July 15, 1864---The Blockade tightens

JULY 15, 1864:                   

The Confederate war effort has reached a point where it relies almost entirely on the bravery and brass of blockade runners to carry on. “Scott’s Anaconda,” the Union blockade of Southern ports, is growing ever more stringent, and as the Union captures more and more of the Confederate coastline, the South has fewer and fewer ports where ships can drop anchor. It takes speed, cunning, and a kind of piratical skill --- not to mention a pirate’s dash and daring --- to find success in evading the Union’s naval cordon.  

The preferred ship for this type of work is a small, light ship with little draft that can move well in uncertain shoal-prone waters at night.  This, of course, means that successful blockade runners are poorly suited to carrying large amounts of heavy weaponry, metals, and other supplies badly needed by the South. 

Blockade Runner ROBERT E. LEE

To help the Confederacy, a blockade runner really has to make many trips, but each trip stacks the odds against the ships that dare the blockade. Eventually, most are captured or sunk. During the war, some 1,500 blockade runners are captured or destroyed. Still, as late as the summer of 1864, five out of six attempts to evade the Union blockade are successful.

Blockade Runner A.D.  VANCE, also known as the "ADVANCE"

Although the original blockade runners of 1861 and 1862 were either ordinary steamships or sloops or brigantines, slow moving, noisy vessels had no fortune with the Union Navy; neither did most of the sailing vessels, since they were at the caprice of wind, tide, and weather. By 1864, most blockade runners are spanking new low-profile, shallow draft, high-speed steamships built in Britain. Paddlewheel-driven, they can make 17 knots on average. As often as possible they are fueled with smokeless anthracite coal.

Blockade running is a business that is jointly run by Southern merchants and foreign investors. Private British investors spent perhaps £50 million on the runners ($250 million in 1860 U.S. dollars, equivalent to about $2.5 billion in today’s dollars). Most of their crews are made up of British subjects from throughout the Empire, including the officers, with only a Southern shipper’s agent aboard. The predominance of British crews is easy to explain, in that most of the few Southern sea dogs are already serving with the Confederate States Navy, and are unavailable for the civilian pursuit of blockade-running.

This brings to light an interesting sectional divergence: Most of the U.S. Army officer corps before the war is populated by Southerners (especially sons of the Old Dominion), most of whom went out with the Confederacy, leaving a smaller pool of men to manage the Union’s land war. Most of the U.S. Navy’s officer corps are Yankees (and Bay State men). In this very narrow sense, the conflict is a war between Boston Brahmins and Tidewater Cavaliers.

Except insofar as going to sea is inherently risky, blockade-running is not a particularly dangerous business. Although Union Navy ships often shoot across the bows of blockade runners, few Yankee skippers really want to harm anyone, particularly foreign nationals; interdiction, not destruction, is the rule of thumb.  Until the summer of 1864, the captures are not numerous enough to take up more than a slight margin of the enormous profits. Shipowners can afford, if they have to, to lose a vessel after just two successful trips.

Blockade running is highly lucrative: The blockade runners charge from $300 to $1,000 per ton of cargo brought in; two round trips a month generates perhaps $250,000 in revenue (plus $80,000 in wages and expenses). A Royal Navy officer on leave might earn several thousand dollars in gold in salary and bonus per round trip, with ordinary seamen earning several hundred dollars.

The blockade runners were based in the British islands of Bermuda and the Bahamas, or Havana, in Cuba. The Union-held city of Key West was a popular transshipment point, as by mutual consent the pro-Union and pro-Confederate elements in town had put their animosities aside in favor of everyone becoming extremely wealthy.

The Blockade Runners' Haven

 

The goods the blockade runners were to carry were brought to New Providence, Freeport, Havana, or Key West by ordinary European (and sometimes Yankee!) cargo ships, and loaded onto the runners. The runners then ran the gauntlet between the Caribbean ports and the Confederate ports, some 650 miles away. On an outbound trip, a runner carried perhaps 400 tons of compact, high-value cargo such as cotton or tobacco. On an inbound trip, the runner would have rifles, medicine, brandy, lingerie, coffee, and mail. The sale of weapons and ammunition brought in as much as 1000% of cost.  By 1864, Lee's soldiers were eating expensive imported meat --- all paid for in silver and gold.

As the blockade tightened in the summer of ’64, the government in Richmond stepped in, and eventually regulated the traffic, requiring that half the imports be munitions; it even purchased and operated some vessels on its own account and made sure they loaded vital war goods.

The Blockade Runner OWL avoids capture

With such profits to be made, abuses were the rule of the day. It was documented in 1864 that a wholesaler in Wilmington, North Carolina asked his agent in the Bahamas to stop sending so much chloroform and instead send "essence of cognac" because that perfume would sell "quite high."

Hardcore Confederate patriots held rich blockade runners in contempt for profiteering on luxuries while ordinary people were in rags. On the other hand, blockade running was the lifeblood of the Confederacy. Many women in the back country flaunted imported $50 hats as patriotic proof that the "Damn Yankees" had failed to isolate them from the outer world. But starting this summer, that would change.

The DENBIGH was a textbook-type Blockade Runner. Painted gray with a low freeboard and burning anthracite coal, she was virtually invisible against the sea at any distance, particularly at night