THE BLOCKADE OF FLORIDA

Seminole Indians, angered over President Andrew Jackson’s plan for their relocation to the Oklahoma Indian Territory, rose up on 28 December 1835 and attacked a column of Army troops under MAJ Francis L. Dade south of Tampa, Florida.  Only three of Dade’s 110 men escaped the massacre.  The Second Seminole War was thus ignited, the only Indian war in which our Navy played a significant role.

Whether or not arms and ammunition were being run to the Seminoles by the Spanish from Cuba, as Floridian officials continuously insisted, is arguable.  But on this day, in response to Florida Governor John H. Eaton’s persistence, Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson ordered a blockade of the southern coast of Florida.  The job fell to the West Indies Squadron, but Commodore Alexander J. Dallas had only five ships as his disposal–the venerable 38-gun frigate CONSTELLATION, the sloops-of-war ST. LOUIS, 20, WARREN, 20, and VANDALIA, 18, and the schooner GRAMPUS, 12. 

To our 1830s Navy, maritime blockade was an unknown mission.  Since her foundational years our Navy had served only two missions: the Federalist task of guerre de course by lone-ranging independent ships; and the Jeffersonian reservation of the Navy for harbor and inshore defense.  The frame of mind necessary to manage an offensive blockade didn’t exist among Naval officers, Commodore Dallas in particular.  In this Seminole War there were no enemy cruisers to attack, merchantmen to intercept, or fleets to engage.  Dallas’ strategic orientation did not suit the tasking.  Furthermore, possessed of only deep draft warships, blue-water cruising was his only viable course–and gun running to Florida could have been more easily done with shallow-draft skiffs and barges working up through the Keys.  As a result, this blockade of Florida wasn’t our most shining accomplishment.

Dallas also found his attentions distracted by competing priorities.  New England merchants were ranting over losses to Haitian pirates.  Texas was striking for independence from Mexico, and the simultaneous Creek War in Georgia demanded Marine Corps support.  But most damning, our Navy never believed that arms were being run to the Seminoles in the first place.  Dallas would find it impossible to prioritize a mission he judged unnecessary from the outset.

Not surprisingly, no filibustering captures were made off Florida during the 1836-42 blockade, though it was maintained continuously throughout the Seminole uprising.  Our greatest contribution to the conflict turned out to be a “mosquito fleet” of shallow-draft riverine craft that took the fight to the enemy in Florida’s wetlands.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  26 JAN 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Buker, George E.  Swamp Sailors:  Riverine Warfare in the Everglades, 1835-1842.  Gainesville, FL: Univ. Presses of Florida, 1975, pp. 1-5, 34-35, 47-48.  Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 171.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 130.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 244.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 8 “W-Z”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, p. 107.

Mahon, John K.  History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842.  Gainesville, FL: Univ. of Florida Press, 1985, pp. 121, 171, 220.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 40.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Second Seminole War is an example of how not to run a joint operation.  Throughout the conflict the Army continued to believe the Indians were being supplied from Cuba and could not fathom why the Navy didn’t prevent such.  The Navy thought the opposite, and until the advent of the “mosquito fleet” in 1840, there was very little coordination between Army and Navy operations.

ST. LOUIS was to have an exceptionally long career for a wooden sloop.  She was built by the Navy, for the Navy, at the Washington Navy Yard in 1828 and initially served as the flagship for Dallas’ West Indies Squadron.  She was transferred to the Pacific Squadron in 1839.  After showing our American flag for the first time in San Francisco Bay, she transferred to Singapore with our East Indies Squadron.  Again a flagship, she was re-assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron in 1852.  She served twice with the African Squadron, suppressing slave trading in the pre-Civil War years, then patrolled with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron during that latter momentous conflict.  From 1866-94 she was laid up at Philadelphia as a receiving ship and training ship for the Pennsylvania Naval Militia.  In 1894 she was formally loaned to the state Militia and in 1904 her name was changed to USS KEYSTONE STATE in deference to that organization.  She was finally stricken from the Naval Vessels Register on 6 August 1906 and sold for scrap.  Her 78-year career, marked by multiple re-fits, spanned four wars and allowed the training of countless naval personnel.

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                                   NOT ABOVE MAKING A BUCK!

Blockade running during our Civil War was a profitable enterprise for those who were successful.  The running of war materials brought a handsome price, but even higher profit margins accompanied “luxury” items, such as silks, lace, fine liquors, and porcelains.  Southern sea captains, like the fictional Rhett Butler, were of course involved in running.  But foreign nationals, lured by the advent of windfall profits, engaged in blockade running purely as a business venture.  Galveston, Texas, was one of several American ports at which the Confederation of Switzerland maintained a diplomatic legation.  The Galveston consul was Dr. Jacob C. Kuhn, originally of St. Gall, Switzerland.  Kuhn had lived for 20 years prior to the Civil War in Galveston and was well acquainted with the local business community.  When the blockade running schooner Wave reached Galveston in the summer of 1863, Dr. Kuhn saw an opportunity.  He purchased Wave and set about collecting cargo for an outbound run.

By this day, 80 bales of cotton had been shipped aboard Wave.  A captain, four crewmen, and three paying passengers comprised the souls embarked.  And in this morning’s pre-dawn, the schooner slipped out of San Luis Pass and turned south.  She hoped to reach Vera Cruz, Mexico, where her cotton would fetch a profit sufficient to recoup Dr. Kuhn’s entire investment on this single run.

Cruising offshore was the Union Navy’s 5-gun Unadilla-class gunboat USS CAYUGA.  She was a hybrid of that day, built and rigged as a two-masted schooner, but with twin steam engines amidships yoked to a single screw.  She and her skipper, LCDR William H. Dana, were veteran blockaders by this date, having already captured or assisted in the capture of the schooners Jesse J. Cox, Tampico, and J.T. Davis and the sloops Blue Bell and Active.  Dana apparently had little trouble overhauling the southbound schooner bearing a Swiss flag, as Dana’s report mentions nothing of a chase.  The Yankee easily saw past the false Swiss colors and sent Wave to New Orleans under a prize crew.

Though Dr. Kuhn’s profit-minded enterprise failed, in nearby Mobile Bay another profit scheme was hatching–privateering.  Rumors broke this day that Alabama businessmen had purchased the stout tugboat Boston.  She was to be armed and outfitted for cruising against Union commerce.  Privateers were private citizens who operated in the interests of their sponsoring government.  Any vessel and cargo taken could be sold for the profit of the privateer owners, officers, and crew.  But fortune frowned on Boston as well.  The opportunity never arose for Boston’s run to sea, and early in 1864 her crew was conscripted instead into the Confederate Army.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  27 AUG 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Associated Press.  “Dispatches to the Associated Press, the Late Naval Repulse at Fort Sumter.”  New York Times, 14 September 1863.  AT: http://www.nytimes.com/1863/09/14/news/dispatches-to-the-associated-press-the-late-naval-repulse-at-fort-sumter.html, retrieved 11 August 2017.

Cooney, David M.  A Chronology of the U.S. Navy:  1775-1965.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. III-132.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 59.

“Report of Captain Marchand, U.S. Navy, forwarding information obtained from deserters sent from Mississippi Sound.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 21; West Gulf Blockading Squadron from January 1 to December 31, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1906, p. 106.

“Report of Lieutenant-Commander Dana, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Cayuga, regarding the capture of the schooner Wave.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 20, West Gulf Blockading Squadron from March 15 to December 31, 1863.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1905, pp. 475-76.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  In 1856, the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law banned the practice of privateering (which too often devolved into frank piracy), though the Confederacy did not join the agreement.  Lincoln’s administration adhered to the principles of the treaty but never signed it.  As such, in February 2025, Congressmen Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Mark Messmer (R-IN) introduced a bill to the US House authorizing President Trump to commission privateers against drug cartels.  It did not pass.

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                                         THE “ANACONDA” PLAN

At the outbreak of the Civil War the senior-most officer in our federal Army was GEN Winfield Scott, the victor of the Mexican War of the 1840s.  As an overall strategy to deal with the Confederacy, his staff dusted off that which had worked so well in that Mexican War, an epic, Napoleonic clash of land armies culminating in the capture of the capital city of Richmond.  To support this scenario, the US Navy would attenuate the enemy’s counter-campaign by clamping a tight naval blockade on the Confederacy.  Indeed, Mexico and the Confederacy had much in common.  Both were large land masses with miles of coastline.  Both had navigable rivers penetrating their sparsely populated heartland.  Both were agrarian, non-industrialized economies, whose commerce centered in a few key seaports.  Neither had a significant Navy, nor the resources to build one.

The Mississippi River was included in Scott’s blockade plan, as its capture would complete the encirclement of the Rebels and split off the Trans-Mississippi region, the breadbasket of southern food production.  A seaborne blockade coupled with control of the Mississippi would constrict the South much as would an imaginary python.  Scott’s plan was quickly dubbed the “Anaconda” strategy.

Lincoln was dispossessed of a better alternative and accepted the strategy despite the fact that declaring a blockade amounted to de facto recognition of the Confederate republic.  On this date, six days after the fall of Fort Sumter, Lincoln announced the closure of southern ports from South Carolina to Texas (Virginia had only seceded 17 April and North Carolina did so on 20 May).

The executive order caught the US Navy unprepared.  Leadership had grown gray with many aged officers lingering on the active roster, reluctant to relinquish their paychecks.  Bright junior officers stagnated under a clogged promotion system.  By 1861 for example, David Dixon Porter had served 20 years as a Lieutenant.  Our warship inventory had been allowed to deteriorate in both numbers and technology.  Of the 90 ships in commission, 50 were vessels of sail, many too derelict to get underway.  Only 38 were steam powered and 20% of these were inoperable.  Worse, many of our seaworthy ships were deployed at that moment, showing the flag in far-flung corners of the world.  The Union Navy on this day had but 24 ships to affect Scott’s plan!  A Blockade Strategy Board was quickly convened to authorize the purchase and outfitting of yachts, ferries, whalers, tugs–even garbage scows.  The civilian masters of these vessels were often commissioned directly as acting Naval officers.  And within several months, the Union Navy was getting back on her feet, patrolling the Confederate coast.

Watch1 for more “Today in Naval History”  25 APR 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 131.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. I-9, VI-30.

Eisenschiml, Otto and Ralph Newman.  Eyewitness: The Civil War as We Lived It.  New York, NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1956, pp. 346-55.

Surdam. David G.  Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War.  Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2001.

Trotter, William R.  Ironclads and Columbiads:  The Civil War in North Carolina, The Coast.  Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair Pub., 1989, pp. 25-29.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  David Dixon Porter’s date of rank as a Lieutenant was 27 February 1841.  Three days after Lincoln proclaimed the blockade above LT Porter received his next promotion–to Commander (the rank of Lieutenant Commander was not authorized until May 1864).

Over the course of the Civil War from 1861-65 the size of the Union fleet rose from 90 to 670 vessels, 1300 to 6700 officers, 7500 to 51,500 seamen, while the annual budget rose from $12 million to $123 million.

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                                           BLOCKADE RUNNING

The effect of Lincoln’s naval blockade of the Confederacy was starting to tell by the end of 1861, as cotton and tobacco began piling up on southern wharves.  Unable to move their major exports, the agrarian Southern economy increasingly lacked a means to barter for manufactured goods.  Adventuresome captains, willing to risk their ships in running the Union blockade, became a main source of imported goods.  These captains have since been romanticized as gentleman rogues, though in truth, most acted solely for profit.

Blockade running concentrated in Wilmington, Charleston, Mobile, and Galveston.  With time, it became as much a science as a fortune-dependent endeavor.  European merchants would ship goods to “depot” ports in Havana, Bermuda, St. Thomas, Nassau, or Halifax, where cargoes were exchanged for cotton and transferred to smaller, often specialty-built, shallow-draft runners that could skirt just seaward of the breakers.  Deep-water Union blockaders could not pursue that closely to shore.  At the height of the practice in 1864, British-built steamers, capable of 14-18 knots, with a draft under 11 feet, were favored.  These cast a low silhouette, with short masts and minimal rigging.  In the first recorded use of naval camouflage, most were painted light gray for nighttime invisibility.  Northern anthracite coal was most desired, burning with minimal smoke, though it was hard for Southern captains to obtain.  Runners would wait beyond the coast by day, timing their run to arrive on the flood tide of a moonless night.  Though the South desperately needed war matériel, the profit motive that drove the blockade runners was reflected in their cargoes–often dominated by such luxuries as silks, crystal, and French wines.  The Confederate Navy formally commissioned some runners, but most captains were private citizens, drawn by huge profit margins.  Indeed, even a few Yankee dollars found their way into blockade running enterprises.  But as the Union blockade stiffened, the 9:1 odds against capture in 1861 dropped to 2:1 by 1864.

Despite these odds, more than a few runners made over twenty successful transits of the blockade.  The occasional runner, such as CSS COLONEL LAMB, was never captured.  She escaped to England after the war and was sold into the merchant trade.  One might think running success provided a great opportunity for the badly starved Confederate war machine.  But profit proved a stronger motive.  On this date the Charleston Mercury printed the bill of goods for sale from an unnamed arrival:  French woven corsets for $25 each; linen cambric handkerchiefs, $35/dozen; fancy flannel shirts, $230/dozen; brown cotton drawers, $130/dozen; and brown cotton shirts, $135/dozen. 

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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Anderson, Bern.  By Sea and by River:  The Naval History of the Civil War.  New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1962, pp. 215-32.

Carse, Robert.  Blockade: The Civil War at Sea.  New York, NY: Rinehart & Co., 1958, p. 254-55, 263.

Fowler, William M., Jr.  Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War.  New York, NY: Avon Books, 1990, pp. 247-48.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, 222-23.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: It is difficult to calculate the overall efficiency of the Union blockade from existing records, as arrivals were not centrally catalogued.  And certainly, the odds of success decreased as the war progressed.  Yet the general circumstances probably favored the daring, with estimates of the overall blockade running success rate across the entire war being slightly greater than 50%.

          CSS COLONEL LAMB remembers William Lamb, a Virginia businessman, politician, and Confederate officer who commanded the garrison at Fort Fisher from 1862-65, protecting access to Wilmington, North Carolina.

Margaret Mitchell immortalized the blockade runners with her character Capt. Rhett Butler in the novel Gone with the Wind.  Though actual blockade runners may not all have been so dashingly charming, Rhett Butler is nevertheless accurately portrayed as being generally admired by the Southern aristocracy, despite his self-serving motivations.

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                                           QUEEN’S CREEK RAID

Evasion by a Confederate blockade runner was no small embarrassment to the Union ships whose job it was to isolate the South.  And when a small cutter was observed running goods up the Piankatank River in Virginia, the screw steamers USS WESTERN WORLD and USS CRUSADER were sent to find her.  WESTERN WORLD was a 440-ton, 178-foot screw steamer purchased by the Union Navy and commissioned 3 January 1862.  On this date she was just out of refit in Philadelphia, assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to patrol the Chesapeake Bay from Fortress Monroe to the mouth of the Piankatank (between the York and Rappahannock Rivers).  Too large to enter the Piankatank’s smaller tributaries, WESTERN WORLD’s skipper, Acting Master Samuel B. Gregory, sent Acting ENS Joseph S. Cony with a boat party.  Cony, two junior officers, and 24 men boarded two of WESTERN WORLD’s launches, and at 1000 this morning, they pushed off from Hill’s Bay (near modern Milford Haven Coast Guard Station) in the direction of Queen’s Creek.  Here, the offending cutter and another schooner were thought to be lying.

The 70-ton schooner proved the easier task.  She was found above Bells’ Mills with running rigging aloft, but no sails bent.  Though she had been scuttled to prevent her capture, Cony found her otherwise in good order and attempted to move her.  She was fast however, and Cony’s party set her ablaze.

Now seeking the smaller cutter, Cony’s men next pulled up a branch of Queen’s Creek.  Here they found another schooner, about half the size of the first, this one also aground with her masts cut away.  Her hull proved intact, and hoping now to re-float her, Cony deployed his men in a protective skirmish line.  Yet again, this schooner was found to be stuck fast, having been beached at high tide.  She, too, was fired lest she be repaired and pressed back into service by the Rebels.

Meanwhile the skirmishers had been busy.  Instructed to allow no one to pass, they had attempted to stop a man who happened by.  He spurned their challenge and escaped into the woods.  Chase him they did, but without luck.  He turned out to be Carter Hudgins, a bitter secessionist and Lincoln-hater who had earlier reported several of his neighbors for expressing Union sympathies–neighbors who were now in a Richmond prison!  Locals warned Cony that Hudgins would likely return to thrash the Yankee interlopers.  But concern over Hudgins was shortly superseded by the discovery of a well-hidden cutter up a nearby branch.  The single-banked, six-oar craft was the one for whom Cony’s party searched.  Taking her in tow, Cony turned downstream and despite Hudgins’ threats, returned safely to WESTERN WORLD.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  12 MAY 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 8 “W-Z”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, p. 235.

“Report of Acting Ensign Cony, U.S. Navy, regarding expedition in search of schooner in Queen’s Creek.  IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9; North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from May 5, 1863, to May 5, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, p. 5.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Cony rose to the rank of Acting Master by the end of the war.  However, he was lost at sea on 10 February 1867 when the civilian merchant ship he commanded burned and sank off Cape Hatteras.  Cony is remembered with the Fletcher-class destroyer CONY (DD-508) of WWII and Korean Conflict service.

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