As already said, the blockade-runners were at first chiefly old sailing ships of various rigs or old steamers, the idea being to risk as little capital as possible in this illegitimate trade while making the utmost profit—not an unknown plan in legitimate trade, and never a wise one. Small schooners were used all through the wars to run the numerous shoal-water inlets along the coast, but the real interest in the blockade-runners begins when the Liverpool merchants began to build steamers especially designed for that purpose—build them without hindrance on the part of their government.
The Blockade-runner Teaser.
From a photograph made in 1864.
Taylor, as said, was the first to carry out one of these swift vessels, and he describes her as follows:
“The new blockade-runner was a paddle boat, built of steel, on extraordinarily fine lines, 214 feet long and 20 feet beam, and drew only 8 feet of water. Her masts were mere poles without yards, and with the least possible rigging. In order to attain greater speed in a sea-way she was built with a turtle-back deck forward. She was of 217 tons net register, and had an anticipated sea speed of eleven knots, with a coal consumption of thirty tons a day. Her crew, which included three engineers and twelve firemen, consisted of thirty-six hands all told.” And she was a type of the best sort, although they eventually reached a speed of seventeen knots.
At Nassau “everything aloft was taken down, till nothing was left standing but the lower masts, with small cross-trees for a lookout man on the fore, and the boats were lowered to the level of the rails. The whole ship was then painted a sort of dull white, the precise shade of which was so nicely ascertained by experience before the end of the war that a properly dressed runner on a dark night was absolutely indiscernible at a cable’s length. So particular were captains on this point that some of them even insisted on their crews wearing white at night, holding that one black figure on the bridge or on deck was enough to betray an otherwise invisible vessel.
“The reckless loading, to which high profits and the perquisites allowed to officers led, is to a landsman inconceivable. That men should be found willing to put to sea at all in these frail craft piled like hay wagons is extraordinary enough, but that they should do so in the face of a vigilant and active blockading force, and do it successfully, seems rather an invention of romance than a commonplace occurrence of our own time.”
So prepared, the steamer sneaked away from port, fled from every sail and every smoke, crossed the Gulf Stream by daylight in order to determine her position uninfluenced by the current, and struck in on the coast at night. The light on the blockading flagship was commonly used to locate the harbor, and when this was seen the runner either ran away around the end of the squadron and slipped in along the coast or else plunged boldly through under the guns of the flagship.
The Banshee on her first inward trip received $250 per ton in gold for freight on war material. She carried out 100 tons of tobacco at $350 per ton, and 500 bales of cotton, that yielded $250 net per bale.