty on persons signalling smuggling vessels.
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190. No person shall, after sunset and before sunrise between the twenty-first day of September and the first day of April, or after the hour of eight in the evening and before the hour of six in the morning at any other time of the year, make, aid, or assist in making any signal in or on board or from any ship or boat, or on or from any part of the coast or shore of the United Kingdom, or within six miles of any part of such coast or shore, for the purpose of giving notice to any person on board, any smuggling ship or boat, whether any person so on board of such ship or boat be or not within distance to notice any such signal; and if any person, contrary to the Customs Acts, shall make or cause to be made, or aid or assist in making, any such signal, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be stopped arrested detained and conveyed before any justice, who, if he see cause, shall commit the offender to the next county goal, there to remain until delivered by due course of law; and it shall not be necessary to prove on any indictment or information in such case that any ship or boat was actually on the coast; and the offender, being duly convicted, shall, by order of the court before whom he shall be convicted, either forfeit the penalty of one hundred pounds, or, at the discretion of such court, be committed to a gaol or house of correction, there to be kept to hard labour for any term not exceeding one year.
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