The Price of Entry(port)

TFSmith has his fictitious naval historian Irene Musicant deliver a large fraction of the exposition on the blockade. In spite of the heavy repetition employed in these sections, it is nevertheless clear that he must have written much of it - which opens up interesting questions.




In a section in a late chapter, TFSmith via Irene states:

As a point of comparison, the U.S. Navy’s blockade of the southern ports required patrolling some 3,500 miles of rebel coastline and 180 possible ports of entry, the largest effort ever attempted; when the war began in 1861, the Americans had some 90 purpose-built warships, including some 40-odd steamers, in commission or laid up. By the end of 1861, another 140 vessels – mostly converted merchantmen, and suitable only for coastal and inshore service - were added, including another 80 steamers. Even then, with some 160 vessels assigned to blockade duty (the remainder were operating in support of the Army, or assigned to other tasks), and no real rebel navy in opposition, the U.S. Navy’s campaign was widely seen as partially effective, at best. Although purely commercial shipping had stopped, fast blockade runners, often built in Britain, were operating freely out of Cuba, the Bahamas, and Bermuda.

Starting from first principles, we can examine this and attempt to determine how the British blockade of the Union should be going by the latter half of the year.


Firstly, there is the question of the length of the coastline. The oft-quoted value for the length of the Union coastline is 1,260 miles (of which 20% is Maine, and with British troops cutting all rail routes from north of Portland Maine that section is effectively useless) - this is very roughly 1/3 of the amount given for the Rebel coastline, so the ships should be more tightly concentrated.

Secondly, there is the number of possible ports of entry. As it happens, the Union coastline is not like the Confederate one - much of the Union coastline is defined by a few very large rivers and bays (New York bay, Long Island Sound, Delaware Bay and the Chesapeake Bay) and so the number of ports of entry is considerably lower - possibly as little as a couple of dozen, so long as the mouths of points like the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound are efficiently blocked. Again, this means the ships should be more tightly concentrated, by as much as a factor of eight or so.


Thirdly, there is the question of the number of ships. At different times TFSmith has indicated that the number of ships blockading the Union is anything from forty (the number he shows present when a battle comes up) to well over a hundred (the number deployed for the purposes of logistics). The chapter in question describes Milne asking for 24+16+24+32 ships of frigate/corvette/sloop/gunboat classes, and for now we will use this number - it totals 96. TFSmith also describes the number of ships assigned to Union blockade duty as "160" out of a total number of 210, and so we can assume the number of steamers is in proportion at roughly 70% of the total number of available steamers (so 84). The British actually have more steamers assigned to the blockade than the Union, and compressed into a far smaller area.


Fourthly, TFSmith says that the Rebels had "no real navy". While true (TFSmith has the Virginia ahistorically destroyed in drydock), this is largely unimportant - the British have plenty of steam liners in reserve, and in a realistic deployment of force they would see a Union sally as a good opportunity to sink them.


Fifthly, TFSmith also states that the blockade stopped "purely commercial" shipping, and that only "fast blockade runners, often built in Britain" were still able to operate - out of "Cuba, the Bahamas, and Bermuda".
The distance from each of these points to the closest point on the CS coast, in a straight line, was as follows:
Nassau to Florida 184 miles (Jacksonville 440 miles)
Havana to Florida 170 miles (Mobile Bay 600 miles)
Bermuda to North Carolina 670 miles
Since neither the Bahamas nor Bermuda are viable for blockade runners into the Union, the closest blockade running port for the Union is Havana (roughly 1120 miles from Havana to the mouth of the Chesapeake, 1380 to NY) and there is not a wide choice.
In fact, however, TFSmith makes it clear that he does not understand how blockade running worked at all. Real blockade running vessels went as close to the target coast as possible to start their runs, with other (non blockade runner) ships carrying the goods from their purchase point to the blockade-running port. This is because the ships are vulnerable at any point on their voyage.
Also, critically, blockade runners were often not merely British built but British flagged - the neutral flag allowed an important degree of protection, as it meant the ship was a neutral vessel instead of an enemy one and could not be captured on a whim (there had to be probable cause, meaning the ship could only be caught when it was obviously attempting to run the blockade).

Instead, TFSmith describes the blockade running efforts like this:

At the same time, the U.S. blockade running effort was well and truly organized: the network of American consuls and agents throughout the Atlantic littoral, from Europe to Africa to South America, well-financed by gold and silver pouring out of the mines of California, Nevada, and Colorado, could buy munitions selectively and ship at least a percentage of what was necessary through the often fragile spider’s web of the blockade.

The fortunes made were staggering. Profits from a pair of round-trips from New England to Europe and back again could pay the entire cost of a new-built blockade runner, and running became big business in port cities from Portsmouth to Philadelphia. Investors could see a 15 percent return in two months, and 200 percent in four. A $3,200 investment in one share of a fast blockade runner (the commissioned runner USS New Constitution, newly-built by Webb in New York and chartered by the Navy in 1861 from the Pacific Mail, for example) could be easily sold for $6,000 after a single round-trip. An ordinary seaman, lucky to make $150 in a year at sea in peacetime, could make $100 in gold in a single voyage, and a $50 bonus in gold at its successful conclusion, and most were successful - in 1862, only one runner in eight was captured by the British. For the same voyage, a captain or pilot could receive $5,000 a trip, the equivalent of $66,000 in 1990 US dollars.

A short history of one such ship should serve to make the point. USS Vanderbilt was a 3,400-ton sidewheel steamer, built as a fast liner for Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's North Atlantic Mail Steamship Line and placed into service in 1857. Popularly known as "Vanderbilt's Yacht," the former flagship of the Line had been chartered as a transport by the Army and then transferred to the Navy. Capable of 14 knots, the big gray liner had slipped out of New York harbor in January, running across the Atlantic to Europe, where she was loaded with saltpeter purchased by American agents in a half-dozen ports, and then ran back, arriving triumphantly in New York in March after passing the initial line of patrolling British warships at night.

This apparently means that the Americans are making blockade-running attempts not from a few hundred miles out, but from more than three thousand. The width of the Atlantic, so often cited as a millstone around the necks of the British, evaporates when blockade runners make an eight thousand mile round trip while still able to speed through the British blockade with ease.
The Vanderbilt is cited as typical, when she was certainly not - one of the fastest ships in the Americas, in fact - and the Constitution was described by the NYT as the largest wooden steamer in the world (and as having a speed of about twelve knots in bad weather).
We have already seen that TFSmith radically overestimates the number of Blue Riband holders available to the Union, but he also considerably underestimates the chances of being caught. His number of "only one runner in eight" is actually the estimate of the efficiency of the Union blockade in 1862 - and even in 1863, as the number of steamers on the blockade rose and the US picked up experience, the number of blockade runners captured rose to one in four (even though the blockade runners themselves were also becoming more experienced). With the concentration of more purpose-built British warships into a smaller area than the Union could count on in 1862, and with blockade runners coming from much further away, the British might even approach the efficiency of the Union blockade of 1864 - one in three.





This also contains a continuity error - TFSmith does not have the war begin until April, and yet the sample voyage for the Vanderbilt has her leaving New York in January and returning in March.

Once the war had begun, of course, an enemy (Union) ship visiting half a dozen ports in Europe would be at serious risk of finding a British patrol waiting off one of the ports she visited waiting for her to exit. As an official Government charter (as described) she would be vulnerable to capture or interception at any time.
Perhaps it is only before the war began that such a voyage would be possible after all.