The traditional image of Cornish smugglers is of generous, jolly, harmless chums who just enjoyed a drop of untaxed brandy and used peaceful persuasion to get the co‑operation they needed.

But just how accurate is this cosy stereotype? Were real-life smugglers actually more like today’s Mafia or Triads?

At the Maritime Museum on Wednesday 28 January Richard Platt will compare the grim facts with the romantic legend, in an illustrated talk entitled Cornish Smugglers: Brutal Thugs or Harmless Free Traders?

For much of the 18th and early 19th century, Britain’s coastal counties were the setting for a vast smuggling industry. In some areas huge gangs of men regularly unloaded shiploads of contraband in full view of the outnumbered and outgunned customs authorities. Whole communities shared in the risks and profits of these illegal free trade enterprises.

Tickets for Cornish Smugglers: Brutal Thugs or Harmless Free Traders? are available from the Maritime Museum at £7 for lecture only and £16 to include two-course buffet. Doors and bar open from 6pm. To book your seats please call 01326 214546.

Richard Platt is the author of Smuggling in the British Isles, The Ordnance Survey Guide to Smugglers’ Britain, and more than sixty other books for children and adults. He acted as a costume consultant for the Disney movies Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, and will shortly be writing the text of a new interactive website for USS Constitution, the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat.