Some biographers claim that about 1750 he married a Miss Sarah Smith, daughter of a London apothecary, but there is no surviving evidence of this. It seems that François also acquired a reputation as a skilful smuggler, too smart for the Customs officers. In July 1753, while he was moored off the well-known smuggling coast near Baltimore in south-west Ireland, they boarded his cargo vessel, the Argonaute, searched it and seized it. Although there was insufficient evidence to charge him, the vessel was impounded, and Thurot spent over two years unsuccessfully trying to get it released.
