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Updated: October 15, 2025
It will be difficult to erase from my memory the excitement of the evening we made our little craft fast alongside the quay at Wilmington; the congratulations we received, the champagne cocktail we imbibed, the eagerness with which we gave and received news, the many questions we asked, such as, 'How long shall we be unloading? 'Was our cargo of cotton ready? 'How many bales could we carry? 'How other blockade-runners had fared? &c.; and the visits from thirsty and hungry Southerners of all ranks and denominations, many of whom had not tasted alcohol in any form for months, to whom whatever they liked to eat or drink was freely given, accompanied by congratulations on all sides.
Dating from the first sea-fight, the siege had lasted altogether seventy-two days; and during seven weeks of this period they had subsisted on the casual supplies smuggled over by the blockade-runners from the mainland.
Already there was not a little activity at the principal foreign ports nearest to the Southern States, created by the hurried operations of speculators anxious to profit by the war that was to come; and later these harbors were the refuge of the blockade-runners.
The American blockading squadron, which had undertaken the almost impossible task of stopping all traffic along 3,000 miles of coast, consisted of nearly a hundred vessels of different sorts and sizes bonâ-fide men-of-war, captured blockade-runners, unemployed steam-packets, with many other vessels pressed into government service.
Some days after, he learned that the lookout was a dead man, frozen at his post of duty. It will readily be understood that the inducements offered to blockade-runners must have been immense to persuade men to run such risks. The officers and sailors made money easily, and spent it royally when they reached Nassau.
"The enemy and their British allies have been so unfortunate in the Gulf that they have chosen a safer approach to the shores of the South. Nearly all the blockade-runners at the present time go in at the Cape Fear River, where the shoal water favors them. A class of steamers of light draft and great speed are constructed expressly to go into Wilmington.
The fog that prevailed inshore was favorable to blockade-runners; and if there was a vessel of this character in Cape Fear River, the early morning had been such as to tempt her to try to make her way through the blockaders to sea. "She is not one of the ordinary steamers that run in and out of the river," said Mr.
The "Florida" was originally a merchant-ship, known as the "Oreto;" and under that name she sailed from Liverpool, carrying a peaceful cargo, and manned by sailors who had no idea that any thing beyond a peaceable voyage was planned. Hardly had the ship passed the mouth of the Mersey, when her course was shaped for Nassau, the haven of privateers and blockade-runners.
Most of the Confederate ports had been either captured or were so strictly blockaded that it was next to impossible for the blockade-runners to get in or out, while the capture of the forts on the Mississippi enabled them to use the Federal flotillas of gunboats to the greatest advantage, and to carry their armies into the center of the Confederacy.
"The blockade-runners have the islands all to themselves, or at least the two towns on them. They have plenty of money, and they spend it without stint or measure. They make business good, and the inhabitants take excellent care of them. It is no place for Americans; for everybody's sympathy is with the South.
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