Blockade runners of the American Civil War

• 1. Origins And Strategy

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  On the 12th of April 1861, the American Civil War erupted with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter. The newly formed Confederate States of America possessed no navy to speak of in those early months. President Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation on April 17 offering letters of marque to anyone willing to provide ships for the Confederacy. This desperate measure aimed to bypass the Union blockade that General Winfield Scott had devised as his Anaconda Plan. Lincoln's first proclamation called for 75,000 troops just two days after the attack on Fort Sumter. By April 19, he threatened the Confederacy with a full-scale blockade along its coastlines. The plan extended from the Atlantic Ocean down to the Gulf of Mexico and up into the lower Mississippi River. Thaddeus Stevens angrily criticized this strategy as a great blunder that recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent power. Despite these criticisms, the blockade became the primary tool used by the Union Navy to strangle the Southern economy. The Confederacy lacked industrial resources to produce arms or supplies needed to fight a prolonged war. British investors stepped forward to fill this critical gap in the Confederate supply chain.

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• 2. British Investment And Construction

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  British merchants served as the primary shipbuilders and source of military supplies throughout the conflict. In 1862, more than 75 percent of textile workers in Britain were unemployed due to the cotton embargo imposed by the Confederacy. This economic pressure forced Britain to turn to other nations like Egypt and India for badly needed raw materials. The Confederate government subsequently lifted their cotton embargo and began selling it at reduced prices to win back British trading partners. James Dunwoody Bulloch arrived in Liverpool inside two months after the attack on Fort Sumter to establish his base of operations. He made contact with Confederate Commissioners William Yancey and Dudley Mann in London. Bulloch then established a relationship with the shipping firm of Fraser, Trenholm & Company. They arranged for the buying and selling of cotton while being ultimately responsible for shipping approximately seven-eighths of all cotton exported from the Southern states during the war. Bulloch also arranged for the construction and purchase of the Florida, the Alabama, and the Shenandoah. In 1863 he contracted with the Laird shipyard for the construction of two ironclad rams intended to break the Union blockade. When British authorities seized these vessels, Bulloch turned to France to commission the Stonewall.

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• 3. Key Figures And Agents

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  Major Josiah C. Gorgas served as the head of the Confederate Ordnance Bureau starting before the war ended. A West Point graduate of 1841, he had worked in nearly every arsenal in the nation prior to siding with the Confederacy. Gorgas liaised with Charles Prioleau who headed the Liverpool office of Fraser, Trenholm and Company. During the summer of 1861, Gorgas stockpiled supplies and prepared his first load of cargo. A 1,200-ton iron-hulled steamer named the Bermuda was chosen to make that voyage. Caleb Huse acted as an arms procurement agent under Gorgas direction. He departed the South for New York in April 1861 and arrived in Liverpool on May 10 of that same year. Huse arranged the sale and procurement of rifles from the London Armoury Company which became the chief supplier of arms throughout the war. By February 1863, the Armoury had shipped more than 70,000 rifles to the Confederacy. John Newland Maffitt received appointment as acting agent in Nassau on the 11th of April 1862. His duties included selecting ports of entry and discharging officers as needed.

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• 4. Ship Design And Tactics

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  Blockade runners were almost all privately owned vessels built by British shipbuilders seeking to maintain trade with southern states. These ships emerged as side-wheel steamers that were long and narrow with a shallow draft allowing them to cut through water efficiently. Many were painted dark gray to blend better with the backdrop of the night sea while a few appeared white to obscure their profile against the daytime horizon. When approaching land, these steamers often switched from normal coal to burning smokeless anthracite coal. Some ships used cotton soaked in turpentine as fuel because it produced little smoke and intense heat resulting in marked increases in speed. The SS Fingal was the first vessel to run the blockade from England under command of James D. Bulloch. The Syren completed a record 33 runs through the blockade before being captured in Charleston harbor on the 18th of February 1865. The CSS Advance made 20 successful runs before its capture on the 10th of September 1864 off Wilmington. Union forces eventually captured more than 1,100 blockade runners and destroyed or ran aground another 355 during the war.

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• 5. Major Ports And Routes

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  Wilmington served as the central depot for blockade runners throughout most of the Civil War. Between October 1864 and January 1865, over eight million pounds of meat reached the Confederates through this single port alone. That same period saw nearly two million pounds of lead arrive at Wilmington along with almost five hundred thousand pairs of shoes. Sixty-nine thousand rifles and forty-three cannon also passed through this critical entry point while cotton exports paid for these purchases. When Wilmington fell in February 1865, the major supply line was cut and Union victory became assured. Nassau in the Bahamas acted as one of several offshore stopover points for shipments coming into or leaving Confederate States. By the end of the war, 397 ships sailed from the Confederacy to Nassau while 588 went from Nassau back to the Confederacy. New Orleans gave port to more than 300 blockade runners in the first ten months of the conflict before falling on the 25th of April 1862. Mobile and Galveston became the next choices after New Orleans and the Mississippi River were secured by Union forces.

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• 6. Union Enforcement And Decline

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  The Union made massive repeated attempts to stop ships coming and going despite initial delays in establishing an effective patrol. The largest Union fleet ever assembled in the Atlantic attacked Fort Fisher on the 23rd of December 1864. This fleet consisted of 125 men-of-war and transports blockading the harbor when an incoming blockade runner passed through to take refuge upriver. The last blockade runner entered Wilmington's port on the 5th of January 1865 just days before the fort was captured on January 15. Rear Admiral Porter wrote to the war department noting that new class of blockade runners were very fast and sometimes came in to play around their vessels. Union attacks along the Bermuda coast outraged Lewis Heyliger who coordinated shipments of cotton and tobacco to England. By the end of the Civil War, the Union Navy had reduced American South exports of cotton by 95 percent from pre-war levels. Historians estimate supplies brought into the Confederacy via blockade runners lengthened the duration of the conflict by up to two years.

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