Between May and September , these three ships were responsible for carrying more than 4, bales of cotton to Havana, Cuba, for sale to European buyers. Still, this figure is a meager one-seventh of Mobile's pre-war commerce level. The Alabama , Cuba , and Fanny were lost by mid September , however. The Cuba was burned to prevent her capture on May 19, , while heading toward Mobile; the Alabama was captured on September 12, by the Union blockade; and the Fanny was burned that same day to prevent her capture.
Blockade Runner Denbigh Large steamers were not the only ships used in blockade running. Schooners, smaller steamers, and sloops carried more than 15, bales of southern cotton past the blockade. Three foreign-owned ships also served as blockade runners. These were larger ships, with the Matagorda being about ft in length and the Denbigh being about ft.
They were under English and Northern registry respectively before coming south. These three ships carried more than 9, bales of cotton past the blockade and brought back clothes, wine, sugar, and rum, most of it in late and , prior to the fall of Mobile.
The Donegal was captured by the Union blockader Metacomet on June 6, , while attempting a run into Mobile. The Alice was captured on September 10, , running out of Galveston toward Havana, and the Denbigh ran aground on May 23, , while trying to enter the port of Galveston and was burned the next day by the Union blockade.
Many of the local ships, especially the riverboats, were captured with relative ease by the Union Navy. The sleek and fast foreign-built blockade-running steamers, though, were another matter. In , there were 22 attempts by steamers to reach Mobile; of these 19 were successful and no steam vessel was captured coming out of the port.
The capture of Mobile Bay by Admiral Farragut's fleet in August of virtually eliminated blockade running on the Gulf, although some attempts were still made to run into Texas. This was not a severe blow to the Confederacy because Mobile was never as important a port as either Wilmington or Charleston, which were much closer to the British controlled islands of Bermuda and the Bahamas. Although accurate numbers are difficult to find, historians have estimated that between 32, to 35, bales of cotton were successfully shipped out of Mobile and past the blockade to Havana in the 30 months between February and August The forms of examination and procedure were those of belligerent prize-courts; and the decisions expressly recognized a state of war, and could be founded on no other hypothesis.
Under these circumstances, the complaint against the British Government of having done an unfriendly act in recognizing the rebels as belligerents, had no very serious foundation. The Queen's proclamation of neutrality, published on May 13, was a statement that hostilities existed between the Government of the United States and "certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America,'' and a command to British subjects to observe a strict neutrality between the contending parties.
Its form and contents were those commonly found in the declarations of neutrals at the outbreak of war. The annoyance it gave to the Government and the elation it caused at the South were due to the fact that it appeared somewhat early in the struggle, and that it was the first recognition from abroad of the strength and organization of the insurgent Government. As a matter of law, Great Britain had the right to declare herself neutral, especially after the blockade was proclaimed, as blockade is a purely belligerent act.
Her offence, reduced to its exact proportions, consisted in taking the ground of a neutral before the magnitude and force of the insurrection were such as to justify it. But the hopes raised at the South by the proclamation led to the prevalent belief throughout the Union that it was dictated by unfriendly motives; while the undisguised sympathy for the Southern cause shown by the upper classes in England tended to strengthen the impression and to aggravate the wound.
The inception of the blockade was somewhat irregular. Ordinarily a blockade may begin in one of two ways; either by a public announcement coupled with the presence of a force before the blockaded port; or by stationing the force without an announcement. The first is a blockade by notification; the second is a blockade in fact. As breach of blockade only becomes an offence when accompanied by knowledge, actual or constructive, of the existence of the blockade, it is a question of some importance when the blockade begins and how knowledge of it is to be acquired.
In a blockade by notification, knowledge is held to have been acquired when sufficient time has elapsed for the notice to have been generally received; and after this time a neutral vessel, by sailing for the blockaded port, has committed an offence and incurred a penalty. With a blockade that is purely de facto , on the other hand, knowledge must be obtained on the station, and neutrals have a right to sail for the port and to be warned off on their arrival.
Whether a blockade is initiated as a blockade by notification or as a blockade de facto, the indispensable condition of its establishment is the presence of a force at the blockaded port. Actual notice of the fact can never precede the existence of the fact. The President's two proclamations did not therefore constitute actual notice, because at the date of their issue there was not even a pretense that the blockade existed.
Nor do they appear to have been so intended. The idea was rather to publish a manifesto declaring in a general way the intentions of the Government, and then to carry them out as promptly as circumstances would permit. The blockade therefore began as a blockade de facto, not as a blockade by notification. During the summer of vessels were stationed at different points, one after another, by which the blockade at those points was separately established. Notices, of a more or less informal character, were given in some cases by the commanding officer of the blockading force; but no general practice was observed.
When Captain Poor, in the Brooklyn , took his station off the Mississippi, he merely informed the officer commanding the forts that New Orleans was blockaded. Pendergrast, the commanding officer at Hampton Roads, issued a formal document on April 30, calling attention to the President's proclamation in relation to Virginia and North Carolina, and giving notice that he had a sufficient force there for the purpose of carrying out the proclamation.
He added that vessels coming from a distance, and ignorant of the proclamation, would be warned off. But Pendergrast's announcement, though intended as a notification, was marked by the same defects as the proclamation.
The actual blockade and the notice of it must always be commensurate. At this time, there were several vessels in Hampton Roads, but absolutely no force on the coast of North Carolina; and the declaration was open to the charge of stating what was not an existing fact. The importance of these early formalities arises from the fact that the liability of neutral vessels depends on the actual existence of the blockade, and upon their knowledge of it.
Until the establishment of the blockade is known, actually or constructively, all vessels have a right to be warned off: When the fact has become notorious, the privilege of warning ceases. In the statement about warning, therefore, the President's proclamation said either too much or too little. If it was intended, as the language might seem to imply, that during the continuance of the blockade--which, as it turned out, was the same thing as during the continuance of the war--all neutral vessels might approach the coast and receive individual warning, and that only after such warning would they be liable to capture, it conceded far more than usage required.
If it meant simply that the warning would be given at each point for such time after the force was posted as would enable neutrals generally to become aware of the fact, it conveyed its meaning imperfectly. In practice, the second interpretation was adopted, in spite of the remonstrance's of neutrals; and the warnings given in the early days of the blockade were gradually discontinued, the concessions of the proclamation to the contrary notwithstanding.
The time when warning should cease does not appear to have been fixed; and in one instance at least, on the coast of Texas, it was given as late as July, The fact of warning was commonly endorsed on the neutral's register. In some cases the warnings had the same fault as Pendergrast's proclamation, in being a little too comprehensive, and including ports where an adequate force had not yet been stationed. The boarding officers of the Niagara , when off Charleston, in May, warned vessels off the whole Southern coast, as being in a state of blockade, though no ship-of-war had as yet appeared off Savannah; and the Government paid a round sum to their owners in damages for the loss of a market, which was caused by the official warning.
The concession of warning to neutrals at the port, if it had continued through the war, would have rendered the blockade to a great extent inoperative. Vessels would have been able to approach the coast without risk of capture, and to have lain about the neighborhood until a good opportunity offered for running past the squadron.
In other words, the first risk of the blockade-runner would have been a risk of warning, instead of a risk of capture; and the chances in his favor would have been materially increased.
The courts, as well as the cruisers, disregarded the proclamation as soon as the blockade was fairly established, and held, in accordance with English and American precedents, that warning was unnecessary where actual knowledge could be proved. It is probable that when the blockade was proclaimed it was thought that the measure could be adequately carried out by stationing a small squadron at the principal commercial ports, supplemented by a force of vessels cruising up and down the coast.
The number of points to be covered would thus be reduced to four or five on the Atlantic and as many more on the Gulf. Had this expectation been realized, the blockade would have been by no means the stupendous undertaking that it seemed to observers abroad. Acting upon such a belief, the Government entered upon its task with confidence and proceeded with dispatch. The Niagara , which had returned from Japan on April 24, was sent to cruise off Charleston. The Brooklyn and Powhatan moved westward along the Gulf.
Before the 1st of May, seven steamers of considerable size had been chartered in New York and Philadelphia. One of these, the Keystone State , chartered by Lieutenant Woodhull, and intended especially for use at Norfolk, was at her station in Hampton Roads in forty-eight hours after Woodhull had received his orders in Washington to secure a vessel. The screw-steamer South Carolina , of eleven hundred and sixty-five tons, purchased in Boston on May 3, arrived off Pensacola on June 4; and the Massachusetts , a similar vessel in all respects, and bought at the same time, was equally prompt in reaching Key West.
Notwithstanding these efforts, the blockade can hardly be said to have been in existence until six weeks after it was declared, and then only at the principal points. When the Niagara arrived off Charleston on the 11th of May, she remained only four days; and except for the fact that the Harriet Lane was off the bar on the 19th, there was no blockade whatever at that point for a fortnight afterward. The British Government called attention to this fact, and suggested that a new blockade required a new notification, with the usual allowance of time for the departure of vessels; but the State Department did not regard the blockade as having been interrupted.
Savannah was blockaded on the 28th of May. At the principal points, therefore, there was no blockade at all during the first month, and after that time the chain of investment was far from being complete.
Indeed it could hardly be called a chain at all, when so many links were wanting. Even Wilmington, which later became the most important point on the coast in the operations of the blockade-runners, was still open, and the intermediate points were not under any effective observation.
As liability for breach of blockade begins with the mere act of sailing for the blockaded port, the distance of this port from the point of departure becomes an important consideration to the blockade-runner. The longer the distance to be traversed the greater the risk; and some method of breaking the voyage must be devised, so that as much of it as possible may be technically innocent.
The principal trade of the South during the war was with England; and it became an object to evade liability during the long transatlantic passage. For this purpose, all the available neutral ports in the neighborhood of the coast were made entrepots for covering the illegal traffic. There were four principal points which served as intermediaries for the neutral trade with the South; Bermuda, Nassau, Havana, and Matamoras. Of these Nassau was the most prominent.
Situated on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, it is only about one hundred and eighty miles in a straight line from the coast of Florida. Florida, however, was not the objective point of the leading blockade-runners. It had neither suitable harbors nor connections with the interior. The chief seats of commerce on the Eastern coast were Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington. The run to these points from Nassau was from five hundred to six hundred miles, or three days, allowing for the usual delays of the passage.
For such trips, small quantities of coal were needed, which gave great room for stowage of cargo. There was no great depth of water at Nassau, which was an advantage to the blockade-runners; and the cruisers generally took their station off Abaco Light, fifty miles away.
New Providence was surrounded by numbers of small islands, over whose waters, within a league of the shore, the sovereignty of a great power threw a protection as complete and as effective as that of guns and fortifications. A vessel bound to Nassau from one of the blockaded ports must have been hard-pressed indeed if she could not find a refuge.
The U. Government successfully convinced foreign governments to view the blockade as a legitimate tool of war. It was less successful at preventing the smuggling of cotton, weapons, and other materiel from Confederate ports to transfer points in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Cuba, as this trade remained profitable for foreign merchants in those regions and elsewhere.
Gideon Welles , the Secretary of the Navy, argued for a de facto but undeclared blockade, which would prevent foreign governments from granting the Confederacy belligerent status. President Abraham Lincoln sided with Seward and proclaimed the blockade on April Lincoln extended the blockade to include North Carolina and Virginia on April By July of , the Union Navy had established blockades of all the major southern ports.
South Recognized as a Belligerent. Following the U.
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