Texas Blockade Running Question

I have @AndyHall's 2014 work, Civil War Blockade Running on the Texas Coast. Neither Gentry nor the Texas & New Orleans RR are mentioned in the index (maybe I missed something).

Who gave the T&NO Rail "permission" to ship 350 bails of cotton? Maybe if we know a little more we can help.
 
I have @AndyHall's 2014 work, Civil War Blockade Running on the Texas Coast. Neither Gentry nor the Texas & New Orleans RR are mentioned in the index (maybe I missed something).

Who gave the T&NO Rail "permission" to ship 350 bails of cotton? Maybe if we know a little more we can help.
Maj. B. Bloomfield, Magruder's staff
 
Interesting question, and I don't have a ready answer.

There was almost no blockade running in or out of Texas going on at the end of 1863 using steam runners, although there was a continual stream of small sailing craft that could carry anything up to a few dozen bales. Seems kind of unlikely that Gentry would have divided up his shipment in that way, on multiple vessels going to multiple ports, on whatever schedule.

This shipment may have ended up on one of the next three steam runners that left Galveston after Gentry's inquiry, Isabel, Alice, and Lavinia (ex-Harriet Lane) ran out together on the evening of April 30, 1864, that I do discuss some in the book. That's not a very firm answer, but it seems a possibility to me.
 
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Interesting question, and I don't have a ready answer.

There was almost no blockade running in or out of Texas going on at the end of 1863 using steam runners, although there was a continual stream of small sailing craft that could carry anything up to a few dozen bales. Seems kind of unlikely that Gentry would have divided up his shipment in that way, on multiple vessels going to multiple ports, on whatever schedule.

This shipment may have ended up on one of the next three steam runners that left Galveston after Gentry's inquiry, Isabel, Alice, and Lavinia (ex-Harriet Lane) ran out together on the evening of April 30, 1864, that I do discuss some in the book. That's not a very firm answer, but it seems a possibility to me.
350 bales sounds right for a small steamer, 50 to 100 for a schooner. Magruder had ordered Lavinia and Sachem stripped and run out in an order a few days after the Union showed up on the Victoria coast in November. I was asking to see if anyone knew of another candidate that I did not know of.
 
Did all those blockade runners belong to the government? I'm curious why permission was needed to ship what was presumably privately owned cotton, since it was being sold to raise money or buy material for the railroad.
 
Did all those blockade runners belong to the government? I'm curious why permission was needed to ship what was presumably privately owned cotton, since it was being sold to raise money or buy material for the railroad.
The two ships in question were captured US warships, so they had been CS property. Don't know if they still were.

The railroads were a central component of Magurder's defense plan -- small military force, able to rush to the scene of action on railroads. That requires the railroads be kept up to the task and, with almost no private commercial business to support them, the government had to help keep them running reliably.
 
I'm curious why permission was needed to ship what was presumably privately owned cotton...

Sirs, was the self-imposed Confederate ban on the export of cotton still in force? If so, perhaps the moratorium was requested to officially fill any administrative square to avoid legal entanglements later?
107

Just a thought,
USS ALASKA
 
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