Civil War Blockade Papers

[wausaubob]

Just want to say, Wausau Bob, that all of this has been very helpful to me as I set up my imaginary blockade running business (through Wilmington) in my civil war novel. Helps to know what the South was desperate for and when. Really appreciate all of the charts etc.

Check out the Wiki for the name Princess Royal which could give you a further idea.

 

[wausaubob]

The matter is simple, by 1860, 1 out of every 30 people in the US lived in New York/Brooklyn/Newark.

 

[wausaubob]

As soon as direct traffic from New York to the southern ports was stopped, prices were going to go up, variety down and credit was going to be withdraw. The government was going to import guns and ammunition? What about soap? Candles? Shoes? Flour? Salt?

 

[wausaubob]

The only merchant banking system in the south that was competitive with New York, was in Louisiana/New Orleans.

Any discussion of the blockade that does not get to the blockade and capture of New Orleans, by the second paragraph, is misleading.

 

[wausaubob]

If commerce to and from New York was diverted to Edinburgh and Liverpool, costs were going to go up. If the tertiary ports of Halifax, Bermuda, Nassau and Havana had to be used to transfer freight to specialized ships, costs were going to go up and volume was going to go down.

 

[John Hartwell]

A couple of informal first-person narratives of life on the blockade:

Cruise along the Blockade, by Frank B. Butts, Paymaster's Clerk, USN

Life on the Texan Blockade, by William F. Hutchinson, surgeon, USS Lackawana

 

[Lisa Murphy]

A couple of informal first-person narratives of life on the blockade:

Cruise along the Blockade, by Frank B. Butts, Paymaster's Clerk, USN

Life on the Texan Blockade, by William F. Hutchinson, surgeon, USS Lackawana

Excellent! Great recommendations.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Florida Historical Quarterly
Volume 36
Number 2 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 36,
Issue 2
Article 3
1957

Blockade Runners
Alice Strickland

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida Historical Quarterly by an authorized editor of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Abstract
During the Civil War Confederate blockade runners played a dangerous and exciting game of hide and seek with Union gunboats off the Florida coast. President Lincoln had proclaimed the blockade on April 19, 1861, with the intention of closing the Atlantic ports of the Confederacy to trade with other nations. The South, therefore, was faced with the problem of running the blockade in order to bring in the necessities of war.

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2641&context=fhq

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

Tampa Bay History
Volume 18 Issue 2 Article 3
12-1-1996

Steamers, Tenders, and Barks: The Union Blockade of South Florida
Irvin D. Solomon and Grace Erhart
University of South Florida

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tampa Bay History by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected].

During the Civil War, the Union Navy sought to cripple the Confederacy with a blockade of southern waters. In Florida, this task fell primarily to the East Gulf Blockading Squadron, whose mission was to deprive the South of vital food and supplies by capturing blockade runners and raiding salt works. After the blockade of Tampa in 1861, Charlotte Harbor became the only port in South Florida accessible to runners. Consequently, this harbor became a rendezvous point for runners and an important target for the Union Navy. During the war, many kinds of sail and steam-powered craft plied the deep waters of the Charlotte Harbor region, where they operated as blockade runners, blockaders, supply ships, and tenders. Four ships – the Salvor, the Gem of the Sea, the Honduras, and the Ariel – exemplified the types of vessels that routinely operated in these waters. This article examines the history of each of these four ships to give a sense of naval encounters along Florida's West Coast during the Civil War.

https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1411&context=tampabayhistory

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

Florida Historical Quarterly
Volume 41
Number 1 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 41,
Issue 1
Article 8
1962

The Blockade and Fall of Apalachicola, 1861-1862
Joseph D. Cushman, Jr.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida Historical Quarterly by an authorized editor of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Abstract
President Lincoln proclaimed the blockade of all Confederate ports on April 19, 1861. In order to make the blockade effective, the United States Navy was split into two squadrons: the Atlantic Squadron which was to guard the entire Atlantic coast as far south as Cape Florida; and the Gulf Squadron which was responsible for the vast Gulf coast, an area which extended from Cape Florida to the Mexican border. Early in 1862 the Gulf Squadron was divided again into a West Gulf Squadron and an East Gulf Squadron. The area guarded by the East Gulf Squadron extended from Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic to St. Andrew's Bay on the Gulf. It was this command, with its headquarters in Key West, to which the approaches of Apalachicola were assigned.

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2825&context=fhq

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

Alexander Collie: The Ups and Downs of Trading with the Confederacy
Michael Clark

Within a few months of the start of the Civil War, the United States commanded the sea along the Confederacy's 3,500 miles of coastline from Virginia to Texas, despite having a navy of fewer than fifty warships. The effect of the blockade on the trade of the Confederate States was critical and it encouraged an influx of speculators, most of whom were British. It cost the Confederacy about two dollars to receive one dollar's worth of goods and it was paid very little of the vastly inflated price of its cotton and pine-resin sold in Europe. In a House of Commons debate in March 1862, a prominent shipowner, maritime author and outspoken advocate for the Confederacy, William Schaw Lindsay MP, described the blockade as "an infinitely stronger interference with private interests and private property than the right of capture at sea." The United States answered that the blockade was a war measure aimed only at the states in rebellion

https://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol19/tnm_19_125-148.pdf

Not sure of the copywrite so just a blurb and the link.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

Florida Historical Quarterly
Volume 46
Number 2 Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol 46,
Number 2
Article 6
1967

Naval Engagements in Tampa Bay, 1862
Frank Falero, Jr.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida Historical Quarterly by an authorized editor of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected].

DURING THE CIVIL WAR, the Union Navy's primary mission was to prevent the South from marketing her products and to prevent her from obtaining arms. To accomplish this dual mission, the North stationed a considerable number of ships in blockade positions along the Gulf and Atlantic seaboards. The majority of these blockade vessels were small in size as well as firepower. There were two main reasons why the Union used small ships as blockaders. The first reason being that their adversaries likely would be small, shallow-draft vessels with limited firepower, and second, the larger more powerful ships were needed to seek out and destroy the many large, well-armed blockade runners, such as the Alabama and the Florida.

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3061&context=fhq

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

Searching for the Schooner Rob Roy: An Historical Archaeological Analysis of a Civil War Blockade Runner
by Samantha JTCE Bernard
May 2020
Director of Thesis: Dr. Jennifer McKinnon
Major Department: Program in Maritime Studies, Department of History

The American Civil War spanned four years of bloody fratricide that divided the country. During those years, President Lincoln declared a blockade on all Southern ports hoping to cut supplies to the Confederacy in an attempt to shorten the conflict. As a result, blockade running became a lucrative career, and several captains, who held no allegiance to the Union or Confederacy, took advantage of the potential profits. One such captain, William Watson, successfully ran the blockade from 1863 to 1865 with the assistance of the eight-man crew on the centerboard schooner Rob Roy. On 2 March 1865, Rob Roy was intentionally run aground and burned in Deadman's Bay off the coast of Florida to avoid capture. This thesis seeks to contribute to the overall understanding of blockade running in the Gulf of Mexico during the American Civil War by looking at the political, economic, and social relationships between people interacting with Rob Roy by completing a historical, archaeological analysis of sail versus steam in the Gulf of Mexico. If found during the search, the theoretical concept of agency and artifact biography would have been utilized to understand the interactions between people and Rob Roy. Artifact biography studies recognize the undeniable relationship between people and objects and the vital role an object plays in understanding the cultural past of humans.

This thesis utilizes both primary and secondary historical sources to analyze the unique role Rob Roy played in the American Civil War while comparing its success to other blockade runners of the Gulf of Mexico. The archaeological fieldwork conducted for this research
provided additional information that contributed to the overall understanding of social interactions in ports along the Gulf Coast. Ultimately, the main question is, "what contribution does the study of one blockade runner have on the general understanding of the interaction of ports in the Gulf of Mexico during the American Civil War?"

https://thescholarship.ecu.edu/bitstream/handle/10342/8564/Final_Draft_Bernard_S.pdf?sequence=1

I cannot find copywrite info for this so please use above link.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

An interesting paper - more sources to search for...

I enjoyed the line of "...childern were told that Santa Claus has not been able to run the blockade..."

JOURNAL ARTICLE
Reassessment of the Union Blockade's Effectiveness in the Civil War
M. Brem Bonner and Peter McCord
The North Carolina Historical Review
Vol. 88, No. 4 (OCTOBER 2011), pp. 375-398 (24 pages)
Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and History

An Empirical Analysis of Demands for Priority Computing Goods by Externally and Internally Funded Researchers on JSTOR

Richard A. Elnicki, Warren R. Hughes, An Empirical Analysis of Demands for Priority Computing Goods by Externally and Internally Funded Researchers, The Journal of Business, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan., 1980), pp. 79-96

www.jstor.org

Full article on JSTOR, with Google sign-in (if you have a Gmail account, you have a Google sign-in and this will allow free reading of 100 articles a month).

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

East Carolina University
The Most Impudent Procedure in the History of Blockade Running: An Historical and Archaeological Examination of the Canadian Steamship ARABIAN
Timothy P. Marshall
May 1999

https://thescholarship.ecu.edu/handle/10342/6631 - click on View / Open link under the title

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[USS ALASKA]

An article to go with thread https://civilwartalk.com/threads/blockade-vs-closed-ports.195961/

JOURNAL ARTICLE
1861: Blockade vs. Closing The Confederate Ports
Stuart Anderson
Vol. 41, No. 4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 190-194 (5 pages)
Published By: Military Affairs

1861: Blockade vs. Closing The Confederate Ports on JSTOR

Stuart Anderson, 1861: Blockade vs. Closing The Confederate Ports, Military Affairs, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 190-194

www.jstor.org

Full article on JSTOR with Google sign-in (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]

If the blockade interrupted trade between Europe and the Confederacy, that would cause some harm in the Confederacy. However the first priority was to stop direct trade between the US and the Confederacy. If that happened the Confederate economy was going to feel credit being withdrawn and the variety of goods available declining. The blockade runners use secondary and tertiary ports and they don't engage in price competition. The blockade runners sell their cargoes to the broker with ready cash, and he sets the consumer price.
If the Confederacy found itself cutoff from New York/Brooklyn/Newark, and from Philadelphia and Cincinnati, it was going to feel it.
The threat of blockade and corresponding Confederate embargoes went a long way to convincing people of wealth and position in the five borders areas that secession was not prudent.

 

[wausaubob]

There was one place in the Confederacy that handled trade on a level that rivaled New York City and that was New Orleans. New Orleans was not a manufacturing center like New York, but in terms of trade and distribution it was a very wealth city. Without New Orleans as a functional port, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi would feel their economy depreciate. As soon as Farragut had military vessels in the main channel of the Mississippi River the Confederate economy in the west was in trouble. Capturing the city gave the US a large naval base in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

[wausaubob]

The external blockade would not have achieved much if the US had been unable to control trade in the interior. On the Potomac River, and Kanawa, at Cincinnati/Covington, at Louisville and St. Louis, the US had to be able to stop gold and silver from entering the Confederacy. I
The emphasis on the long coast lines of the Confederacy and the potential for European imports is a distraction. The northern states were the biggest trade partner of the states that became the Confederacy. Only the cotton industry was an export/import area, and even in cotton about 20% of the sales were to the paid labor states of the northern US.

 

[USS ALASKA]

ADMINISTRATION OF THE ATLANTIC BLOCKADE 1861-1865
THESIS
North Texas State College
MASTER OF SCIENCE
by Charles Henry Delafield II
Denton, Texas
January, 1967

PREFACE
Of the vast amount of writings concerning the American Civil War only a very small percentage pertains to the Federal Navy's role. Undoubtedly this is so because this was primarily a land war. A few exploits of the Navy have received a great amount of acclaim, such as the Trent affair, the sinking of the Alabama, and possibly the ironclad battle between the Monitor and its adversary. The majority of naval activities were of a routine nature occasionally highlighted by a spectacular assault. Many of these went relatively unnoticed, but collectively they were of utmost importance and immeasurably contributed to the Federal victory. The purpose of this paper is to show in detail the role of only a portion of the Navy, the Atlantic Blockading Squadrons, during this conflict. The successes and frustrations of their administrators in carrying out their missions typify the challenge faced by the entire Navy. One needs only to add the areas of naval endeavor along the Gulf and inland waters to understand the important contribution of the Navy.

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc130775/m2/1/high_res_d/n_03439.pdf

Not sure of the copywrite so just posted the link.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA