Notes on the Yankee Blockade of the South Atlantic Seaboard 1861-1865

James M. Merrill, Assistant Professor of History at Whittier College, is on sabbatical leave for the academic year, 1958-1959, as a Guggenheim Fellow doing research on the second part of his projected trilogy dealing with Civil War naval operations. Notes on the Yankee Blockade of the South Atlantic Seaboard 1861-1865 JAMES M. MERRILL On the afternoon watch, August 22, 1864, the Confederate blockaderunner "Lilian" hauled away from the cotton press at Wilmington, North Carolina, glided down the Cape Fear River, exchanged signals with the forts at the entrance, dropped anchor, and waited. At nightfall, she got under way, her helmsman steering a course due east for the open sea. A shout came from the darkness: "Heave to, or ?? sink you." Instantly, the pilot of the "Lilian" ordered the helm hard to port and attempted to ram the Federal picket boat. The Union craft began firing signal rockets simultaneously with her bow gun. The roar was deafening. Pyrotechnics glared. "Lilian" lurched. Frightened Mickey Mahoney, the second steward, besought "all the saints in the calendar for deliverance, [and] tumbled headlong down the companionway, with such groans and shrieks" that an officer thought the poor fellow was unhinged. More shells crashed over "Lilian " without damage, and, within an hour, she had left all but one of the Federal ships far behind. She had barely eluded this vessel when she ran into a cross fire from Yankee steam frigates. After three hours of "frightPortions of this article appear in The Rebel Shore: The Story of Union Sea Power in the Civil War (Boston: Lirde, Brown & Co., c1957), by James M. Merrill. 387 388JAMES M. MERRILL fully accurate" firing, the Yankee ships took the badly damaged "Lilian" as a prize and its officers and crew as prisoners of war.1 Three years before, at the outset of the Civil War, the Union Navy, its ships rotting in dry dock or scattered across the seas at foreign stations, had shouldered the herculean task of blockading the Confederate coast from Virginia to Texas. Despite lack of fighting power in April, 1861, the Navy Department dispatched all available seaworthy vessels to Southern ports: the steam frigates "Niagara" and 'Wabash" to Charleston; the steam frigate "Minnesota" and the sail sloop "Cumberland" to Hampton Roads, the chief base for the North Atlantic Squadron; the brig "Perry" to the east coast of Florida; the steamer "Union" to Savannah; and a handful of ships to the Gulf. These vessels, barnacle encrusted and undermanned, were to patrol over 3000 miles of hostile shore line.2 As the Lincoln administration increased the purchase and construction of naval gunboats, the blockading squadrons were materially strengthened. In May, 1861, only two ships guarded the entire coast of North Carolina; a year later, fifty-eight craft policed this sector; and, at the end of the war, the total had reached 142.3 Blockade procedures continually varied as North and South tried to outwit each other. By 1864 both the Union blockade of Southern coasts and the blockade-running of Confederate ships had become highly developed. Swift, gray steamers with telescoped funnels sneaked in and out of those ports still open to the South. The game of hide-and-seek with "Massa Linkum's gunboats" could be compared to hunting, steeplechasing, big game shooting, or polo playing, but mere sport could not approach blockade -running in excitement.4 Confederate and British mariners, navigating the sea lanes between Rebel coasts and nearby neutral ports, especially Nassau, traded Southern cotton for English cannon. Once a runner was safely moored in a Southern port, stevedores dumped 1 James Sprunt, "Blockade Running," Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War 1861-65 (Walter Clark, ed., 5 vols.; Raleigh, N.C., et al.: Pub. by the State, 1901 ), V, 369-72. 2 For example, see Welles to Stringham, Navy Department, April 22, May 1, 1861, in Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894-1922), Ser. I, Vol. 5, pp. 617-18, 619-22; hereinafter cited as O.R.N., followed by the series number in Roman numerals , the volume number in Arabic, and the...