The story of the actual work done by the navy in this last war for the preservation of the life of the nation begins when a blockade of the ports of the seceded States was ordered. Two proclamations were issued to provide for this measure. The first was issued on April 19, 1861, which, as the reader will remember, was six days after the capture of Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, by the secessionists. It covered all the ports of the South except those of Virginia and Texas; but on the 27th of the same month, these two States having also joined the Confederacy, their ports were included by a second proclamation. Because, from a naval point of view, that was the most important proclamation issued by a President of the United States since the War of 1812, its words shall be given literally.

“Now therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States ... have further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States and of the Law of Nations in such case provided. For this purpose a competent force will be posted so as to prevent entrance and exit of vessels from the ports aforesaid. If, therefore, with a view to violate such blockade, a vessel shall approach or shall attempt to leave any of the said ports, she will be duly warned by the commander of one of the blockading vessels, who will endorse on her register the fact and date of such warning, and if the same vessel shall again attempt to enter or leave the blockaded port, she will be captured, and sent to the nearest convenient port for such proceedings against her, and her cargo as prize, as may be deemed advisable.”

It is worth while considering in advance some of the facts relating to the task that was thus set for the navy. The coast line invested extended from Alexandria, Virginia, to the borders of Mexico on the Rio Grande. The continental line was 3,549 miles long. The coast or shore line, including bays and similar openings, was 6,789 miles long; and if to this be added the shore lines of the islands which were included in the blockade and which were necessarily watched by the blockading fleet, the entire length of beaches under guard was exactly 11,953 miles.

The South Carolina islands, as described by Jedidiah Morse, “are surrounded by navigable creeks, between which and the mainland is a large extent of salt marsh fronting the whole State, not less on an average than 4 or 5 miles in breadth, intersected with creeks in various directions, admitting through the whole an inland navigation between the islands and mainland from the northeast to the southeast corners of the State. The east sides of these islands are for the most part clean, hard, sandy beaches, exposed to the wash of the ocean. Between these islands are the entrances of the rivers from the interior country, winding through the low salt marshes and delivering their waters into the sounds, which form capacious harbours of from 3 to 8 miles over, and which communicate with each other by parallel salt creeks.” And that will apply to the whole coast.

More than that, in this length of shore line were found 185 harbor and river openings that might be used for the purposes of commerce with the Confederate States. It is also an important fact that these harbor openings were, in almost every instance, too shoal for the ordinary ocean-going cargo ships of that day. If too shoal for a merchantman, they were so for a man-o’-war, and the more intricate and variable the channels the better adapted they were to the purposes of a trade that was to be carried on in spite of the blockade.

To close these 185 harbor openings the government had, on the day the proclamation was issued, twenty-six steamers and sixteen sailing ships in commission. But let not the uninformed reader suppose that such a great fleet as this was at once started off on that duty. There were in the home squadron but five sailing ships and seven steamers, while of these a number were at sea en route from nearby foreign to American ports, and of those actually in the United States harbors but three—the Pawnee, the Mohawk, and the Crusader—were in Northern waters. To close 185 harbor openings the Secretary of the Navy had for the moment just three steamers, the rest of the commissioned fleet being either in the ports of the Southern States or scattered the wide world over. And that is to say, there was for the moment no force adequate to blockade efficiently even the one Southern port of Charleston.

The navy register showed, however, in addition to the forty-two ships in commission, twenty-seven that were lying at the navy yards in ordinary but fit for service. The government had thirty-nine steamers and thirty-four sailing ships that might be brought together in the course of a few months to enforce the blockade of the 185 harbors of the South and keep contraband trade clear of the eleven thousand and odd miles of Southern sea-beaches.

It is worth noting here that when the Navy Department was first considering its lack of ships for the purpose of enforcing the blockade, a consultation was had with a number of the most eminent ship-owners of New York. The leader of these eminent ship-owners, after considering the subject carefully, said to Secretary Welles that thirty sailing vessels would have to be purchased before an actual blockade of the ports could be completed. As a matter of fact, over 600 ships were employed at the end, and even then some blockaders got through.

But it was not alone in a lack of ships that the government was embarrassed. It was necessary to find officers and crews for the ships that were not in commission. Hundreds of men were needed to man even one of the five screw frigates, and yet to man the whole twenty-seven ships not in commission there were, on March 4, 1861, “only 207 men in all the ports and receiving ships on the Atlantic coast.” “It is a striking illustration of the improvidence of naval legislation and administration that in a country of thirty millions of people only a couple of hundred were at the disposal of the Navy Department.”

And as for the officers, as has been already shown, when the need of the nation was greatest, a fifth of them drew swords against the flag instead of defending it.

To still further hamper the work of the Navy Department, Congress was very slow to learn that a vast naval force was needed. The fact that the South had no navy and no merchant marine of its own, seemed, in the minds of the Congressmen, to make it wholly unnecessary to spend money on fighting ships. Indeed, a Navy Department has rarely been in a more distressful condition than was that under Mr. Gideon Welles in the first six months or so of the administration of President Lincoln.

However, a beginning was made. Perhaps the first step of importance in fitting the navy for war was the appointment of Mr. Gustavus V. Fox as assistant to Mr. Welles, for Fox had been a naval lieutenant and brought a practical knowledge of naval affairs with him when he was placed in charge of the actual war operations of the ships.

First of all, of course, was the work of getting men by a call for volunteers. The call was answered by hosts, but never by as great numbers as were needed. Captains and mates from the Northern ports and the Great Lakes were the more valuable part of this volunteer force, but so great was the need of officers that not a few men who had never been at sea received appointments. The youngsters at the Naval Academy who had had one year’s instruction, or more, were taken at once into the service. They were mere boys, but they had learned something of warships, and some of them made names that will not be easily forgotten.

The next effort after the call for men was to issue a call for ships. The department strove to buy “everything afloat that could be made of service,” and where owners would not sell, to charter the ships. At first the ships were purchased by the department direct or by naval officers. Altogether, twelve steamers had been purchased and nine chartered by July 1, 1861; and it is worth recording that, because greed was a stronger passion than love of country, the prices charged were outrageously high. Afterwards a business man was appointed to the task of buying ships, and somewhat better rates were then obtained, while a board of naval officers inspected the ships to decide on their fitness and the alterations needed to make them serviceable.

It was a heterogeneous collection, a nautical curiosity shop, that they got together—deep-water ships, inland-water steamers, ferryboats, and harbor tugs. The inspecting officers were compelled by stress of need to accept about everything that would float and carry a gun. And, singular as it may seem at first thought to those who in these days ride on them, the double-ended ferryboats made very successful naval ships. It was the Fulton ferryboat Somerset that captured the blockade-runner Circassian off Havana—a prize that yielded $315,371.39 to her captors. Nor was that her only service. Being well built to stand the hard knocks of their ordinary service, the ferryboats were easily fitted with heavy guns and served well in battering down alongshore forts.

By the 1st of December, 1861, the government had purchased 137 vessels, of which, however, fifty-eight were sailing vessels; and it may as well be told here as elsewhere that 418 vessels were purchased during the war, of which 313 were steamers.

Meantime the department started the work of building ships. Congress authorized seven sloops-of-war, and the department laid down eight, of which four were built to the lines of the sloops of 1858 in order to save time; and it is worth noting that the Kearsarge was among the four. The eight were begun immediately, and six more were laid down before the end of the year.

Without waiting for an appropriation, the department contracted with private shipyards for the building of twenty-three heavily armed screw gunboats. And this contract is worth more space than the mere statement of the fact, for it draws attention to the importance of the private shipbuilder as a factor in the sea power of a nation. Even in the War of 1812, when wooden sailing ships were the sole evidence of sea power, the private shipbuilder was of essential importance. It was a private shipbuilder from New York, Mr. Noah Brown, who sent Perry’s victorious squadron afloat on Lake Erie, and it was the private shipbuilder who gave the Americans the supremacy that they enjoyed from time to time on Lake Ontario. Without private yards amply equipped for the construction of the best warships afloat, no nation can have a sea power adequate for the protection of its honor and the preservation of peace.

These twenty-three gunboats mounted from four to five guns each, of which one was an eleven-inch smooth-bore. They were wooden boats, of course, and they were known as the ninety-day fleet because some of them were in commission within three months from the signing of the contract.

The fact that they were so quickly built is also worth considering in connection with the fact that ships relatively as efficient as they were could not now be built in less than a year. The day of a ninety-day fleet passed when steel was substituted for wood.

The first point actually blockaded was Hampton Roads. Flag Officer G. J. Pendergrast established the blockade there, and issued the following proclamation on April 30, 1861:

This proclamation is worth careful perusal for two reasons: The first reason is that it contained an untrue statement. Instead of having “sufficient naval force” “for an efficient blockade of the ports of Virginia and North Carolina,” he had barely enough for Virginia alone. Wilmington was a most important harbor of the South; it eventually became the favorite with blockade-runners, but there was not a ship ready to close it for many weeks after this proclamation was issued.

More important still is the second reason for reading the proclamation carefully—the fact that it was issued at the behest of the Navy Department, and illustrates clearly the department’s idea of a blockade at that time. It is necessary to say here that, owing to the excitement of the times, the government was making a very grave error—it was trying to establish a “paper blockade.” That is to say, there was a determined effort made to interdict trade where there was no blockade de facto—not a ship, or a rowboat even, stationed to close the port. And this was a most remarkable undertaking, because the “free trade” for which the War of 1812 was waged was the freedom to trade in any belligerent port not actually closed by the presence of a warship. The government was sacrificing a great principle for the sake of a temporary advantage.

This was not due to the mistake of a naval officer. It was the deliberate action of the administration, and it is not unlikely that it will come back, some time, to plague us when we are the neutral nation seeking for trade in a belligerent port.

Proof of the fact that the whole Cabinet was involved is found in the correspondence of Mr. Seward relating to the blockade off Charleston. The Niagara had arrived home from Japan on April 24th, and was sent to blockade Charleston as soon as possible, arriving off the bar on May 11th. She remained there four days only, and then went away in search of a ship that was said to be bringing arms from Belgium to a port further south, and there was no warship off that harbor until May 28th (some accounts say the 29th), when the Minnesota came to take the Niagara’s place. The Harriet Lane, a revenue cutter, used as a warship, did lie off the harbor on the 19th, but for thirteen days Charleston was entirely uncovered.

On May 22, 1861, Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, in the interest of British ships at Charleston, called the attention of Mr. Seward to the fact that the Niagara had left Charleston on the 15th and that the harbor was thereby opened. Replying to this, Mr. Seward wrote, along with other things, the following:

“The blockade of the port of Charleston has been neither abandoned, relinquished, nor remitted, as the letter of Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul would lead you to infer. We are informed that the Niagara was replaced by the steamer Harriet Lane, but that, owing to some accident, the latter vessel failed to reach the station as ordered until a day or two after the Niagara had left.

“I hasten, however, to express the dissent of this Government from the position which seems to be assumed by your note, that that temporary absence impairs the blockade and renders necessary a new notice of its existence. This Government holds that the blockade took effect at Charleston on the 11th day of this month, and that it will continually be in effect until notice of its relinquishment shall be given by Proclamation of the President of the United States.”

On May 13th the British ship Perthshire appeared off Pensacola, having heard nothing of the blockade there, but she was told that Mobile was open. So she went to Mobile, loaded cotton, and sailed on the 30th, although the port was closed on the 26th by the Powhatan. She was captured at sea on June 9th, by the Massachusetts, but released by the flagship Niagara, whose captain “considered the capture illegal, as, by order of the Department, no neutral vessel not having on board contraband of war was to be detained or captured unless attempting to leave or enter a blockaded port after the notification of blockade had been indorsed on her register,” The owner made a claim for £200 compensation on account of the detention of his ship, which had lost twelve days of her voyage; and the claim was allowed and paid by the government of the United States.

The United States had now to abide by the law that its navy had in 1812 established. The ship of a neutral had a right to enter any port left open by the government ships, and for several months after the President’s proclamation nine-tenths of the 185 Southern harbors remained open.

This matter is of importance because of the right of neutrals in case the blockade of a port was actually abandoned or raised even for an hour. The opening of the port made it legally necessary for the blockaders to begin over again as if no blockade had existed. The neutral entering an opened port had a right to remain fifteen days, as the law was applied, after she was officially notified of the blockade, while neutrals approaching a re-blockaded port had the right to go away unmolested if they had not been notified, actually or constructively, that the new blockade existed.

New Orleans was blockaded on May 26, 1861, by the Brooklyn, and Galveston on June 2d by the South Carolina. For celerity of movement in carrying out orders to blockade the different ports no man exceeded Lieutenant Woodhull, for within forty-eight hours after receiving orders to charter a steamer he had left Washington, obtained the Keystone State in the Delaware, carried her to Hampton Roads, and reported ready for duty.

On the whole, it may be said that on July 1, 1861, the magnitude of the work of blockading 185 ports and inlets began to be appreciated by the Navy Department. Moreover, the hesitation and vacillation that had characterized the early movements of the government were becoming submerged. The determination of the people of the North to preserve the American nation intact was growing, under the shame of early reverses ashore, into a mighty tide that was to be irresistible at the last. A blockade was established within the time mentioned, in which even the critical eye of British men-o’-warsmen, sent especially to examine it in the interests of British commerce, could find no flaw. When, on the 13th of July, Commodore Pendergrast issued another proclamation saying Virginia and North Carolina were legally closed, he stated the fact, and from that time on the whole coast was, at worst, under guard, if not impassable. It was a blockade that was to starve the hosts fighting against the flag into abandoning their arms and returning once more to the ballot-box for a redress of grievances.

This is by no means to say that the blockade was absolutely effectual. Tales of the blockade-runners are to be told further on, but some of the difficulties in the way of effecting a blockade, even when ships a-plenty were on the coast, must be considered here. Mention has already been made of the physical aspects of the coast. No more difficult coast for a blockade can be found in the world. With this in mind, let the reader recall the fact that the South in those days was about the only producer of cotton in the world, and that the sap of the long-leaved pine was converted into tar and turpentine, which were produced there in very great quantities. On the other hand, consider that the South had scarcely anything in the way of factories. The people there were dependent on commerce for their supplies of even the most common necessities of life—for household goods, for clothing, and even for some kinds of food. And as for the arms and supplies needed for a war, there was one small powder mill, but nothing more in all the South, unless, indeed, the existence of the Tredegar iron mills at Richmond might be called a gun and engine factory.

Here, then, were the conditions for commerce: The South was the chief source of cotton and naval stores, and it was in desperate need of manufactured articles in a great variety. The blockade stopped all lawful traffic between it and the rest of the world. The cotton for the mills of the world was shut off. The mills of France and England were shut down for want of raw material, and people starved to death in England because the mills were shut down, and there was no way in which the unfortunate operators could get money for food. We can afford to recall this fact when we feel embittered by the attitude of a certain part of the English people toward us during our struggle for national life. In Lancashire, England, no less than ten million dollars had been given away by relief committees to the starving mill hands within two years after the war began. Moreover, the English government was not always one-sided, as will appear further on.

The price of cotton rose to a level that now seems fabulous in the markets of the world. The prices of the goods that the people of the South were accustomed to import rose as rapidly there, while munitions of war commanded any price that might be asked by one who could supply them. Here was a chance for profit such as the world had not seen since the wars of Napoleon, and greed is the steam that turns the wheels of commerce.

Just off the Southern coast lay the Bahama Islands, while the Bermudas were but a day’s sail farther away. It is 674 miles from Bermuda to Wilmington, and 515 from Nassau to Charleston—three days’ run, or less, in either case. Here were neutral ports to serve as a basis for the contraband trade, and thither the contraband traders flocked as the pirates of old swarmed about Jamaica.

Nassau was a natural resort for the blockade runners, for its people had been wreckers—had “thanked God for a good wrack”—for time out of mind. Besides that, it was not only near by the Southern coast, but it was surrounded by a host of reefs awash, every one of which was neutral territory, and was surrounded by its marine league of neutral waters, where a blockade-runner was safe.

As the reader will remember, the blockade-running traffic was chiefly in the hands of the British, although Yankees were found not unwilling to turn a contraband dollar with one hand while they flapped the old flag in the air with the other and shouted over Union victories vociferously.

At the beginning of the contraband business the vessels were loaded in England, cleared for Bermuda or Nassau, and sent thence to the Southern destination, Charleston being the chief port. Any vessel, even a condemned sailing schooner, was counted good enough; in fact, worthless vessels were preferred because the loss would be less in case of failure.

The touch at the neutral port was, of course, a mere device to deceive the American government officials; but a change was soon made in that game, for the courts held to the doctrine of the continuity of a voyage. If the ultimate destination of the ship and cargo was Charleston, she might be lawfully captured anywhere en route in spite of the fact that she was cleared for a neutral port when the voyage began.

There being no appeal from this decision, the contraband dealers resorted to shipping goods from England to the neutral port off the coast, and there unloading the goods. The papers, of course, were made out in proper form, under oath, giving the neutral port as the ultimate destination. They showed, for instance, that a house in Nassau was buying shoes, woollens, guns, gunpowder, swords, etc., sufficient to supply an army, and it was called legitimate trade. Perjury was as common in this contraband business as the drinking of wine. In fact, one cannot help quoting here the words of the favorite “Naval History of Great Britain”—the words of James where he is writing of American traders in the days of the “paper blockades” of 1812. He says:

“Every citizen of every town in the United States, to which a creek leads that can float a canoe, becomes henceforward ‘a merchant’; and the grower of wheat or tobacco sends his son to a counting-house, that he may be initiated in the profitable art of falsifying ship’s papers, and covering belligerent property. Here the young American learns to bolt custom-house oaths by the dozen, and to condemn a lie only when clumsily told, or when timorously or inadequately applied. After a few years of probation, he is sent on board a vessel as mate, or supercargo; and, in due time, besides fabricating fraudulent papers, and swearing to their genuineness, he learns (using a homely phrase) to humbug British officers, and to decoy and make American citizens of British seamen.”

What Mr. James says of the American people as a whole, can be truthfully said in substance of the British blockade-runners. They were an infamous lot, without exception, and ever ready to sacrifice honor and risk life so long as the number of pieces of gold was large enough.

But this is not meant to apply to the Confederates engaged in running supplies through the blockaded lines. Their case was entirely different, for they were legally belligerents, and to obtain supplies was, from their point of view, a patriotic duty. So it might—so it usually did happen that a blockade-runner carried one man (the pilot) whose courage and firmness excite the heartiest approbation of every unprejudiced mind, while every other member of the crew was at heart a coward who dared not fight the blockaders in pursuit, and a sneak who would sell his soul for gold.

However, even the trick of transferring cargo at Nassau did not serve them long, for “it was held that the ships carrying on this traffic to neutral ports were confiscable, provided the ultimate destination of the cargo to a blockaded port was known to the owner.”

For this “the United States were accused of sacrificing the rights of neutrals, which they had hitherto upheld, to the interests of belligerents, and of disregarding great principles for the sake of momentary advantage.” In fact, however, Lord Stowell had held where a neutral, when trading between two ports of a belligerent, had landed the cargo in a neutral port and re-shipped it on another vessel, the continuity of the voyage was not broken. Cargoes shipped in due form to Nassau and taken before reaching that port having been declared lawful prizes in spite of perjury, the contraband traders then adopted the bold expedient of shipping their goods by regular lines to New York and there re-shipping them to Nassau and Bermuda; but the moment this trade attracted attention the New York customs officials were instructed to refuse clearances to ships “which, whatever their ostensible destination, were believed to be intended for Southern ports, or whose cargoes were in imminent danger of falling into the hands of the enemy.”

The Nassau merchants got the British authorities to inquire into this refusal to clear ships to their port, the ground taken being that an unjust discrimination was made against them, but after considerable correspondence the British decided to let Uncle Sam alone in that matter. The subject is of special interest for the reason that it shows how strong the American government is in an emergency, even though the Executive is very often obliged to wait on Congress before making a move.

So, at last, the contraband traders were obliged to rely entirely on their ability as sneaks. The goods were sent to Nassau and Bermuda as before, though, meantime, Havana, Cuba, and Matamoras, Mexico, on the Rio Grande, were of considerable importance. Cargoes of Southern products were safe after reaching these ports, if cargoes of contraband goods en route to them were not. Moreover, there was a change in the forms of ships used that made these nearby ports absolutely necessary to the traffic; for soon after the blockading fleets became efficient the use of condemned ships as blockade-runners was abandoned and smaller and swifter vessels were adopted. The transition from these to vessels built especially to run between the islands and the Confederate ports was easy and was quickly made. The inventive talent of the traders was worthy of a better cause. Low and slender hulls, with the most powerful engines and twin screws or feathering paddles, were adopted. The paint used was of an obscuring color. There was no spar save that necessary to support a crow’s nest for the lookout. The one thing that they could not keep from betraying them, at the last, was the smoke, but at one time they burned anthracite coal, and they stopped using it only when the American government prohibited the export of it. As time passed and the strangulation caused by the blockade became more severe, the skill and ingenuity of the blockaders increased, so that the traffic never was stopped. There was, at one time, talk in Richmond of having the Confederate government take the traffic into its own hands absolutely, because of the demoralization caused by the illegitimate traders. They brought what they could sell at the most profit, of course. They brought liquors where medicines were needed, and silks and fancy slippers in place of the necessities of life for which the people suffered. It is a pity that the change was not made, for then one might have considered the blockade-runners with other feelings than disgust.

But if the traffic never ceased absolutely, the constriction of the blockade was and is now manifest. It was so efficient that one can scarcely read of the effects produced by it in the South without tears. One can believe that the blockade was a merciful as well as a just measure of war in that it shortened the struggle more than any other measure, and so saved many lives on both sides; but it is a pitiful fact that those who suffered most from the effects of the blockade were the women and the little ones. There are many tiny graves in the South that were dug because the blockade excluded the medicines needed by the sick.

Lest the reader think the language used here regarding the foreign blockade-runners is too strong, a story told by one of them, Thomas E. Taylor (see p. 110, “Running the Blockade”), shall be given. Taylor was a leader in the business. He ran the first steel ship (the Banshee) built especially for the purpose. Among other vessels under his control was the Will-o’-the-Wisp. She was a wretched ship, and here is what he says:

“I found her a constant source of delay and expenditure and I decided to sell her. After having her cobbled up with plenty of putty and paint, I was fortunate enough to open negotiations with some Jews with a view to her purchase. Having settled all preliminaries, we arranged for a trial trip, and after a very sumptuous lunch I proceeded to run her over a measured mile for the benefit of the would-be purchasers. I need scarcely mention that we subjected her machinery to the utmost strain, bottling up steam to a pressure of which our present Board of Trade, with its motherly care for our lives, would express strong disapproval. The log line was whisked merrily over the stern of the Will-o’-the-Wisp, with the satisfactory result that she logged 17½ knots. The Jews were delighted, so was I; and the bargain was clinched.”

As to the legal status of a blockade-runner, Taylor says: “The blockading force is entitled to treat such a ship in all respects as an enemy, and to use any means recognized in civilized warfare to drive off, capture or destroy her. A crew so captured may be treated as prisoners of war, nor is any resistance to capture permitted, and a single blow or shot in his own defence turns the blockade-runner into a pirate.” In the same line is what Wilson’s “Iron Clads in Action” says regarding the fact that the crews of captured blockade-runners “at least once or twice rose up on the prize crew and recaptured the ship. It was a big risk—piracy upon the high seas—with the penalty of death if blood was shed.”

One of the cases wherein the crew recaptured the ship from the prize crew is described very well in the Mercantile Marine Magazine (London) for June, 1862, p. 177. The story begins: “On Saturday, May 3, the rooms of the Liverpool Mercantile Marine Association were crowded almost to suffocation by the merchants and Mercantile Marine officers of Liverpool, to witness the presentation of a magnificent testimonial to Captain William Wilson, of the British ship Emily St. Pierre, for his pluck and gallantry in recapturing his ship which had been seized by the United States cruiser James Adger, off Charleston.” He had been guilty of “piracy upon the high seas,” but 170 Liverpool merchants united to give him a silver tea and coffee service, the association named gave him a gold medal, the owners of the ship gave him 2,000 guineas, and his crew gave him a sextant. The captain, in his little speech, said that the “token of your kindness” would remind the British sailor that “his efforts for the right and true will not be lost sight of nor go unrewarded.” The story is well worth quoting as showing how men, naturally inclined to “the right and true,” may be led by the exigencies of trade to applaud and reward even “piracy upon the high seas.”

The reader should observe here that for a captured crew of one belligerent to rise against a prize crew of the other belligerent is a very different matter from this act of “piracy.”

As already said, the blockade-runners were at first chiefly old sailing ships of various rigs or old steamers, the idea being to risk as little capital as possible in this illegitimate trade while making the utmost profit—not an unknown plan in legitimate trade, and never a wise one. Small schooners were used all through the wars to run the numerous shoal-water inlets along the coast, but the real interest in the blockade-runners begins when the Liverpool merchants began to build steamers especially designed for that purpose—build them without hindrance on the part of their government.

Taylor, as said, was the first to carry out one of these swift vessels, and he describes her as follows:

“The new blockade-runner was a paddle boat, built of steel, on extraordinarily fine lines, 214 feet long and 20 feet beam, and drew only 8 feet of water. Her masts were mere poles without yards, and with the least possible rigging. In order to attain greater speed in a sea-way she was built with a turtle-back deck forward. She was of 217 tons net register, and had an anticipated sea speed of eleven knots, with a coal consumption of thirty tons a day. Her crew, which included three engineers and twelve firemen, consisted of thirty-six hands all told.” And she was a type of the best sort, although they eventually reached a speed of seventeen knots.

At Nassau “everything aloft was taken down, till nothing was left standing but the lower masts, with small cross-trees for a lookout man on the fore, and the boats were lowered to the level of the rails. The whole ship was then painted a sort of dull white, the precise shade of which was so nicely ascertained by experience before the end of the war that a properly dressed runner on a dark night was absolutely indiscernible at a cable’s length. So particular were captains on this point that some of them even insisted on their crews wearing white at night, holding that one black figure on the bridge or on deck was enough to betray an otherwise invisible vessel.

“The reckless loading, to which high profits and the perquisites allowed to officers led, is to a landsman inconceivable. That men should be found willing to put to sea at all in these frail craft piled like hay wagons is extraordinary enough, but that they should do so in the face of a vigilant and active blockading force, and do it successfully, seems rather an invention of romance than a commonplace occurrence of our own time.”

So prepared, the steamer sneaked away from port, fled from every sail and every smoke, crossed the Gulf Stream by daylight in order to determine her position uninfluenced by the current, and struck in on the coast at night. The light on the blockading flagship was commonly used to locate the harbor, and when this was seen the runner either ran away around the end of the squadron and slipped in along the coast or else plunged boldly through under the guns of the flagship.

The Banshee on her first inward trip received $250 per ton in gold for freight on war material. She carried out 100 tons of tobacco at $350 per ton, and 500 bales of cotton, that yielded $250 net per bale.

In January, 1865, Jefferson Davis, “in a message to Congress on this subject, said that the number of vessels arriving at only two ports—Charleston and Wilmington—from November the first to December the sixth, had been forty-three, and that only a very small portion of those outward bound had been captured; that out of 11,796 bales of cotton shipped since July the first, 1864, but 1,272 bales had been lost. And the special report of the Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the same matter stated that there had been imported at the ports of Wilmington and Charleston since October 26th, 1864, 8,632,000 pounds of meat, 1,507,000 pounds of lead, 1,933,000 pounds of saltpetre, 546,000 pairs of shoes, 316,000 pairs of blankets, 520,000 pounds of coffee, 69,000 rifles, 97 packages of revolvers, 2,639 packages of medicines, 43 cannon, with a very large quantity of other articles. From March 1st, 1864, to January 1st, 1865, the value of the shipments of cotton on Confederate government account was shown by the Secretary’s report to have been $5,296,000 in specie, of which $1,500,000 had been shipped out between July 1st and December 1st, 1864.

“A list of vessels which were running the blockade from Nassau and other ports, in the period intervening between November, 1861, and March, 1864, showed that 84 steamers were engaged; of these, 37 were captured by the enemy, 12 were totally lost, 11 were lost and the cargoes partially saved, and one foundered at sea.

“They made 363 trips to Nassau and 65 to other parts. Among the highest number of runs made were those of the Fanny, which ran 18 times, and the Margaret and Jessie, which performed the same feat and was captured. Out of 425 runs from Nassau alone (including 100 schooners), only 62—about one in seven—were unsuccessful.”

The following estimate of the disbursements and profits of a blockade-runner is taken from Scharf, as is the quotation above. The estimate refers to the last part of the war, when the Confederate government took a half of the cargo space of runners:

On the other hand, it should be observed that the Federal ships captured over 1,000 prizes during the war. One of these, the Memphis, paid $510,914.07 in prize money to her captors, two or three paid over $400,000, and whole fleets yielded from $100,000 to $300,000. The Banshee, of which Taylor boasts, paid $104,948.48 to the Yankee crews of the Fulton and Grand Gulf. Blockade-running, like privateering in 1812, paid a few firms handsomely. The Frasers of Charleston are said to have cleared $20,000,000 in gold, but many others lost heavily—the Jews who bought the Will-o’-the-Wisp, for instance. It was a thoroughly disreputable business, but so much of the story must be told, if only to show the character of part of the opposition which the government faced in the Civil War.