That is quite an amazing development Keith.
I agree to much of your reasons why Shotley was not supplying the Jacobites although it is a protracted group who also seeded much of the border riever activity or at least the Moss Troopers who were another group on the border lands very much on the Durham Northumberland doorstep.
Generally the Shotley people will have wanted to retain their heads! and with Newcastle bristling with troops they certainly had to keep their heads down.
I think the smuggling is another league and seen as semi allowable and in the case of the Shotley team they got away with that by having people in high places... I also suspect the ruse of the hollow blades was half myth and half true since the word "fuller" before 1850 was "hollow". A sort of deliberate subterfuge that fitted the mix-up nicely.
In the situation of what was stamped on which blades I have to note that Shotley did not use the bushy tail fox and that was the sole domain of Birmingham although it may possibly have become mixed up in a number of blades out of Hounslow although if evidence is available I would be ready to concede it may have been used elsewhere...or traded. Usually it was with the addition of SH stamped in the body of the Fox; Samuel Harvey Snr or his son Samuel...
Shotley Bridge used the hammered and chiseled Passau Wolf in stick form either applied there or on smuggled Solingen blades or both.
I say this with the proviso that anything can happen in this story and I am ready to believe what transpires ! The Duck and Crossed Sausages even !!
