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on according to a regular system, and in gangs, frequently composed of one or more receivers, together with coopers, watermen, and lumpers, who were all necessary, in their different occupations, to the accomplishment of the general design of wholesale plunder. They went on board the merchant vessel completely prepared with iron crows, adzes, and other implements to open and again head up the casks; with shovels to take out the sugar, and a number of bags made to contain a hundred pounds each. These bags went by the name of "black strap," having been previously dyed black, to prevent their being conspicuous in the night, when stowed in the bottom of a river boat or wherry. In the course of judicial proceedings it has been shown that in the progress of the delivery of a large ship's cargo, about ten to fifteen tons of sugar were on an average removed in these nocturnal expeditions, exclusive of what had been obtained by the lumpers during the day, which was frequently excessive and almost uncontrolled, whenever night plunder had taken place. This indulgence was generally insisted on and granted to lumpers, to prevent their making discoveries of what they called the "drum hogsheads" found in the hold on going to work in the morning, by which were understood hogsheads where from one-sixth to one-fourth of their contents had been stolen the night preceding. In this manner one gang of plunderers was compelled to purchase the connivance of another, to the ruinous loss of the merchant.

The total number of the mates and crews of vessels, revenue officers, lumpers, coal-heavers, coopers, watermen, lightermen, night-watchmen, scuffle-hunters,