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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                                              4 SEPTEMBER 1887

                                         RADM GEORGE BROWN

On the moonless night of 14-15 February 1863, 27-year-old LCDR George Brown of the Union Navy’s Mississippi River Squadron took the sidewheel ironclad gunboat USS INDIANOLA south toward Vicksburg.  His mission was a daring run past the vaunted Confederate batteries at Vicksburg.  He towed two coal barges in case any Union warships downstream were in need of resupply.  The trio passed half the batteries before their presence was detected in the darkness, and no shots struck the gunboat.  Six days later Brown started back upstream.  The night of 24 February found INDIANOLA at Palmyra Island, north of Grand Gulf, Mississippi.  Here about 2130, lights were noted in pursuit.

CSS WEBB, DR. BEATTY, GRAND ERA and the former Union gunboat QUEEN OF THE WEST, now in enemy hands, were gunning for Brown!  QUEEN closed first, ramming and sinking one of the coal barges.  Covering musket fire from DR. BEATTY allowed QUEEN and WEBB to repeatedly charge Brown.  Recognizing that he had to keep INDIANOLA’s vulnerable sidewheels from being struck, Brown lingered exposed on the deck to direct his pilot.  At times he knelt on a ventilation grating to communicate instructions to the engine spaces below, with Confederate minié balls whizzing all around!  On several occasions as the rams closed, Brown directed the fire of his gunners, aiming and discharging one gun himself.  None of the Union sailors had seen action before this night, and the darkness only added to the near-panic aboard the overwhelmed INDIANOLA.  Brown coolly directed his gunboat’s response for a terrifying hour.  Then QUEEN succeeded in ramming from the stern, carrying away the Union rudder and punching through her hull.  When a second ramming blow parted the starboard sidewheel shaft and smashed a second hull breach, INDIANOLA became unmanageable.  Two and a half feet of water rapidly flooded the bilges, forcing Brown at 2320 to run INDIANOLA onto the shore.  She came to rest on a sand bar just south of Palmyra Island, where, having lost only two casualties, Brown’s crew destroyed the signal books and valuable gear.

LCDR Brown and INDIANOLA were captured.  He was exchanged months later in Richmond and went on to command USS ITASCA at the battle of Mobile Bay.  After the Civil War he sailed the former CSS STONEWALL to Japan, upon the sale of that vessel.  He was promoted to CAPT in 1877 and commanded the Department of Alaska.  While overseeing the Norfolk Navy Yard this date he was promoted to Commodore.  He went on to command our Pacific Station in the Philippines until his promotion to RADM in 1893.  Then, following a second tour as Commandant of the Norfolk Navy Yard, RADM Brown retired 19 June 1897, his 62^nd birthday.

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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 21-22.

“Report of Acting Assistant Surgeon Mixer, U.S. Navy, late of the U.S.S. Indianola, regarding the operations and capture of that vessel.”  IN:  Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 24, Naval Forces on Western Waters from January 1, to May 17, 1863.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1911, pp. 392-95.

Site visits.  Vicksburg, and Grand Gulf Military Monument State Park, Mississippi, 15 October 2003.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  RADM Brown passed away before WWI in 1913.  Our Navy has not yet named a warship for RADM Brown.  In fact, deconflicting several Navy men bearing the name “George Brown” can be complicated.  Brown’s son, George, Jr., as well as a second son named Hugh, both served as US Navy officers.  LTJG George Peter Brown (unrelated) was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in 1944.  The Fletcher-class destroyer BROWN (DD-546) remembers an earlier and unrelated enlisted sailor also named George Brown, a hero of the Barbary Wars.

INDIANOLA’s loss thwarted RADM David Dixon Porter’s efforts to blockade the Red River, south of Vicksburg.  The Red River was a pathway for the resupply of Vicksburg from the Trans-Mississippi theater.  At the time Porter’s squadron was stuck north of that city, and he had been detaching warships to run past the city to blockade the mouth of the Red River.  The loss contributed to Porter’s near-disastrous foray up the Red River in March-May 1864.  INDIANOLA remained grounded until January 1865, when Union salvors refloated her after much effort.  She was sold for scrap.

The run past Vicksburg was formidable.  In Civil War days the Mississippi River ran directly in front of the bluffs of the city, then made a hairpin turn to double back past the city a second time within gun range.  Since, the river has carved a new bed, but from the bluffs today, one can still see the trace of the former channel past the city.

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                    FIGHTING FATHER AND SON

CAPT Benjamin Franklin Sands, USN, came from a military family, having 11 relatives and descendants with military service.  His combat tours during the Mexican War were bracketed by duty of a more scientific nature.  He served in the Bureau of Charts and Instruments of the Naval Observatory in the years before the Civil War, commanding coastal survey expeditions and inventing an instrument for deep sounding.  By the outbreak of the Civil War, he was a respected officer and hydrographer.  That war necessitated his return to combat, commanding the sidewheel steamer USS Fort Jackson of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from 1863-65.  By this time, his 19-year-old son, James Hoban Sands, had entered the Navy as well and was serving as an Ensign aboard the screw sloop USS Shenandoah.  January of 1865 found father and son participating in the Union Navy effort to close the last remaining port open to the Confederacy, Wilmington, North Carolina.

That Union effort involved reducing Fort Fisher, the bastion guarding an entrance to the Cape Fear River, upon which Wilmington is situated.  Despite weeks of campaigning to this date the fort and its garrison were still intact.  Today’s undaunted Union plan called for a ground frontal assault under naval bombardment.

The elder Sands stood his warship in a line of battle off the fort at 0900 this morning and opened a shot and shell barrage with his 100-pounders and IX-inch gun.  Meanwhile, at 0948, LT Smith W. Nichols, XO of Shenandoah, led a storming party of 68 Marines and bluejackets ashore.  The younger Sands guided one of Nichols’ launches.  Shenandoah’s storming party joined the ground assault and stepped off on a perilous charge of the fixed fort defenses.  Through a hail of bullets and shells they advanced, Sands and the Shenandoah party reaching the outer stockade wall that provided some shelter from the enemy’s fire.  Here they found themselves pinned, returning what fire they could, hoping the bombardment by his father and the rest of the Union flotilla might be effective.

For the rest of this day, Sands and his men hunkered behind the outer stockade wall.  At sunset, the cramped and exhausted assault party began a withdrawal.  Still under enemy fire, Sands, Nichols, and Bo’sun James H. Polley rallied their men.  Through the dedication and industry of Sands, the Shenandoah party reached safety.  None from Shenandoah lost his life this day, only 7 were wounded.  Sands organized the evacuation of the wounded, then turned to help other injured men.  Shenandoah’s skipper, CAPT Daniel B. Ridgely, relayed to RADM David D. Porter that Sands, “deserved the highest praise for his zeal and energy shown throughout.”

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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Rehabilitation Medicine

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989. p. 157.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 2 1901-1918.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, pp. 247-48.

“Report of Captain Ridgely, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Shenandoah.”  IN:  Rawson, Edward, George P. Colvocoresses and Charles W. Stewart.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 11: North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 28, 1864, to February 1, 1865.  GPO, Washington, DC, p. 539.

“Report of Captain Sands, U.S. Navy. commanding U.S.S. Fort Jackson.”  IN:  Rawson, Edward, George P. Colvocoresses and Charles W. Stewart.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 11: North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 28, 1864, to February 1, 1865.  GPO, Washington, DC, pp. 547-48.

“Report of Lieutenant Nichols, U.S. Navy, commanding assaulting party from U.S.S. Shenandoah.”  IN:  Rawson, Edward, George P. Colvocoresses and Charles W. Stewart.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 11: North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 28, 1864, to February 1, 1865.  GPO, Washington, DC, pp. 539-40.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 42, 72.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Father and son survived this battle, and Fort Fisher did fall.  The elder Sands returned to his scientific work after the war, being promoted to RADM in 1871.  James Sands remained in the Navy as well–also for duty in the hydrographic office of the Naval Observatory.  He, too, was promoted to RADM and in his final tour, from 1905-1907, served as the 19^th Superintendent of the Naval Academy.

Father and son Sands are two of but a handful of Navy officers to be honored with the naming of both a warship and a research vessel–the post-WWI Clemson-class destroyer Sands (DD-243), and the 1960s oceanographic research ship of the same name, (AGOR-6).

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