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In the earlier years of the war the blockade-runners were nearly all sailing-vessels, schooners, and brigs, that were easily captured. But when the supplies of the South became exhausted, and the merchants of England began building ships especially for this purpose, the duty of the blockading squadron became exciting and often very profitable.
The great body of the emigrants went either across the plains with ox or mule teams or round Cape Horn in sailing-vessels. A few took passage in the steamer by way of Panama. Not fewer than one hundred thousand men, representing in their nativity every State in the Union, went to California that year.
The harbor in front of the city more like an open roadstead than a harbor, for it was nearly a dozen miles to the opposite shore was dotted with sailing-vessels of almost every description, swinging at anchor, and making it a pretty piece of navigation to pick one's way amongst them in safety. As the John L. Stevens approached her dock we saw that an immense crowd had gathered to give us welcome.
Two or three steamers and a few sailing-vessels are all the craft the harbour contains; a few customs officers and discharged convicts loaf on the pier, where some natives from the Loyalty Islands sleep or shout. Parallel streets lead from the harbour to the hills that fence the town to the landward.
The charm of the place is its remarkable situation, commanding a view of the Baltic, with Sweden in the distance, while the Sound which divides the two shores is always dotted with myriads of steamers and sailing-vessels. The position of Elsinore recalls that of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles as surely as its name reminds us of the play of Hamlet, and Shakespeare.
And as some time might be required to collect the necessary shipping, which I estimated at little less than a hundred steamers and sailing-vessels, I determined to push operations, in hopes to secure the city of Savannah before the necessary fleet could be available. Lieutenant-General U. S. GRANT, Commander-in-Chief, City Point, Virginia.
For the Ship doth rise aloft with excellent stateliness, plowing the air with as much celerity as sailing-vessels plow the seas; departing straightway from the watching eyes of thousands of spectators, it plunges deep, or so it seems, into the very heart of the rising Sun, which doth apparently absorb it in devouring flames of glory, for never again doth it return to earth, . . and none can solve the mystery of its vanishing!
The East River glistened in the sunlight, its bosom vexed by myriad craft, by ocean liners, by tugs and barges, by grim warships, by sailing-vessels, whose canvas gleamed, by snow-white fruitboats from the tropics, by hulls from every port. Over the bridges, long slow lines of traffic crawled.
The King of Unyoro, for instance, whose territory extends to Madi, once sent him a present of beads and coral ornaments which must have come up the Nile, for at the same time the sailing-vessels on the Nile were heard of, and ornaments of that nature were never brought into the country from the Zanzibar side.
Sailing-vessels making this trip carry a quantity of crude oil, which in extreme cases they employ to still the boisterous sea about them, when "God maketh the deep to boil like a pot." It should be known that our own Benjamin Franklin first suggested, about a century ago, the carrying of oil by vessels for this purpose.
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