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Research has continued since the publication of the Dundonald smuggling books: The Loans Smugglers and The Smugglers of Kyle in 2007 and Mathew Hay in 2008. This new volume updates the story. It includes David Dunlop's tobacco company and his bankruptcy. There is also more information about the Clone branch of the Dundonald smuggling families.

This book should have been launched during the exhibition The Dundonald Smugglers Revisited at Dundonald Castle Visitor Centre between September and December. Now publication is planned for October 2020.

2020
ISBN 978-1-897725-34-4
A4 126pp ringbound
£15.00

Dr John Campbell, John Christian, William Logan, Gilbert McAdam, David McClure, George McCree, Alexander Oliphant and Robert Whiteside formed a wine company in Ayr. In the early days, they were accused of smuggling wine into their warehouse from the Isabella. But soon a regular legal trade developed from Europe. This book concentrates on the wine that was re-exported as part of Campbell's West India trade, Christian's Dominican trade and McClure's Newfoundland trade. The Pallas owned by McClure, McCree and Thomas Arthur carried wine to the headquarters of the British troops at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Several of the individual partners were deeply invloved in the smuggling trade. The year after the Pallas sailed to Halifax, McClure was fined more than £405, according to an 'English Bill' relating to his former smuggling activities with McCree.

This book should have been launched at this year's Ballantrae Smugglers' Festival. Publication is still planned for August 2020.

2020
ISBN 978-1-897725-11-5
A4 92pp ringbound
£5.00

This is the story of smuggling in the Carrick district of Ayrshire. It concentrates on the area to the north of Ballantrae, whose smuggling story was described in 2013. The Carrick story is dominated by the Brackenridge family of Dowhill [now a farmshop on the A77]. They were involved in smuggling before 1765 but it is only after the Isle of Man was taken over by the government that their activities expanded with bases at Money Vart near Glenarm in County Antrim and on the Island of Sanda. For many years they were untouchable. Their story includes the first reference to smugglers using a cave, hidden on a cliff face on Sanda, to store their contraband. This book includes other smugglers in the area who dealt in a wide range of goods, including salt from Ireland. It emphasises the distinctive stories which make each of these areas unique.

This book should have been launched at this year's Ballantrae Smugglers' Festival. Publication is still planned for August 2020

2020
ISBN 978-1-897725-22-1
A4 156pp ringbound
£15.00

John McWhirter went out to Virginia in 1786, taking with him a selection of goods to be sold in exchange for hogsheads of tobacco. Some of this tobacco was imported legally at Port Glasgow or Greenock and then shipped to Europe where it would enter the smuggling trade. The rest went to his agents on Guernsey and from there straight to Ayrshire. When in Virginia, McWhirter contacted the Ayrshire company of John Aitken & Co., Virginia, which included William Brackenridge, while his friend Valentine Ferguson, also from Ballantrae was one of the clerks. The resultant debts were never settled.

This book should have been launched at this year's Ballantrae Smugglers' Festival. Publication is still planned for August 2020

2020
ISBN 978-1-897725-25-2
A5 32pp paperback
£5.00

Page 61 of A Nest of Smugglers: Dumfries and Galloway 1688 to 1850 (2012) states that: the smuggling story of Ballantrae is so complex that it will be subject of a separate booklet. It was not anticipated that this booklet would appear quite so soon or that it would be in the form of a book. The Ballantrae Smuggler's Festival in August 2013, however, provided the necessary stimulus to pull together all the information available and to complete the research, where necessary. Why is Ballantrae's smuggling story so complex? The simple answer is: location. It lies between the two major smuggling areas of Wigtownshire: the Bay of Luce, dominated by the Mull and Clone Smuggling Companies and of Ayrshire: the Carrick Shore, where the Brackenridges ruled supreme and the Troon, home of Loans Smuggling Company. At the same time, the local people were perfectly capable of running their own smuggling ventures. The first references to Ballantrae boats at the Isle of Man are in 1716 and the salt smuggling from Ireland ended somewhat abruptly when the salt tax was removed in 1823. The book covers the ten miles of coast from Lendalfoot and Sand House (Carleton) Bay in the north to Currarie Port in the south. Several other locations are mentioned, including the farms of Ballachdown, Big Park, Chapman Craigs, Craignance [Craigans] and Little Shallockwreck and the inn at South Laggan.

2013
ISBN 978-1-897725-20-7
A4 92pp ringbound
£7.50

Matthew Hay formed part of the 2008 exhibition at Dundonald: Pills, Potions and Poisons. Accused of posioning his tenants, the Wilson family of Plewlands, by putting arsenic into sowens being prepared for their supper, he was hanged on Ayr Moor on Friday, 13 October 1780. This booklet uses the trial records to reproduce the daily events surrounding the poisoning and asks the inevitable question: was he guilty?