Civil War Blockade Papers

[wausaubob]

OK ladies and gents - this one is the whole way from Christchurch, New Zealand...

The blockade of the Confederacy during the American Civil War
Green, Michael Frederick
University of Canterbury
Master of Arts
1969

Abstract:
The blockade of the Confederacy has been studied and described often before and may not seem to have been a very rewarding topic for a thesis. Nevertheless I have found it immensely interesting, perhaps because this longest sustained continuous operation of the Civil War seemed on closer study to have all sorts of unexpected connections with other events and issues. Because the general outlines and many of the details are quite well known, I decided to build my study around the theme of effectiveness, to which there are two related yet distinct approaches. There is the relatively straight-forward story of the build-up from practically nothing of a naval force adequate to enforce a blockade of so long a coastline, in the course of which a host of problems of unprecedented magnitude and character had to be surmounted. And there is the legal question of effectiveness, the subject of great debate at the time. To study this satisfactorily it was necessary to look at the American blockade in a longer historical perspective, to consider its place in the development of blockade law and practice, and to examine the adequacy of the methods and standards of judgement applied to determine effectiveness. By combining these two approaches, one mainly narrative and one mainly analytical, I hope I have produced a fresh look at an old question.

All Rights Reserved

https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstreams/691bff3d-d652-4a52-bd37-c6fcbdf0a849/download

Please use above link.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

That looks interesting.

 

[wausaubob]

The kiki guy wrote a nice paper. That's especially true for the 1969 date he completed it.
Though he did not emphasize it, his writing supports the conclusion that once the US had New Orleans, Mobile and Savannah under close blockade, the blockade runners were already redirecting towards secondary ports that did not have the labor force to handle cotton and the incoming freight. What the Confederates accomplished using those secondary ports was very helpful to their cause, but it was never 5 million bales per year.
I have yet to encounter a historian who states that the coastal blockade was never a stand alone operation. There was always an intent to control the Mississippi River as far down and possible. Generals Scott and McClellan exchanged correspondence in 1861 agreeing that an attempt to capture New Orleans was a high priority.
The US targeted international imports in the blockade. But it seems to me that by 1861 NYC was already a major production, distribution and finance center. Any part of the US that was cut off from NYC was going to find prices, availability and credit deeply restricted.
If the labor force on NYC and the surrounding counties became unavailable and all those longshoremen had to be replaced by people in Bermuda or Nassau in the Bahamas, it seems to me that the section forced to make the substitution is already in trouble.
The paper suggests, though it does not explicitly state, that neither the US nor the British wanted a flawless blockade. If some Confederate cotton arrived in NYC or Liverpool that decreased the demand for intervention. Also, if blockade runners could dispose of their inbound freight at outrageous prices, and buy the cotton at a discounted price on the dock, then that would create a pro blockade lobby in London.
By the time in September 1863 that Charleston is also under close blockade, with the port essentially sealed off for about 6 months, its too late for the anti-blockade to do anything. By that time the EP is in force. Benjamin had closed the Confederate mission to Britain. Britain was interposing the exchequer between the British rams and the Confederacy and Admiral Milne was communicating for the British with his US counterparts.
The Confederates probably imported enough rifles and munitions to fight the battles that cost so much blood later in the year.
But I suspect what the smugglers could not afford to carry included rails, plate iron, railroad wheels, and tools of all sorts.
Despite their best efforts the Confederacy was moving backward into the 18th century. That inevitably made them dependent on horses, mules, wagons and caissons, and there was never enough of any of them.
In the end, when the Confederacy was desperately short on caloric intake in its armies, the blockaders were capturing a high per centage of the attempted runs through the blockade.

 

[wausaubob]

It was also notable that the scholar quoted acting Rear Admiral Lee with respect to redesigning blockade tactics to meet the demands of the age of steam.
I didn't read all of it. But I don't think he described a substantial effort by the Confederates to break up the blockading fleet. We know the Confederates conducted successful sorties against the blockaders, especially new Charleston. But I sustained effort with a substantial flotilla was beyond Confederate capabilities.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Watson, William. Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner, The. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2001. 324 pp.

A thumbs up from Mark Jenkins! Found a pdf version on-line but very unsure of copyright. The book was published in 1893 so might be public domain but who knows? So please use below link...

https://civilwarnavy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Watson_The-Adventures-of-a-Blockade-Runner_1893.pdf

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf]

Civil War Blockade-Running at Jupiter Inlet: 1861-1865
By Robert I. Davidsson

'While there were no land battles fought in the Palm Beaches during the Civil War, for nearly four years a deadly game of hide-and-seek, pitting Confederate and British blockade runners against U.S. Navy coastal patrol boats, was waged near the Jupiter Inlet and Narrows.

Navy "Official Records" list forty-seven blockade runners schooners, sloops, and steam-powered vessels as captured or destroyed between Cape Canaveral and Jupiter Inlet. A small flotilla of six Union gunboats on patrol along the southeast coast of Florida captured twenty-four vessels in the vicinity of the Jupiter Inlet.'

http://www.pbchistoryonline.org/uploads/file/Civil War Blockade-Running at Jupiter Inlet 1861-1865.pdf
91

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

Despite the thousands of successes that blockade runners had, the Union blockade has to be considered a success both strategically and tactically (again, despite numerous tactical failures).

 

[USS ALASKA]

JOURNAL ARTICLE
The Civil War Blockade Running Adventures of the Louisiana Schooner William R. King
WALTER E. WILSON
Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association
Vol. 56, No. 3 (Summer 2015), pp. 294-314 (21 pages)
Louisiana Historical Association

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43858255

Full article at above link on JSTOR with Google sign-in (In the upper right-hand corner of the linked page, there is a 'Log in' button. If you have a Gmail account, you have a Google sign-in and this will allow for free reading of 100 articles a month).

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[wausaubob]

Many analysts assert that enough war material made it through the US blockade to keep the Confederacy armies supplied. I don't think that's accurate. When Charleston was under close blockade after the US captured battery Wagner outside Charleston, I think war material was in very short supply in the Confederacy. It seems that artillery munitions were a special problem. General Lee's eastern army did very little fighting after September 1863 for the remainer of the year. In the west, Bragg and Longstreet mounted a lucky and very successful infantry assault on the US forces at Chickamauga. But as the weeks wore on after that, the Confederates could not bombard Chattanooga despite occupying the surrounding high ground. And according to @Rhea Cole the US forces could out gun the Confederate artillery by November. Something was not right with Confederate besieging force. It was as if the Confederates did not have enough logistical support and artillery power to maintain a tight siege. And by late October the manpower shortage in the west began to show.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Many analysts assert that enough war material made it through the US blockade to keep the Confederacy armies supplied. I don't think that's accurate. When Charleston was under close blockade after the US captured battery Wagner outside Charleston, I think war material was in very short supply in the Confederacy. It seems that artillery munitions were a special problem. General Lee's eastern army did very little fighting after September 1863 for the remainer of the year. In the west, Bragg and Longstreet mounted a lucky and very successful infantry assault on the US forces at Chickamauga. But as the weeks wore on after that, the Confederates could not bombard Chattanooga despite occupying the surrounding high ground. And according to @Rhea Cole the US forces could out gun the Confederate artillery by November. Something was not right with Confederate besieging force. It was as if the Confederates did not have enough logistical support and artillery power to maintain a tight siege. And by late October the manpower shortage in the west began to show.

Hove you ever been to Chattanooga?

Lookout Mountain from Missionary Ridge.

Orchard Knob from the same vantage point. It was from there that Grant & Thomas watched the attack on the ridge.

From the ridge & the point of Lookout Mountain artillery fire was literally laughable. Calling it a siege is a stretch of the dictionary definition.

It is essential to understand that the Atlanta & Dalton depots were exclusively for the support of the Army of Northern Virginia. Loosing Chattanooga, the Sequachie Valley & Knoxville added (+/-) 550 miles each way to Virginia & back. That was a strain the clapped out steam engines could hardly stand. Irreparable breakdowns were inevitable.

 

[DaveBrt]

Many analysts assert that enough war material made it through the US blockade to keep the Confederacy armies supplied. I don't think that's accurate. When Charleston was under close blockade after the US captured battery Wagner outside Charleston, I think war material was in very short supply in the Confederacy. It seems that artillery munitions were a special problem. General Lee's eastern army did very little fighting after September 1863 for the remainer of the year. In the west, Bragg and Longstreet mounted a lucky and very successful infantry assault on the US forces at Chickamauga. But as the weeks wore on after that, the Confederates could not bombard Chattanooga despite occupying the surrounding high ground. And according to @Rhea Cole the US forces could out gun the Confederate artillery by November. Something was not right with Confederate besieging force. It was as if the Confederates did not have enough logistical support and artillery power to maintain a tight siege. And by late October the manpower shortage in the west began to show.

While you may be correct, I cannot accept the ammunition shortage theory unless you can find some documentation to support it. I looked through the RR documents I have published and see only three indications of shortages above the normal -- 2 shipments from NC to Lee were to be given immediate attention (one Ord Stores and one Ord, both in early October) and a shipment of 11 car loads of ambulances and 90 horses shipped to Bragg in late October.

The artillery guys might be able to point to ammunition shortage messages to the arsenals, but they do not come to mind to me.

 

[Rhea Cole]

While you may be correct, I cannot accept the ammunition shortage theory unless you can find some documentation to support it. I looked through the RR documents I have published and see only three indications of shortages above the normal -- 2 shipments from NC to Lee were to be given immediate attention (one Ord Stores and one Ord, both in early October) and a shipment of 11 car loads of ambulances and 90 horses shipped to Bragg in late October.

The artillery guys might be able to point to ammunition shortage messages to the arsenals, but they do not come to mind to me.

I can't speak to shortages of supply. I can, however, cite multiple cases of deplorably poor quality. For example, in Union ammunition boxes 1.5 friction primers / round were packed. The CSA ordinance bureau mandated 5 friction primers / round.

On the night of December 20/30, 1862 Waters' Alabama Battery spent the night fabricating quill primers. The friction primers issued to Waters were all faulty.

It doesn't take much effort to find multiple incidences of faulty fuses for timed rounds.

I don't know of a single reason for the faulty primers. One of the historians I know has a memorable point of view.

"Jefferson Davis & der führer discovered that slaves made pathetic munitions workers."

It is hard to argue with that.

 

[USS ALASKA]

By the gent who wrote the paper in post #74

JOURNAL ARTICLE
Runners of the UNION BLOCKADE
Gordon P. Watts, Jr.
Archaeology, Vol. 42, No. 5 (SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1989), pp. 32-39
Archaeological Institute of America

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41740335

Full article at above link on JSTOR with Google sign-in (In the upper right-hand corner of the linked page, there is a 'Log in' button. If you have a Gmail account, you have a Google sign-in and this will allow for free reading of 100 articles a month).

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[Rhea Cole]

While you may be correct, I cannot accept the ammunition shortage theory unless you can find some documentation to support it. I looked through the RR documents I have published and see only three indications of shortages above the normal -- 2 shipments from NC to Lee were to be given immediate attention (one Ord Stores and one Ord, both in early October) and a shipment of 11 car loads of ambulances and 90 horses shipped to Bragg in late October.

The artillery guys might be able to point to ammunition shortage messages to the arsenals, but they do not come to mind to me.

As to raw numbers, I have never looked into that. What I have had reason to study is the disparity of weight of metal & rifled cannon in the Army of TN & the Army of the Cumberland.

At the onset of the Tullahoma Campaign in 1863 batteries of obsolete six pond cannons & 12 pound howitzers dueled with 14 pound Aimes rifles, 12 pound gun / howitzers & 3" rifles. It was literally 1841 vs 1863 technology.

Another issue is horseflesh. A battery had 100-125 horses. Artillery horses had to be 15 hands. It had to be a breed of saddle & motive power. Morgan's were ideal. As Longstreet demonstrated when he advanced up the Sequatchie Valley with oxen pulling his guns, motive power was fundamental.

The supply disparity was multifaceted. The bottom line is that the weight of metal was decidedly on one side.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Journal Article
Unpretending Service: The James L. Davis, the Tahoma, and the East Gulf Blockading Squadron
David J. Coles
The Florida Historical Quarterly
Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jul., 1992), pp. 41-62
Florida Historical Society

https://www.jstor.org/stable/30148186

Full article at above link on JSTOR with Google sign-in (In the upper right-hand corner of the linked page, there is a 'Log in' button. If you have a Gmail account, you have a Google sign-in and this will allow for free reading of 100 articles a month).

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

Sirs, to go with the other posts on sunken ships...

Title; Derelicts; an account of ships lost at sea in general commercial traffic and a brief history of blockade runners stranded along the North Carolina coast, 1861-1865
James Sprunt. Wilmington, N. C.
1920

This isn't a scan - it appears to be very crisp and clear photos of each page. Very readable.

Request Rejected

File too large to attach - Please use above link. I have no idea why the link says 'Request Rejected' - it works fine for me...???

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

A paper @John Winn might enjoy...

Journal Article
The Importing and Exporting Company of South Carolina (1862-1876)
Lynda Worley Skelton
The South Carolina Historical Magazine Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 24-32
South Carolina Historical Society

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27567226

Full article at above link on JSTOR with Google sign-in (In the upper right-hand corner of the linked page, there is a 'Log in' button. If you have a Gmail account, you have a Google sign-in and this will allow for free reading of 100 articles a month).

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[John Winn]

Thank you so much for thinking of me @USS ALASKA (and I'm surprised you'd remember I had some connection). As it happens I have that article but I didn't know about being able to read JSTOR articles with a Google account. Thanks again.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Not a problem, sir! I believe this paper MIGHT be an excerpt from a 1967 thesis...

The Importing and Exporting Company of South Carolina, 1862-1876
Lynda Worley Skelton
Clemson University
5-1967
Thesis
Master of Arts (MA)
Social Sciences

The Importing and Exporting Company of South Carolina, 1862-1876

By Lynda Worley Skelton, Published on 05/01/67

open.clemson.edu

...I just don't have access to it...

(and I'm surprised you'd remember I had some connection)

I can't remember what I had for breakfast or what day it is sometimes...but I can remember posts I read 7 years ago...can't explain it. Maybe what day and what breakfast wasn't all that memorable but dang it, THIS guy is related to a Blockade Runner - How cool is THAT?!?

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[John Winn]

For those interested, the author didn't list all the founding members. Attached is a clip from a long article published in the Charleston paper (can't find the complete reference just now) listing the founders. Some of the ones she lists are noted but some not (my gg grandfather D.H. Silcox being one).

 

[DaveBrt]

A paper @John Winn might enjoy...

Journal Article
The Importing and Exporting Company of South Carolina (1862-1876)
Lynda Worley Skelton
The South Carolina Historical Magazine Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 24-32
South Carolina Historical Society

View attachment 519411

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27567226

Full article at above link on JSTOR with Google sign-in (In the upper right-hand corner of the linked page, there is a 'Log in' button. If you have a Gmail account, you have a Google sign-in and this will allow for free reading of 100 articles a month).

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

Sc Historical Soc. does not allow reading (unless you save to a JSTOR folder and read there) and does not allow downloading. Not very free with their research results.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Ships Captured or Destroyed Attempting to Evade the Union Blockade of Southern Ports During the Civil War, 1861-65
Getz, Lowell L.
Excel
2022-06-24
Copyright, 2022-06-24, by Lowell L. Getz. All Rights Reserved.

Abstract
One week after the firing on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, starting the American Civil War, President Lincoln issued a proclamation ordering a blockade of all southern ports, from the Chesapeake Bay to the mouth of the Rio Grande River. From that date until the end of hostilities, April 15, 1865, 1,504 ships and boats were captured or destroyed attempting to evade the blockading Union vessels. Of these, 1,047 were reported by the captains of the intercepting Union vessels. In this account, for each blockade runner captured or destroyed, if known, I give the following: name of the blockade runner; where it had departed from; date it was intercepted; where it was intercepted; blockade ship(s) credited with the capture/destruction; fate of the blockade runner, captured or destroyed; cargo; destination; and nation of registry.

Ships Captured or Destroyed Attempting to Evade the Union Blockade of Southern Ports During the Civil War, 1861-65 | IDEALS

www.ideals.illinois.edu

Because of copyright, please use above link.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA