If the proper officer of the Customs shall place any lock, mark, or seal upon any stores or upon any place or package in which the same may be on board any ship or vessel arriving in the United Kingdom, and such lock, mark, or seal shall be wilfully opened, altered, or broken, or if any stores so secured shall be secretly conveyed away either while the ship remains in the port at which she shall have so arrived, or at any other port in the United Kingdom to which she may proceed, or on her passage from one port to another, the master of such ship shall forfeit the sum of twenty pounds.