Home : America At War : The Civil War : The Civil War On The Fringe :Blockade Runners
When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, the Union states had about nine-tenths of the industrial capacity of the US. The agricultural South had only one foundry capable of making heavy artillery, just two small arsenals and some captured machinery for making muskets. Even iron, copper, coal and lead were scarce. Arming the Confederacy's new army and navy would only be possible with imports of weapons, machinery and raw materials from abroad. Recognizing that the Confederacy's survival depended on foreign trade, President Abraham Lincoln declared a blockade of the seceded states on 19 April 1861. At first, much of the US Navy was scattered on distant seas. All sorts of small steamers and sailing vessels slipped in and out of the South with little interference. One of the early sailing vessels to run the Union blockade was the America. This was the famous yacht for which the America's Cup race was named. The Union Navy expanded as agents bought almost every steamship they could get their hands on. Merchant and passenger steamers, river steamboats and even New York City ferryboats were quickly converted to carry guns. Regular warships that sailed in from their former stations in distant waters were assigned to blockade duty. Reinforced, the Union Navy began catching most of the amateur blockade runners. A more businesslike firm brought the Bermuda, a large British steamer, into Savamlah, Georgia on 18 September 1861. Her cargo sold at a staggering profit, and the Bermuda made a return trip laden with 2,000 bales of cotton for England's mills. While the Bermuda's profits inspired more investors to get into the blockade running game, that particular vessel was awkward and slow. On 27 April 1862, she was captured by the USS Mercedita. Her incoming cargo included a large shipment of Confederate postage stamps that had been printed in London. Although the British government was neutral, many firms that entered the blockade running business were British-owned or British and Southern partnerships. British manufacturers were also willing to sell modern rifle muskets, cannons, metalworking machinery and even steamships to Confederate buyers. Northerners were well aware of private British involvement in blockade running. Union newspapers pointedly ran headlines such as "British Steamer Captured!" when the navy caught a steamer running into a Southern port. The British, in turn, were irritated when US ships forced legitimate vessels to heave to for inspection. Besides contributing investors to the trade, Britain and Ireland also furnished many sailors and officers for the blockade runners. Some of these mariners had emigrated to the South before the war, but there were also officers in the Royal Navy who obtained extended leaves to try blockade running for a few months. Among the most successful of these British officers was Captain Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden, who ran the blockade 18 times. High pay for blockade running also tempted many sailors to desert from the Royal Navy's West India Squadron. Goods from Europe were first brought to Hamilton, Bermuda; Nassau, Bahamas; or Havana, Cuba. In these neutral ports, cargo was transferred to Southern blockade runners for the final dash past the Union Navy. Atlantic blockade runners used Bermuda or the Bahamas; voyages from those islands to the coast of the Carolinas took about three days. Gulf Coast runners usually operated from Havana, Cuba. During an outbreak of yellow fever in 1864, a number of blockade runners moved their base to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Once drowsy, minor ports, Nassau and Hamilton boomed with the blockade running trade. "The wharves of Nassau", wrote one commentator, "were piled high with cotton... the harbor was crowded with lead-colored, shortmasted, rakish looking steamers; the streets... swarmed with drunken revelers at night." Charleston, South Carolina was a major port of the antebellum South, and its harbor and rail connections made it the first choice of the blockade runners early in the war. (Movie fans will remember that in Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler was the captain of a Charleston blockade runner.) The Union Navy closed most of the Confederate coast by early 1862, leaving most major ports either captured (like New Orleans) or bottled up tightly (such as Savannah, Georgia and Mobile, Alabama). Increased pressure from the Union Navy and Army practically closed Charleston by mid-1863. Florida's lack of rail connections and its isolation from the rest of the South made its long coast of limited value for bringing in supplies. Galveston, Texas was an open port for steamers running in from Havana. Goods from Europe also flowed into Matamoros, Mexico, and were then loaded onto wagons and brought across the Rio Grande into Texas. Texas, though, was too remote from the centers of the fighting to be a practical conduit for Confederate supplies. Wilmington, North Carolina was by far the Confederacy's most important blockade running port. 28 miles up the Cape Fear River from the Atlantic, Wilmington was safely distant from the Union Navy. The two approaches to the mouth of the Cape Fear River, Old Inlet and New Inlet, were narrow and difficult channels between sandy coastal islands. Between the two inlets were Smith Island and an extensive sandbar called Frying Pan Shoals that stretched far into the ocean. (On a map, the shoals looked something like a skillet with a handle.) Because of Frying Pan Shoals, the Union Navy had to stretch an arc of ships over 40 miles long to watch the Cape Fear approaches. Like Nassau, Wilmington enjoyed (or perhaps suffered) a booming trade from the blockade runners. The easy money attracted not only rowdy sailors and rakish officers, but all sorts of con artists, prostitutes and violent criminals. Some families simply left the crime and commotion of Wilmington and rented their houses to the wealthy newcomers. The Cape Fear River was further protected by Confederate forts, particularly a vast earthwork complex named Fort Fisher. Heavy artillery, including modern British guns that came in through the blockade, kept Union warships far out to sea. Horse artillery companies could pull guns for miles along the beach, extending the fort's protection to endangered blockade runners. A new type of side-wheel vessel called the "Clyde steamer" had been developed by shipbuilding firms on the River Clyde in Scotland by 1860. Lightly built, drawing little water, and with sleek, streamlined iron hulls, Clyde steamers attained great speed and were popular passenger vessels in British waters. With minor changes, Clyde steamers made admirable blockade runners. Staterooms were torn out to increase cargo space. Collapsible smokestacks and removable masts and spars were installed, and the ship's boats were lowered below the gunwales, all to make the ships less visible to Union war vessels. Light gray paint camouflaged the ships, so they blended in with seawater and mist. This was the origin of the "battleship gray" camouflage that is now standard on naval vessels all over the world. Later, new ships were specially built in Britain to run the blockade. New blockade runners achieved greater speed by having thinner hulls and framing than regular steamers. Some could surpass speeds of 18 knots, faster than nearly anything in the US Navy (other than a captured blockade runner). Many blockade runners had women's names (such as the Kate, or the Fanny and Jennie). Other names were patriotic (Robert E. Lee, General Beauregard), literary (Ivanhoe, Tristram Shandy) or jaunty and defiant (Let Her Rip, Greyhound, Gladiator, Will o' the Wisp). Blockade runners preferred to run past the Union Navy on moonless nights, or at least before the moon rose or after it set. Incoming steamers showed no lights at all; the sailors were forbidden even to light their pipes. Federal blockade ships, likewise, covered all their lights, leaving perhaps one faint light glowing on the commander's vessel. In the darkness, a blockade runner might run aground looking for the harbor entrance, or even stumble into the midst of the blockading squadron. The hunted had some advantage in this game. A blockade runner always had full steam and was ready to make a dash; for a naval vessel on station for weeks or months, it was impossible to keep up such an intense level of readiness at every moment. Even outnumbering the incoming ships didn't always help the Navy. If they were too close together, they couldn't open fire without hitting each other. When a Southernbound steamer was spotted, a Union vessel fired signal rockets in the direction of its course to alert other warships. Southern captains confused the blockaders by firing their own rockets in different directions. When approaching a port, some steam ers slipped inside the inner line of blockaders. If they steamed close to shore, just beyond the breakers, the deep-draft warships could not follow them. Mist and spray kicked up by the surf helped the gray-painted, low-lying vessels blend in with the shore. If the blockaders didn't see them and open fire, and they didn't run aground, they had a good chance of slipping safely into the South. Probably around three-quarters of the attempts by steamers to run the Union blockade were successful.
Not every captain could slip quietly in or out of port. One night in 1863, Captain Hobart-Hampden brought the steamer Don out of Wilmington. In the darkness, the Don almost ran down a guard boat from a Yankee ship that had rowed out to watch the Cape Fear approaches. Hobart-Hampden "passed so close, that I could have dropped a biscuit into the boat" and heard "the crash of broken oars against our sides." From the guard boat, a rocket blazed into the sky, and several uncomfortably close Fed eral ships responded with a noisy but harmless barrage of cannon fire. There was nothing to do but pile on as much steam as possible and rush out to sea. Avoiding detection in the night, it looked like the Don had a clear run to the Bahamas, but dawn revealed a Federal cruiser six miles astern of them. The Yankee ship gave chase all day. Overloaded with cotton, the Don's speed was compromised, and the cruiser narrowed the gap to about three miles. Late in the afternoon, the cruiser opened fire with a heavy gun mounted near the bow. By sunset, the enemy ship was so close that two or three shots had soared over the Don. After nightfall, Hobart-Hampden altered his course slightly and hove to. The Union vessel maintained its old heading, and rushed past the Don, still firing ahead into the empty sea. When Capt. Daniel H. Martin took the Lilian toward Wilmington in 1864, he faced not only the Federal Navy, but a mutinous crew. They got through only because Martin held a revolver on the engine room firemen. Drinking from a brandy bottle in his other hand, Martin kept the firemen to their work as shells from the USS Shenandoah fell around them. After nightfall, the Lilian shook off the Shenandoah and made it to port. Martin's luck ran out when he steered the Lilian back toward Bermuda. They tried to outrun an unusually swift Union ship that finally sent a shot punching into their hull below the waterline. The crew tried, but failed, to stop up the hole with blankets, and had to surrender. Surprised by the speed of the Union ship, the Lilian's crew learned that they'd been captured by the USS Gettysburg, which had once been a blockade runner. The Lilian was repaired and also added to the US Navy. When capture looked imminent, captains burned or jettisoned mailbags and documents, and they sometimes even deliberately ran aground to let the crew escape. There was a chance that Confederate gunners on the shore could drive away the enemy warships until a grounded steamer could be freed, or at least until the cargo could be saved. Some grounded vessels were wrecked by the waves, or were burned by their crews to keep them from Union hands. Other times, landing parties from the Union Navy set them afire so the Confederates couldn't salvage the freight. Union sailors found that blockade duty was tedious and frustrating. They spent weeks or months stuck on the same stretch of ocean, enduring blazing sun, cold dreary rain and violent storms. The sight of a smudge of smoke or a strange hull on the horizon threw them into action. More often than not, they spent hours surging forward at top speed, only to find they were chasing another Union ship or a neutral vessel. The prospect of prize money from a capture was some compensation for the monotony of ship board life. Half of the prize money went directly to the US government, but the rest was divided among officers and sailors. Crewmen were often resentful at their small shares, and long delays in getting their money. Still, the lucky capture of a richly laden steamer by a small crew could net enlisted men $2,000 or more - quite a fortune in the days when a sailor was paid $16 a month. Steamers sold by prize courts might end up in the Union Navy, or on the open market. The cap tured vessels Scotia, Union, and Kate (II), among others, were bought by parties who put them right back into blockade running again. When confronted, blockade runners could outrun most Union vessels. Tricks to increase speed included heaving deck cargo overboard, and stoking the fireboxes with turpentine-soaked cotton or even sides of fat-laden bacon. Desperate captains who were low on coal even fed masts, spars and deck planks into the fires. If a chase led on into the night, it was easier to change course and escape. Captain John Wilkinson once had his engine crew shovel in coal dust to create a thick cloud of smoke around dusk; while the Union ship chasing him steered toward the smoke, he altered course and slipped away into the night. Blockade runners usually did not surrender unless they ran aground, or were struck by enemy shot and had no prospect of escape. They endured enemy fire without shooting back. Under maritime law, their crews would be considered pirates (and so faced the death penalty) if they fired on a warship. The crewmen who held British citizenship were officially neutrals and could be held for only a short time. The US, not wanting to further antagonize relations with Britain, usually released British sailors quickly. Captured Confederate crewmen, especially pilots, were not released so easily. Few men had the intimate knowledge needed to steer a steamer safely through the complex channels, obstructions and explosive torpedoes surrounding Confederate ports. A pilot was the one man aboard who could not be replaced; if captured, he faced prison until the end of the war. Another problem for the blockade runners was finding enough anthracite or hard coal, which left no telltale trail of smoke when it burned. Only soft coal, which gave away the position of a steamer with its thick, messy smoke, was mined in the South. Blockade runners needed to carry enough hard coal for a round trip, or have some reserved for them in port. If possible, captains used soft coal or sails while in the middle of their runs, saving the precious hard coal for the hours when they were nearing port. The Confederacy's most valuable export was cotton. The British and French economies were partly fuelled by their textile industries. The blockade that kept European supplies from the South also made cotton scarce in Europe, and raised unemployment in the cloth industry. The soaring price of cotton paid for nearly everything imported by the South during the war. Hobart-Hampden was amazed to find that cotton selling, for the equivalent of two or three English pence a pound in the South, fetched 10 times that in England. Steamers were crammed with 500-pound bales, which had been tightly squeezed by cotton presses to take up less space. After the holds were packed, more cotton bales were piled on the deck. To work the ship, the crew had to climb over the piled bales, or slip between them to get to the narrow openings left over the hatchways. Officers even packed more bales into their cabins, on their personal accounts. Shiploads of 500 to well over 1,000 bales were common. Blockade runners took some passengers, although they were squeezed into uncomfortably tight quarters to make room for more lucrative freight. Non-paying passengers were a serious problem. In Wilmington, the army provost guard searched each outbound ship for stowaways. "A large machine, shaped like a syringe" forced a "chemical mixture" called the "sneezing compound" into every nook and cranny throughout the ship. On one occasion, the "sneezing compound" forced four men (possibly army deserters trying to get out of the country) out from hiding in the coal bunkers of the blockade runner Fanny. Cargos on the inward trips were much more varied. The Confederate government desperately needed Europe's military equipment, lead for bullets and saltpeter for gunpowder, and engines, machinery and tools to strengthen munitions factories in the South. Unfortunately for the Confederate military, blockade running firms quickly learned that bring ing in luxury goods was even more profitable. After all, one 2,500-pound cannon could be replaced with a lot of silk cloth, lace, perfumes, elegant furniture and French brandy, yielding the owners much higher returns than those earned by ferrying in munitions. Incoming merchandise was auctioned off at staggering prices. Between running in full of freight and getting out packed with cotton, one round trip could net a profit of more than $200,000. The civilian crews shared in the bounty. A captain could get $5,000 in gold for a round trip, and a pilot $3,500. Even common sailors might get $250 for a trip, more than a year's pay in the US Navy Confederate Navy personnel assigned to blockade runners got their regular navy pay, but in gold coins instead of the inflationravaged paper money they usually received. The Confederate government eventually required blockade runners to hold a percentage of their cargo capacity for military use. The states of North Carolina and Georgia, and the Confederacy itself, also directly entered the trade by buying their own blockade running steamers. Wilmington was lost to blockade running when Fort Fisher fell on 15 January 1865, after a massive naval bombardment and land assault. Charleston fell shortly thereafter, ending blockade running on the Atlantic coast. The loss of supplies from Europe contributed to the surrender of the Confederate armies in the east in April 1865. Western regions of the Confederacy held out a little longer. The last blockade runner, the Lark, left Galveston for Havana on 24 May 1865. The collapse of blockade running left a glut of fast steamers on the market. Owners sold them at a loss, to salvage what they could of their assets. The surviving "greyhounds of the sea" went on to different fates. The Lilian ended up as a Spanish navy gunboat. The Hero, which had run the blockade at Charleston, was sold to an Australian firm; she was lost in a hurricane in New Caledonia in 1901. All of the innovation and boldness of the blockade runner crews could not save the Confed eracy. But, the 300 steamers, that together made more than 1,000 successful trips through the blockade, brought in over half of the South's arms. The most common Confederate infantry weapon was the British-made .577 Enfield rifle. Without the supplies, food and medicine brought through the blockade, the Confederacy could not have held out as long as it did. The thrilling chases through the blockade excited the imaginations of Europeans as well as the Confederates. French science-fiction writer Jules Verne, who was fascinated with America and the Civil War, wrote a novella called The Blockade Runners. Even the North had some reluctant admiration for their seagoing adversaries. While the war was still going on, a New York firm marketed a game called "Running the Blockade", which resembled a modern board game. Players "navigated" a maze littered with perils such as reefs, whirlpools and torpedoes before reaching safety in the harbor of Wilmington.
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