Running the blockade. A personal narrative of adventures, risks and escapes during the American Civil War

Front matter

C>oo

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Introduction

A German admiral has remarked that the most valuable naval history lies in the despatches and logs of naval officers. Our own Navy- Record Society by the line it has taken thoroughly endorses this view, and has committed itself to the teaching of naval history from the mouths of the men who made it.

Mr. Taylor's work then must not be taken as a mere record of personal adventure, however absorbing it be found from this point of view. As a picture of exciting escapes, of coolness and resource at moments of acute danger, of well-calculated risks, boldly accepted and obstinately carried through, it has few rivals in recent sea-story : but its deeper value does not lie here. Over and above its romantic interest it will be recognised by students of the naval art as a real and solid contribution to history ; for it presents to us vi INTRODUCTION

from the pen of a principal actor the most complete account we have of a great blockade in the days of steam.

The important part that blockade plays in naval warfare is a thing hardly recognised outside professional ranks. For the general reader, the grand manoeuvres of a great fleet in chase of the enemy and the stirring hours of some decisive action throw into oblivion the tedious months of dull, anxious, and exhausting work with which by far the greater part of the war is taken up. Yet it is hardly too much to say that during the most glorious period of our maritime history nine-tenths of the energies of our admirals were devoted to blockade. In the future it is possible that it will take even a higher place. Should England become engaged with a first-rate foreign power, single-handed, it is a recognised fact amongst naval strategists that in a week she could close every one of her enemy's ports and have a fleet free to reduce at its leisure everything he held beyond the seas. With almost any two Powers against her it is probable she could do as much : and it is the

INTRODUCTION vii recognition of this power abroad which gives England, in spite of her military weakness, so commanding a position in Europe.

The importance then of studying every scrap of information on the subject in order to perfect our knowledge of the art of blockade cannot be exaggerated, and Mr. Taylor's simple and straightforward record of his experiences may claim to be perhaps the fullest contribution to the subject that as yet exists. Experiences of individual captains we have had, and; read with the present work, they are of high value : but Mr. Taylor has something more to tell. Not only did he run the blockade personally a greater number of times than any one else, but, boy as he was at the time, he was the chief organiser of a great and systematised attack on the Northern blockade, such as the world had never seen before. His operations may be said to have opened a new era in the history of blockade, and one which bids fair to have far-reaching consequences for every maritime Power.

To make clear his position and its dangers and difficulties a word must be said on the viii INTRODUCTION

general subject of blockade. Blockade, it must be clearly borne in mind, is of two kinds, the one military, the other commercial. The first concerns the belligerents alone, and consists in one of them, who has obtained a working command of the sea, imprisoning the other's war fleets in their own ports. It was this form of blockade which absorbed by far the greatest part of our naval activity during the great French wars. During the American Civil War it was considerably practised, and from American sources may be studied in complete detail the efforts of the Confederate war-ships to escape the vigilance of Federal blockading squadrons. The second form, or commercial blockade, is one that principally concerns neutrals, and it was of course to this form alone that Mr. Taylor's operations extended.

The International Law which regulates its conditions as between neutrals and belligerents is shortly this, A belligerent, if strong enough at sea to close one or more ports of his enemy, may give notice to Neutral Powers that such port or ports are blockaded, and thereafter if

INTRODUCTION ix any neutral vessel attempts to enter or leave them, the belligerent may treat it as an enemy, and may destroy or capture and condemn it as an ordinary prize. To run a blockade then is an operation attended with all the risks of war. Indeed a blockade-runner is in an even worse position than a hostile belligerent ; for not being a combatant he may not resist the efforts of the blockaders to destroy or capture him. He is entitled to escape if he can, but a single shot or blow in his own defence makes him a pirate, and a belligerent capturing him may treat him as such. But it must always be remembered that for a belligerent to be entitled to exercise these high prerogatives he must first have constituted a real and effective blockade. A mere declaration that a port is closed is not enough. It must be so closely watched and invested with an adequate naval force that no neutral can leave or enter without running present danger of being sunk or captured.

Analogous to the rights arising out of an effective blockade, and always to be clearly distinguished from them, is the right of a

INTRODUCTION belligerent to treat as an enemy a neutral vessel carrying contraband of war to his enemy's ports, and this right he may always exercise, whether the ports in question be effectively blockaded or not.

It was this consideration, no doubt, combined with a desire to preserve a strict neutrality and to see the South treated as belligerents and not as mere insurgents, that induced the English Government to recognise the Federal blockade as soon as it was declared. At the opening of the war the Federal Government, in defiance of International Law, declared the whole Southern seaboard undpr blockade. It was a blockade they were then wholly unable to enforce or even to pretend to enforce, but as most of our blockade-ninners carried contraband of war, there was very little to be gained by disputing the Federal pretensions. Some injustice, no doubt, was thus done to the South. But it was more than counterbalanced by the advantage they gained in that the recognition of the blockade made them indisputably belligerents. For these reasons our Government thought it wise to waive its neutral rights and submit to a

INTRODUCTION xi paper blockade, which did not exist. As the Northern power increased at sea the blockade became more and more effective, and by the time Mr. Taylor had got fully to work it may be said to have been something more than a pretence. Finally it became very strict and thoroughly effective, and it is with this instructive period that his reminiscences are chiefly concerned.

This declaration of a blockade that could not be enforced at the time was not the only extension of belligerent rights which the Federal Government claimed and exercised in respect of blockade. As Mr. Taylor fully explains, they did not confine their operations against blockade-runners to the established practice of watching the closed ports. Not only did they cruise for offenders on the high seas, but they intercepted them close to their points of departure, thousands of miles from the blockaded ports. Nay, they even went so far as to attempt to blockade the neutral ports which the offending vessels were using as bases of operations. To most of these claims no objection was made, and there is no doubt that in any future war similar operations

INTRODUCTION will be recognised without question, as within belligerent rights.

In previous wars a belligerent declaring a blockade had to concern himself with little more than turning back ordinary merchantmen who had not received notice of the blockade, or cutting off small fry of the smuggling type that slipped over from adjacent coasts to take their chance of getting in. Such a thing as neutral merchants establishing public companies to build fleets of specially designed vessels for the avowed purpose of breaking a blockade which was thoroughly effective against ordinary types of merchantmen, was a thing unknown to International Law. And further, when these merchants stretched their rights as neutrals so far as to establish regular bases almost in the enemy's waters from which to conduct their revolutionary operations, it was obvious that some latitude must be granted to the blockading power. No objection, therefore, was ever raised to his cutting off vessels avowedly constructed for blockade-running at any point he chose ; but when he attempted to blockade neutral ports from which they were acting,

INTRODUCTION

England put her foot down and compelled the Federal cruisers to draw off. In this she was clearly within her rights. But although the Federal claim to this bold extension of belligerent rights was undoubtedly illegal, it was not without provocation. It is another law of blockade that a vessel is not " guilty " and cannot be interfered with unless it is bound for a blockaded port. The system pursued by Mr, Taylor of establishing depots or bases on British territory close to American waters thus greatly increased the difficulties of the cruisers. Goods destined for the blockaded ports were consigned first to one of these bases, Bermuda, Havana, or the Bahamas, and on their way could not be touched by the Northern captains. It was naturally a great temptation to these officers as they watched the offensive traffic pouring into the runner's bases to see that it did not get out. It is even conceivable that England might have been induced to wink at their proceedings. But it so happened that the first and only attempt to blockade blockade-runners in a British port was made by the very officer who was the culprit in the Trent affair, and that too xiv INTRODUCTION

while we were still unsoothed from his last violation of our neutrality. The British Government, therefore, happened to be in a very irritable mood with the North, and though they had hitherto been inexhaustible in their sympathy with the Federal belligerent pretensions, they now peremptorily stopped their complacency and the North had to submit.

Whether the claim made tentatively by the Northern Government is destined to become recognised by International Law is by no means clear. In the case in question the neutral was too powerful to be resisted. Shortly after, however, the same scheme was actually put in operation by one of the most famous of Mr. Taylor's colleagues, the " notorious Captain Roberts," the ^rch-blockade runner and a British naval officer. When the American war closed, the Turkish Government had been trying for months to suppress an insurrection in Crete by blockading the island on the old lines. Hobart (whose nom de guerre as a blockade-runner was " Roberts "), profiting by his recent experience, undertook to suppress it in a week, and his offer was

INTRODUCTION xv accepted. The insurgents were living entirely on supplies sent them from Greece, and Hobart having been placed in command of the blockading squadron proceeded at once to blockade the Greek vessels in their own ports, and the Cretans were immediately starved into surrender.

This and every other indication show a tendency for the belligerent rights of blockade to increase at the expense of the neutral. If this be so, then blockade must become a more and more effective naval operation, and hence the importance of its study down to the minutest particulars from which any forecast of the future may be obtained.

For the non-professional reader one of the chief points of technical interest in Mr. Taylor's book will be the light it throws on a great national question, which periodically comes out in moments of alarm. It is now a common subject for paragraphists to dilate upon how, if England lost command of the sea, her food supply would be cut off in a week (or some other minute period) and herself be brought to the mercy of her enemy. However useful xvi INTRODUCTION

such prognostications may be for stimulating an interest in the navy, they are full of fallacies and even dangerous as leading to demands for naval armaments so extravagant as to cause the taxpayer to turn his back on the navy altogether, and button his pockets in sheer disgust. To begin with, if England lost the command of the sea, it does not follow that any one else would obtain it, a fact too often lost sight of in naval discussion. The thing does not hang in a simple dilemma. You cannot say, either England has the command or her enemy has it. There is still the middle hypothesis, that neither has it. And this in all reasonable probability is the worst that could suddenly befall us. The destruction of England's command of the sea is no child's play, and even if three Powers together succeeded in doing it, it could only be at such a sacrifice to themselves as would leave the seas practically free to the operations of neutrals. Mr. Taylor's experiences show clearly how surprisingly easy it was for bold and expert captains with adequate vessels to run the most strict and effective blockades.

INTRODUCTION^-

Were England to become engaged in a great war, the first step would be for numbers of her mercantile marine to pass to neutral flags, and all' these vessels with their crews would be ready-made blockade- runners the moment there was a call for them. And even assuming that by some extraordinary chance the British fleet for a time was suppressed with little or no damage to the enemy, the precedents of the American war go to show that the navies of three Powers absolutely intact could hardly avail to maintain a blockade of such a coast-line as ours.

The conditions of blockade, it is true, have changed, but the balance remains much the same. Mr. Taylor considers that searchlights, for instance, tell quite as much for one side as the other. Increased speed is at least as favourable for running as it is for blockading. Torpedo boats seem hardly to affect the balance at all. For while they render the position of a blockading squadron less secure than formerly, they on the other hand furnish it with ideal patrols. Quick-firing guns are all in favour of the blockader, but there xviii INTRODUCTION

is no doubt, long-range guns of position are all against him, compelling him to keep further to sea and so to cover more ground. The extreme importance of invisibility too, on which Mr. Taylor insists, shows how great an advantage a runner, able to procure good smokeless coal, would have over a force blockading the English coast which could not obtain it. On the whole we may safely conclude that a commercial blockade is certainly no easier than it was in the sixties. Many indications from the following pages show how difficult it is to maintain the blockade even of half a dozen ports, if you are unable to intercept the regular runners at their points of departure. This a force without undisputed mastery of the sea could never effect to a sufficient extent. The lesson then that the following pages most clearly teaches is, that the danger of the British Isles being blockaded by any conceivable combination of hostile Powers, so as to reduce her even approximately near starvation, may be dismissed as outside the region of practical strategy ; and in the next place they show us the vast importance of

INTRODUCTION xix

maintaining in our navy an adequate force of vessels of a type calculated to render a commercial blockade really effective. What Mr. Taylor was able to do with one little steamer to prolong Lee's resistance is a lesson to be remembered beside Dundonald's operations on the coast of Spain.

Such are a few of the considerations which Mr. Taylor's book suggests. Different men will draw different lessons from the facts it presents, but its value as the work of a man of unequalled experience in the working of a great blockade will be admitted by all : and whatever weight may be attached to the author's conclusions from his practical experience, the little work will amply justify its existence if it in any way stimulates interest in the practical side of a subject," which naval writers seem inclined to leave too much in the hands of

International lawyers.

JULIAN CORBETT.

CHAPTER I How I Began .... CHAPTER HI

The Banshee no. z .

CHAPTER V

Fort Fisher and Wilmington .

PAGE I

CHAPTER n

My First Attempt on the Despatch . , i6

CHAPTER IV

The Banshees First Run In .... 44

CHAPTER VI

The Rest of the Banshee no. r.'s Career . 70 xxii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAGE

Life at Nassau 86

CHAPTER VIII Our Fleet loi

CHAPTER IX Bermuda 115

CHAPTER X Experiences Ashore in Dixie's Land . . 131

CHAPTER XI Havana and Galveston 145

CHAPTER XII Blockades of the Past and the Future . . 166

Index 177

ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, Etc.

Burning of the Night Hawk . . Frontispiece

Chart of Wilmington Harbour and

Approaches .... Page 45

Portrait of Colonel Lamb . To face page 56

Banshee chased by James Adger „ „ 78

Will- &- THE -Wisp's Dash for Wilmington . . . . ,, „ 106

Banshee No. 2 running the Gauntlet of the Galveston Blockading Squadron in Daylight . . ' , ,,156

Map of the East Coast of North America At end

CHAPTER I

HOW I BEGAN

Feeling in Liverpool — Declaration of blockade — Its immediate result — Effect on trade in Liverpool — The theory of blockades — Attitude of the Federal States — Seaboard of the Seceding States — The Federal Navy — Energy of the Northern States — Additions to the Federal Fleet — Position of the Southerners at sea — Want of building yards and material — Commerce destroyers — The Merrimac and the Monitor — The Alabama and her consorts — Attitude of Great Britain — A royal proclamation — Preparation for blockade-running — Amateurish efforts — Daring attempts — The Trent affair — Launched as a blockade-runner.

At the outbreak of the great American Civil War I was serving as assistant to a firm of Liverpool merchants trading chiefly with India and the United States. There was little in my life at the outset to foretell the full taste of danger, excitement, and adventure which it was my fortune so early to enjoy. I had nothing to hope for beyond the usual life of office routine and a dim chance of a partnership abroad in the future.

B

HOW T BEGAN chap.

Young as I was, my interest in the comingf struggle was deeply aroused. From the position I occupied its significance was brought home to me with the absorbing interest of a factor in my career. My own fortunes and those of my nearest friends seemed at their outset to be bound up in a piece of history that promised to leave its mark upon the world. Nowhere indeed out of America was the secession of the Southern States more keenly watched or canvassed than in Liverpool offices and upon the Exchange of the city, which American trade had begotten and nursed ; and the particular aspect of the impending war was most calculated to fill the imagination of youngsters like myself, who were awakening from the dreams of boyhood to the excitements of real life.

It will be remembered that, as soon as war was seen to be inevitable, President Lincoln sanctioned the heroic measure of attempting to choke secession by closing every orifice through which supplies could be drawn, and in the middle of April 1861 rebellion was turned into civil war by his

DECLARATION OF BLOCKADE declaring the whole of the Southern ports in a state of blockade. One of the immediate results of this act of President Lincoln was the prompt acknowledgment of the South as belligerents by England and France. Yet the Federal States persisted in maintaining that the Confederates were rebels, and that whosoever ventured to recognise them as belligerents must be regarded as friends of rebels and no friends of the North. They ignored the fact that their interference with neutral trade, by this declaration of blockade, was a virtual concession of belligerency to the South. A declaration of blockade presupposes a state of war and not mere rebellion, and the claim by the Federals of a right to seize neutral vessels attempting to break a blockade was one which can be exercised only by a belligerent ; exercised by any one else it is mere piracy.

The effect of the news on the Liverpool Exchange it is needless to describe. By the scratch of a foreign pen a blow that was without precedent was struck at the chief trade of the port. So prodigious indeed

HOW I BEGAN chap.

was this first act of war that for some time there was a doubt whether the Neutral Powers would recognise it. Only five years before the Powers assembled at Paris to wind up the Russian war had by solemn agreement declared, as the final and universal law of nations, that blockades to be binding must be effective; that is to say, that all the ports declared to be blockaded must be actually invested, or at least so closely watched by a cruising squadron that no ship can attempt to leave or enter without manifest danger of capture. Now, as the seaboard of the Seceding States extended from the river Potomac in Virginia, above Cape Hatteras, down to the Rio Grande (the southern frontier of Texas), the coast -line which the Federal Government had to watch effectively was some 3000 miles in length. It was studded, moreover, at wide intervals with ten or a dozen ports of first-rate importance.

The total fleet of the United States when the war broke out consisted of less than 150 vessels, of which fully one -third were quite unserviceable. About forty had crews;

I ENERGY OF THE NORTHERNERS 5

the rest were out of commission, and of these ten or eleven of the best were lying at the Norfolk Navy Yard and fell into the hands of the Confederates. From these figures it will be seen, therefore, how impossible it was at first to maintain the blockade which the Northerners had declared, and how ineffectual it must be, seeing the length of coast-line to be watched.

With their usual energy, however, the Northerners set to work to increase their fleet , within very few weeks over 150 vessels had been purchased and equipped for sea, and more than fifty ironclads and gunboats laid down and rapidly pushed forward towards completion. In addition to these a large number of river craft were requisitioned and protected by bullet-proof iron for service on the rivers ; but even with these vigorous measures the blockade was anything but effective during the first eighteen months or two years of the war. But the Northerners steadily and by almost superhuman efforts increased their fleet, and at the beginning of 1865 had so far succeeded that they possessed a fleet

HOW I BEGAN chap.

of nearly 700 vessels, of which some 150 were employed upon the blockade of Wilmington and Charleston alone, and patrolling their adjacent waters.

It can easily be imagined, therefore, that attempting to get in and out of those ports in the latter months of 1864 and the early ones of 1865 was a very different business from the condition of affairs which existed earlier in the war. When the above ports fell into the hands of the Northerners, the blockade, considering the nature of the coast -line and types of vessels employed as blockaders and runners, was to all intents and purposes as effective as could be expected ; for the blockading fleet consisted of almost every description of craft, from the old-fashioned 60-gun frigate to the mydern " Ironsides " and " Monitors," supplemented by dozens of merchant-steamers converted into gunboats — not very formidable, perhaps, as war-ships, but still dangerous to blockade-runners, especially when fast.

The Southerners, on the other hand, were practically without any navy, with the exception

COMMERCE DESTROYERS of about ten or eleven old wooden vessels captured at Norfolk Navy Yard at the outbreak of the war ; and, as they were almost entirely devoid of engineering works, material, or skilled labour, they could do but little to compete with the North upon the ocean. Their naval efforts were chiefly in the direction of supplying themselves from outside sources with commerce destroyers, such as the Alabama, Florida, Shenandoah, Georgia, etc., though from the wretched and scanty material which they possessed they succeeded in building two or three formidable ironclads ; but their engines and armament were defective, and their crews unskilled. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, the Merrimac, one of the wooden steamers which they had seized at Norfolk, and which' they had converted into an ironclad by covering the hull with railway iron, fought a gallant fight in Hampton Roads with the celebrated Monitor, after having destroyed on the previous day the Congress and Cumberland, two large Northern war-ships.

Another ironclad was also improvised by the Southerners at Mobile. She was called

HO IV I BEGAN chap.

the Tennessee, and was altogether a more formidable craft than the Merrimac, both as regards armament and size, but like the Merrimac was terribly defective in engine power. When Farragut attacked Mobile she did considerable damage to his fleet, and for a time engaged it single-handed, but at last was forced to haul down her flag.

The Confederates also built another small ironclad at Wilmington on the same lines as the Merrimac and Tennessee, but unfortunately she ran ashore on her passage down the river, in order to attack the blockaders outside, and became a total wreck. In addition to the ships I have mentioned they possessed the Sumpter, Rappahanock, Tallahasse (steamers), and several sailing vessels ; but with these vessels they had no chance against their powerful rivals in actual warfare, although the Alabama and her consorts swept the mercantile navy of the United States from the ocean.

Seeing how inadequate the Federal navy was at the time when the blockade was declared, there was certainly a strong case for treating President Lincoln's prohibition as a mere

A ROYAL PROCLAMATION

"paper" blockade. This, however, the British Government did not choose to do. At this time we were particularly anxious, in view of the coming International Exhibition, to stand well with all men and to be entangled in no foreign complications. Within a fortnight, therefore, of the receipt of the news, there came out a Royal Proclamation enjoining on all loyal subjects of the British Crown an attitude of strict neutrality, and solemnly admonishing them under pain of Her Majesty's displeasure to respect the Federal blockade.

Needless to say, the proclamation awakened no respect whatever for the blockade. The lecture in the latter part of it was received in the spirit in which it was issued — as a piece of mere international courtesy ; and those of Her Majesty's loyal subjects who were most affected by the new situation at once took steps to make the best of it. With due respect to the pain of Her Majesty's displeasure we all knew that to run a foreign blockade could never be an offence against the laws of the realm, nor were we to be persuaded that any number of successful or lo HOW Z BEGAN chap.

unsuccessful attempts to enter the proclaimed ports could ever constitute a breach of neutrality. Firm after firm, with an entirely clear conscience, set about endeavouring to recoup itself for the loss of legitimate trade by the high profits to be made out of successful evasions of the Federal cruisers ; and in Liverpool was awakened a spirit the like of which had not been known since the palmy days of the slave trade.

It was a spirit of adventurous commerce savouring of the good old days of the French wars, when a lad might any day be called from the office to take his place on the deck of a privateer, and when daring spirits were alwiays ready to steal away from a convoy and run the risk of capture on the chance of getting the cream of the market. The risks a blockade-runner had to face were much the same, for as no Government pretends to interfere with its citizens if they choose at their peril to trade in the face of a blockade, so no protection or redress is given them if they are caught red-handed. After official notification of blockade any neutral vessel

AN EXCITING PROSPECT ii attempting to leave or enter a blockaded port forfeits its neutrality and places itself in the position of a hostile belligerent. The blockading force is entitled to treat such a ship in all respects as an enemy, and to use any rneans recognised in civilised warfare to drive off, capture, or destroy her. A crew so captured may be treated as prisoners of war, and their vessel carried into the captor's port, where after condemnation by an Admiralty court she becomes his prize. Nor is any resistance to capture permitted, and a single blow or shot in his own defence turns the blockade-runner into a pirate.

Such was the exciting prospect our seamen and supercargoes had before them as they sailed for the. Southern ports. At first, of course, the risk was not thought very great ; the Confederate ports were so many and far ■between, and the Federal navy so weak and unorganised, that vessels proceeded very much as if there was no blockade at all. The consequence was that as early as June 1861, barely two months after the declaration of the blockade, several English vessels had been