Civil War Blockade Papers

The blockade was never understood. However in the first week of August, the US fleet closes Mobile Bay as a blockade runners port.
With about 10 days the news is dispersed to Havana and Nassau the Wilmington is the safest option to run the blockade. With about another 12 days, the United States permanently occupies the direct railroad from Richmond to Wilmington, NC. A few days after that Sherman's wheel to the right lands on the last railroad out of Atlanta, and the Confederate army has to destroy a large part of is artillery ammunition, because it lacks the mules and horses to cart the material out of Atlanta.
By the first week of September the US blockaders can concentrate on Wilmington and the Carolina coasts.
At that point there are three independent Confederate armies, which are each confined to a separate logistical area. Within four months two of those armies are eliminated and the third is trapped in Richmond.
Who is that the thought the blockade was unimportant? Politicians and journalists.
Military men knew that the army that cannot eat must fight, surrender of disperse. The horses and mules will lose weight and start to die first. But the men will desert before they starve.
 
I've read several articles on tbe subject of the cotton economy. I still cant get a clear picture of the "why". Could one of you learned people out there help me u derstand just what was the incintive to purchase bonds. Granted patriotism was flying high at one time, but that fizzled and pure old greed seemed to take over.
The price for cotton used to compute the redemption rate for the cotton bonds was not a market rate. If an investor could get his cotton allotment to Europe he/she could sell it at a very large markup and make money.
 
A paper to go with post #29...

United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA CIVIL WAR SHIPWRECKS, 1861-1865
The Civil War in North Carolina Sound Country, 1861-1865


Form Prepared by Dr. Lindley S. Butler and Office of State Archaeology Staff

North Carolina possesses in its rivers, estuaries, tidal marshes, great sounds, barrier islands, and the offshore Outer Banks one of the longest shorelines on the Atlantic coast of the United States. The dynamic and ever-changing Outer Banks formation, with its prominent capes--Hatteras, Lookout, and Fear--and their adjacent extensive shoals, creates a vast enclosed inland sea of seven connected sounds—Bogue, Core, Pamlico, Roanoke, Croatan, Albemarle, and Currituck. This watery region is the largest estuarine environment on the east coast of the United States, and the 2000-square-mile Pamlico River Estuary and Sound is for the east coast second only to Chesapeake Bay.1 In addition, Albemarle Sound is the biggest brackish water sound in the country.2 The great capes, the narrow sandy islands, and the fickle weather that spawns fierce northeasters and deadly hurricanes have combined to form the most treacherous stretch of coast in the country and indeed one of the most dangerous in the world. In his 1861 geological study of North Carolina, Edmund Ruffin wrote that the coast was “a terror to navigators, and is noted for the number of shipwrecks, and especially near Cape Hatteras.”3 The region today is aptly known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

http://www.hpo.ncdcr.gov/nr/nc0012.pdf
1710

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 

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University of New Mexico
UNM Digital Repository
History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Spring 4-23-1960

Operations of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron Under Admiral Dahlgren 1863-1865
by John Joel Culley

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected].

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File too large to attach. Please download for free here - https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1117&context=hist_etds
1834

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Yale Law Journal
Volume 12
Issue 6 Yale Law Journal Article 1
1903

THE LAW OF BLOCKADE
Charles Noble Gregory.
Dean's Office, College of Law, State University of Iowa.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Law Journal by an authorized editor of Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Classed with the most ancient and well ascertained operations of war is the blockade. Sir Robert Phillimore, the eminent English jurist, in his comprehensive work on International Law, (Vol. III, page 473, 3rd ed.), observes that, "Among the rights of belligerents there is none more clear and incontrovertible, of more just and necessary in the application, than that which gives rise to the law of blockade." For this he especially relies upon our own great commentator, Chancellor Kent.

It is a curious fact that during the last half century, perhaps since the Declaration of Paris of 1856, this right has played no important part in the wars of Europe. She has had no great naval wars. On the other hand. the blockade of the southern coast, undertaken by the United States in its war with the Confederacy, was the most extensive blockade known to history, and that of the ports of Cuba and Porto Rico during the recent Spanish-American war, was an important and extensive operation of its kind.

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1657&context=ylj
1875

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 

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Yale Law School
Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository
Faculty Scholarship Series Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship
1-1-1915

The "Continuous Voyage" Doctrine During the Civil War, and Now
by Simeon E. Baldwin

Yale Law School
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship at Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship Series by an authorized administrator of Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Mr. Atherly-Jones, in his Commerce in War,' says that what the courts of the United States did, during the Civil War, was not to apply the principle of a continuous voyage (which had been originally asserted in support of national monopolies of colonial trade), to the carriage of contraband goods, still less to blockades; but to depart from the old rules of evidence.

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5314&context=fss_papers
1976

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 

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Too lazy to search old posts, but has anyone dumpster dive'd the Blockade Runner museum in Bermuda?
https://www.bermuda4u.com/sights/national-trust-museum/

Who owned/invested in what ships interests me, yet it's the most (deliberately) obscured facet of this topic.
Too lazy to search old posts, but has anyone dumpster dive'd the Blockade Runner museum in Bermuda?
https://www.bermuda4u.com/sights/national-trust-museum/

Who owned/invested in what ships interests me, yet it's the most (deliberately) obscured facet of this topic.

The best place to look for the business records is in British bankruptcies and bank records, not in any of the entrepots. By late 1864 there were seven British companies contracted to the Confederate government to operate blockade runners. Steve Wise summarized the first five CSA contracts and the Confederate and British private and state-owned companies in Lifeline of the Confederacy. The last two CSA contracts did not get most of their ships out before the war ended. The later contracts for all seven relied on a sort of lease until the ships and cargoes were paid for by profits, then operate in partnership thereafter. The majority owners were mostly merchant banking companies. Notice that the Overend, Gurney bank failure just after the war put several of the blockade running banks out of business in the crash. They still owned the ships, but suddenly the ships' value and their earning potential dropped tremendously. During the war, Overend, Gurney themselves, a huge, staid old London Quaker company, had lost heavily because two young partners invested heavily in the blockade trade. Those same partners bankrupted several other private blockade running companies by unscrupulous mortgage foreclosures.
 
Interesting information, thank you! We don't hear enough about the Blockade, how the runners functioned and who they were and who made an awful lot of cash. .

There seems to have been contention on how to deal with the Blockade. From 1863, typical article on objections to running goods out and in based mostly on devaluing currency.

North Carolina, which may skew things a little- NC tended to be odd man out on some topics.
View attachment 204503

View attachment 204501

View attachment 204502
A wonderful analysis -- devaluing the (already shaky) currency by trade. True, that (as I understand it) Nassau and Bermuda took Gold or British currencies, not being too pleased with the Confederate dollars. Of course this would only get worse as the war progressed and the South lost ground. What an interesting collection you have made here.
 
I've read several articles on tbe subject of the cotton economy. I still cant get a clear picture of the "why". Could one of you learned people out there help me u derstand just what was the incintive to purchase bonds. Granted patriotism was flying high at one time, but that fizzled and pure old greed seemed to take over.
Here is an old NY Times summary of the "Cotton Bond Bubble" by Philip Leigh.
 
Collection: Master of Military Art and Science Theses
Title:
Unremitting vigilance: naval intelligence and the Union blockade during the American Civil War.
Author:
Dullum, John M.

Abstract: This
thesis investigates the role naval intelligence played in the Union blockade of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and examines intelligence support to blockade operations on the Atlantic coast between 1861- 1865. Discussion begins with an overview of intelligence in the age of sail and the Navy department's intelligence system at the beginning of the war. Included is a detailed look at intelligence as information, a process and a system including an examination of period sources and communication methods. It then proceeds to examine the role of intelligence on the blockade, discussing its impact on operations and effectiveness in stopping the fast, steam, and sail-driven Confederate blockade runners. Intelligence played a crucial role in the effectiveness of the blockade despite the fact that the Union was never able to completely interdict all maritime traffic from entering or leaving Southern ports. There were significant problems with intelligence on the blockade, especially in the realm of tactical intelligence and dissemination. This study investigates these problems as well as intelligence successes at a time when naval warfare was undergoing a dramatic transformation.

Series:
Command and General Staff College (CGSC) MMAS thesis
Publisher:
Fort Leavenworth, KS : US Army Command and General Staff College,
Date: Original
2000-06-02
Date: Digital
2000-06-02
Call number: ADA 384043
Release statement: Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)
Repository: Combined Arms Research Library
Library: Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library
Date created:
2006-02-22
144

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
You truly have an amazing collection of articles. This one on naval intelligence is of particular interest to me. Thanks for sharing it (and all of them).
 
Phantoms of Anglo-Confederate Commerce: an Historical and Archaeological Investigation of American Civil War Blockade Running
by Gordon P. Watts, Jr.
12 July 1997

Abstract
During the American Civil War Wilmington, North Carolina and the Bermudian ports of St. Georges and Hamilton served as vital links in a complex trading network that developed to facilitate the exchange of southern agricultural products for war materials and civilian merchandise through a Union blockade of the Confederacy. Although that material contributed significantly to the Confederate war effort, Anglo-Confederate blockade running has received limited scholarly attention. Much of the associated literature is based on memoirs rather than scholarship and does not accurately, reflect that necessarily clandestine trade. The primary goal of this thesis is to produce a more comprehensive and detailed picture of blockade running, the cargoes carried through the Union blockade and the powerful steam vessels that made Anglo-Confederate commerce possible. Unlike previous treatments, this thesis combines the results of both archival and archaeological research. The results illustrate the evolution of strategies involved in both establishing and maintaining the blockade and those developed for running the blockade. Assessment of the vessel remains and historical data associated with the construction and procurement of steamers identifies the vessel types and confirms that blockade runners adapted extant technology. Contrary to the popularly held impression, no technological innovations were specifically developed to address the demands of the trade. The spatial distribution of wrecks and the minimal amount of cultural material surviving in association with them, provides strong evidence that cargoes were more valuable than the vessels. That premise influenced the strategy adopted by blockade runners. While Confederate salvors left little evidence of cargo, historical research revealed a wealth of new insight into the specific nature of that material. This new evidence provides a more accurate and detailed picture of Anglo-Confederate blockade running and the strategies, ships and cargoes that made blockade running between Wilmington and Bermuda a success.

George P Watts PhD Thesis - St Andrews Research Repository
https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/.../3/GeorgePWattsPhDThesis.pdf

2307

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Minor correction to the above. His name is Gordon P. Watts. Gordon led the underwater archaeological office for the State of North Carolina, taught at East Carolina University, was instrumental in the Monitor discovery and CSS Alabama excavations, and did contract and non-profit archaeological on the majority of blockade runner wrecks in existence. He published many dozens of archaeological reports, scholarly papers, and articles. Gordon is also a topnotch coprolite analyst. He was one of my three primary thesis advisors, along with William N Still, Jr. (Iron Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Armorclads; Confederate Shipbuilding; American Sea Power in the Old World: and more); and John Tilley (The British Navy and the American Revolution).
 
Naval War College Review
Volume 19
Number 6 October Article 6
1966

School of Naval Command and Staff: Blockade: Evolution and Expectation
by James F. McNulty

U.S. Navy
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected].

6.jpg


https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7016&context=nwc-review
2424

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 

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C. L. Webster III, Entrepot: Government Imports into the Confederate States, Edinborough Press; 2nd edition (January 4, 2019), ISBN-10: 1889020478; ISBN-13: 978-1889020471. A 400 page study of blockade running import cargoes.
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C. L. Webster III, Entrepot: Government Imports into the Confederate States, Edinborough Press; 2nd edition (January 4, 2019), ISBN-10: 1889020478; ISBN-13: 978-1889020471. A 400 page study of blockade running import cargoes. View attachment 298459
This is an excellent book. But if you bought the first edition, be aware that this 2nd edition contains no new information -- it is just printed in a smaller format.
 
Emma Martin Maffitt, The Life and Services of John Newland Maffitt, New York and Washington, The Neale Company, 1906. Written by Captain Maffitt's widow from memory and his papers. This is an interesting biography of a Navy and Coast Survey officer (he discovered and charted a new channel into Charleston), and naval captor of the slave-ships Echo, and Bogata. He resigned his USN commission and joined the CSN, serving briefly as Lieutenant in command of the steam gunboat Savannah, was promoted to Commander, and then returned to blockade running in command of the runners Cecile, Gordon/Nassau, before commanding the commerce raider Florida. He was detached due to ill health but returned to blockade running in command of the runner Florie, named for his daughter, and the runners Lillian, Owl, and Widgeon. He retired from the sea and was not prosecuted after the war, although he was denied a custom house patronage job.

Excerpt from: The Life and Services of John Newland Maffitt "My inspiration in this work has been to do justice to my husband's memory, and, as much as possible, to eliminate myself. He had uttered a word which memory retained. Or left a written document or sentence, it has been set down. So far as possible, he has spoken for himself. My work has been to bridge over any hiatus by explanation or comment, when such was necessary." https://ia802205.us.archive.org/Boo...eservicesofjo00maff_0019.jp2&scale=4&rotate=0
 
Catherine Lynch Deichmann, Rogues & Runners: Bermuda and the American Civil War.
Bermuda National Trust, Bermuda, 2003
A lovely, illustrated booklet on Bermuda's involvement as a neutral entrepot (transhipment) port during the American Civil War. Some of the loveliest paintings of blockade runners anywhere are reproduced in the work.
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