What were the five major ports of the Confederacy?

[larry_cockerham]

I believe I 'lost' my response written earlier to this one in which I contended that Charleston had some deep water in the Cooper River where the naval base has been located. Tonnage, while a valid measure of a port's significance today, would have had very little consequence in 1860-65 in the South. There was little or no fleet and the harbors and shipping connections just weren't there. Nashville for instance was a port for small paddlewheelers, little else. Many of the inland rivers were still lacking locks that would afford the slow beginnings of shipping well after the war.
From any gauge, New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah were doubtless the leaders, but on a very undeveloped scale.

[ole]

Tonnage, while a valid measure of a port's significance today, would have had very little consequence in 1860-65 in the South.

Yeah. I thought about that after I recommended tonnage. I'd guess by far the greatest tonnage was in the export of cotton and the import of iron, steel, sugar and molasses. And value can't be determined by duties collected because, as you've pointed out, so little was imported into southern ports.

If we were going to consider Nashville, we'd have to consider St. Louis and Memphis -- just the ports wherein an ocean-transport might dock.

Re: Charleston. The Cooper may well have had deep water, but entering the harbor itself was a bit tricky. Can we leave it at "given his 'druthers' the captain or shipowner would rather put in somewhere else"?

Ole

[Ozark Iron John]

I reckon them ports were pretty important, but weren't NONE as important to the overall success of the North as St. Louis, Missouri. The Port of St. Louis controlled the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and it was just upstream from the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. It were Dang'd Important.

[larry_cockerham]

Ole, as you alluded, the harbor at Charlestown was low water with minimal tide action. That's why they used the Cooper north of town.

[ole]

The Port of St. Louis controlled the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and it was just upstream from the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. It were Dang'd Important.

It was most certainly important to every point accessible up those two rivers, and the Illinois, Sangamon, Iowa, Big Black and many others -- and that was virtually the entier commerce of the northwest and the territories. What St. Louis didn't carry or transship, Memphis did, but St. Louis was not a Confederate port.

Just a thought.
Ole

[larry_cockerham]

Memphis has little fame as a port either. Remember the rock bluff on which it sits and the wild fluctuations of the Mississippi. Only good thing about the Mississippi is that it floods Arkansas.

[Calicoboy]

Mobile Bay is shallow. But Mobile was a major port during the war and before it. By 1860, Mobile was the second largest cotton exporting port in the south. Second only to New Orleans. It was also one of the very last Confederate ports to fall. D**n the torpedoes and all of that.

Calicoboy

[ole]

Mobile Bay is shallow. But Mobile was a major port during the war and before it. By 1860, Mobile was the second largest cotton exporting port in the south. Second only to New Orleans. It was also one of the very last Confederate ports to fall. D**n the torpedoes and all of that.

Good to know that Mobile was the second largest. When it's what you have available, it's what you use. (I wanted to say, "any port in a storm," but that would throw you off your feed for weeks. So I won't.)

What "second-largest" means is that Mobile was the most accessible port of collection for the second largest percentile of cotton production areas.

Now that raises a new supposition for me: If almost all US-grown cotton went directly to Europe, and if the difference in distance (sailing time, insurance....) from Savannah to, say, Liverpool and Mobile or New Orleans to Liverpool would increase the cost of shipping anything between those points ... wouldn't it follow that New Orleans and Mobile cotton would have cost more to ship and hence, yielded a lower sales price for the cotton producer?

So why wouldn't the planter located at the halfway point between Savannah and Mobile choose to send his cotton to Mobile? Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure.

Ole

[larry_cockerham]

Don't forget that much of the cotton was utilized here in the US and processed in the scattered mills of the southern states. Many of those disappeared as a result of the war, but had been thriving until that time in the cotton growing states.

[Calicoboy]

Originally Posted by Calicoboy

Mobile was the second largest cotton exporting port in the south. Second only to New Orleans.


Calicoboy

Ole,
At first glance it would seem strange that so much cotton went through New Orleans and Mobile. Huge amounts of cotton were grown in interior states in the south. One could either load it onto wagons (very expensive) or float it down a river (cheap). The two biggest watersheds in the south led to....Mobile and New Orleans. It was far less expensive to add a thousand miles to the sea voyage than it was to try and lug the stuff overland. Now you've done it...I'm a corporal now.

Calicoboy