Existing comment:
Initially, the Confederate government shipped its European purchases on privately owned vessels that carried mostly rifles, revolvers, bayonets, swords, cannon, powder, and cartridges. Later, the Ordnance Bureau bought four vessels abroad that ran the blockade with supplies and returned loaded with cotton. From September 1862 to September 1863, these four vessels delivered four times the quantity of small arms produced during the same period in Richmond, Virginia, and Fayetteville and Asheville, North Carolina, combined.
A popular tactic for evading the blockade was sending supplies on vessels from neutral countries to Nassau or other Caribbean ports, where they were transferred to light, swift steam-powered blockade runners. If neutral ships were intercepted en route to the Caribbean, the Union could not seize them without proving the cargo was destined for the Confederacy, an accusation difficult to sustain. |