![]() ![]() The company operated five sailing ships which plied between these three ports, but the establishment of the blockade prevented these ships from sailing. maintained an office in Liverpool, England, while another subsidiary was based in New York. The subsidiary company of Fraser, Trenholm & Co. ![]() One of the most important shipping businesses in the South was the Charleston-based firm of John Fraser & Company, run by its senior director, George Alfred Trenholm. In this engraving a blockade runner has unloaded its cargo in Nassau, and the cotton is being stored before being shipped on to Britain by a neutral vessel. It was up to private business to provide the wherewithal for the development of a merchant fleet capable of importing and exporting the goods which the Confederacy required.Ĭotton was the main export of the Confederacy, and mill-owners in Europe were willing to pay high prices for cotton brought out of Confederate ports by blockade runners. The resources of the fledgling Confederate Navy were stretched to the limit, so initially the government was unable to build up a state-run merchant marine. It was clear that only ocean-going steamers could provide the Confederacy with the imports it needed to survive. Only a handful of sailing ships arrived from, or sailed to, foreign ports during this period, and the strengthening of the blockade during the second half of 1861 made it almost impossible for large sailing ships to run through the cordon of Union steam-powered warships. Following the imposition of the blockade, these foreign ships no longer served Southern ports. The Southern states had come to rely on foreign steamships to supply them with the imports they needed. While these shallow-draft vessels were ideally suited for their purpose, they were incapable of undertaking transatlantic voyages. This meant that the only indigenous steam-powered merchantmen to operate out of Southern ports during the first year of the war were the small coasting packets which plied between ports in the Gulf of Mexico, or navigated the sheltered waters and inland waterways of the Atlantic seaboard. All of these large steamers would eventually be taken over by the Confederate Navy, and none of them attempted to run the blockade before their conversion into warships began. Initially, the Confederate merchant marine was made up of river boats, sailing ships, small coastal steamers, and just ten ocean-going steam ships. Most foreign vessels which happened to be on the scene at the start of the war sailed from Southern ports before the blockade was established, leaving behind a collection of merchant ships which were ill-suited to run through an enemy blockade. In 1861, the bulk of cotton cargoes exported was shipped by foreign vessels, or else moved by river to Northern ports, where American-registered vessels transported the cotton to Europe. ![]() When President Lincoln announced the imposition of the blockade, neutral shipping was given 15 days to leave Southern ports. Before the outbreak of war, the Southern states had virtually no steam-powered merchant marine. ![]()
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