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Updated: July 15, 2025
The Bermudas were to some extent used, but their distance from the coast made them inconvenient as compared with Nassau or Matamoras. Their chief trade was with Wilmington, which became a favorite port during the latter years of the war. Havana was popular for a time, and at first sight would appear to be admirably placed for a blockade-runners' rendezvous.
The profits on a single voyage on the cotton taken out and on the stores brought back were sufficient to make good the loss of both vessel and cargo in three disastrous trips. The blockade-runners, Southerners and Englishmen, took their lives in their hands and they fairly earned all the returns that came to them.
The Navy's task in '63 was complicated by the many foreign vessels that ran only between two neutral ports but broke bulk into blockade-runners at their own port of destination. For instance, a neutral vessel, with neutral crew and cargo, would leave a port in Europe for a neutral port in America, say, Nassau in the Bahamas or Matamoras on the Rio Grande.
His principal business is to follow up the enforcement of the neutrality laws, which compels him to watch these blockade-runners, and vessels of war intended for the Confederate States." "That was my own conclusion," added the Frenchman, speaking his own language, as usual. "I should say that his position is not a pleasant one." "Here comes the bloody spy!" shouted several of the ruffians.
But it did seem strange that the men-of-war of a nation at peace with England should be allowed to cruise off her ports, to stop and examine trading vessels of all descriptions, to capture and send to New York, for adjudication, vessels on the mere suspicion of their being intended blockade-runners; and to chase and fire into real blockade-runners so near to the shore that on one occasion the shot and shell fell into a fishing village, and that within sight of an English man-of-war lying at anchor in the harbour at Nassau.
The navy had been making strenuous exertions to seal the harbor of Wilmington, but with only partial effect. The nature of the outlet of Cape Fear River was such, that it required watching for so great a distance that, without possession of the land north of New Inlet, or Fort Fisher, it was impossible for the navy to entirely close the harbor against the entrance of blockade-runners.
It was small wonder that the merchants of England set to work deliberately to fit out blockade-runners, that they might again get their mills running, and their people fed. The years of the war were lively times for the little town of Nassau.
By these captures the port of Mobile was hermetically sealed against blockade-runners, and a serious blow given to the rebel cause. Rear-admiral Farragut remained in command of the West Gulf squadron till November, 1864, when he requested leave of absence, and was called to Washington for consultation in regard to future naval operations.
Hardly had the proclamation of President Lincoln announcing the blockade of all Confederate ports been issued, when at a bound Nassau became prominent as the point of all most suitable for a blockade-runners' rendezvous. Its harbor and the surrounding waters were deep enough for merchant-vessels, but too shallow to allow much cruising about by warships of heavy armament.
Of these neutral points which served as way-stations for the blockade-runners, there were four on or near our coast, the Bermuda Islands, which lie about seven hundred miles east of Charleston; Nassau, which is off the coast of Florida, and a little more than five hundred miles southeast of Charleston; Havana; and the little Mexican town of Matamoras on the Rio Grande, opposite Brownsville, Texas.
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