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Updated: June 25, 2025
"The whole attention of the government, so far as blockade-running is concerned, has been directed to the approaches of Wilmington. Forts Fisher, Caswell, and Smith afford abundant protection to the light draft steamers as soon as they get into the shoal water where our gunboats as a rule cannot follow them. The one thing we need down there is fast steamers.
The men lost all heart, and would I think have been thankful to have been captured, as a means of escape from what they believed to be a doomed vessel. On arriving there I was taken very ill with yellow fever, and on my recovery made up my mind to give up blockade-running for ever and all. The game indeed was fast drawing to a close.
I trust that our American friends will not be too severe in their censures on those engaged in blockade-running; for, I say it with the greatest respect for and admiration of enterprise, had they been lookers-on instead of principals in the sad drama that was enacted, they would have been the very men to take the lead. It must be borne in mind that the excitement of fighting did not exist.
It remained an isolated achievement, though one of great importance, converting Mobile from a maritime to an inland city, putting a stop to all serious blockade-running in the Gulf, and crushing finally the enemy's ill-founded hopes of an offensive movement by ironclads there equipped. Tecumseh. 2. Manhattan. 3. Winnebago. 4. Chickasaw. 5. Brooklyn. 6. Octorora. 7. Hartford, Flag-ship. 8.
Bowdoin had been shrewd enough to guess what only thing could make the clerk want so much liberty; and the news had leaked down to the others, "that Jamie was going for his foreign mail." "I hear you are going away," said one. "To Europe?" said another. "Blockade-running!" suggested a third. "For cotton." "I I am going to the tropics," stammered Jamie.
Undoubtedly the situation on the Atlantic littoral was sufficiently embarrassing to the Confederate authorities. The presence of a Federal force at New Berne, in North Carolina, threatened the main line of railway by which Wilmington and Charleston communicated with Richmond, and these two ports were of the utmost importance to the Confederacy. Blockade-running became a recognised business.
On the Texas coast, however, blockade-running properly so called the entrance, that is, of blockaded Confederate harbors was a small matter compared with the flourishing contraband trade carried on through the Mexican port Matamoras and across the Rio Grande.
"This night's work will put an end to the Hattie's blockade-running. If that fellow astern don't catch us, he will surely find and pull up the buoys, and then we can't follow the channel except by sending a boat on ahead with a lead-line. That might do when we were going out, but it wouldn't work running in if there was an enemy close behind us. Another thing, this Inlet will be watched in future.
Day after day, day after day, we lay inactive roll, roll; not wholly ineffective, I suppose, for our presence stopped blockade-running; but even in this respect the Texas coast had largely lost importance since the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the previous summer, had cut off the trans-Mississippi region from the body of the Confederacy.
It was hard lines, no doubt, but quite fair play. It was the blockaders' turn to laugh now. I have now come to the end of my blockade-running yarns. I have endeavoured to avoid giving offence to anyone: to the American officers and men who manned the cruisers I can, as a nautical man, truly and honestly give the credit of having most zealously performed their hard and wearisome duty.
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