Union Blockade - Major Engagements

Major Engagements

The first victory for the U.S. Navy during the early phases of the blockade occurred on April 24, 1861, when the sloop USS Cumberland and a small flotilla of support ships began seizing Confederate ships and privateers in the vicinity of Fort Monroe off the Virginia coastline. Within the next two weeks, Flag Officer Garrett J. Pendergrast had captured 16 enemy vessels, serving early notice to the Confederate War Department that the blockade would be effective if extended.

Early battles in support of the blockade included the Blockade of the Chesapeake Bay, from May to June 1861, and the Blockade of the Carolina Coast, August–December 1861. Both enabled the Union Navy to gradually extend its blockade southward along the Atlantic seaboard.

In early March 1862 the blockade of the James River in Virginia was gravely threatened by the first ironclad, the CSS Virginia aka Merrimack in the dramatic Battle of Hampton Roads. Only the timely entry of the new Union ironclad USS Monitor forestalled the threat. Two months later, the Virginia and other ships of the James River Squadron were scuttled in response to the Union Army and Navy advances.

The port of Savannah, Georgia was effectively sealed by the reduction and surrender of Fort Pulaski on April 11, 1862.

The largest Confederate port, New Orleans, Louisiana, was ill-suited to blockade running since the channels could be sealed by the U.S. Navy. From April 16 to April 22, 1862 the major forts below the city, Forts Jackson and St. Philip were bombarded by David Dixon Porter's mortar schooners. On April 22 Flag Officer David Farragut's fleet cleared a passage through the obstructions. The fleet successfully ran past the forts on the morning of April 24. This forced the surrender of the forts and New Orleans.

The Battle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864, closed the last major Confederate port in the Gulf of Mexico.

In December 1864, Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles sent a force against Fort Fisher, which protected the Confederate's access to the Atlantic from Wilmington, North Carolina, the last open Confederate port. The first attack failed, but with a change in tactics (and Union generals), the fort fell in January 1865, closing the last major Confederate port.

As the Union fleet grew in size, speed and sophistication, more ports came under Federal control. After 1862, only three ports—Wilmington, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; and Mobile, Alabama—remained open for the 75 to 100 blockade runners in business. Charleston was shut down by Admiral John A. Dahlgren's South Atlantic Blockading Squadron in 1863. Mobile Bay was captured in August 1864 by Admiral David Farragut. Blockade runners faced an increasing risk of capture— in 1861 and 1862, one sortie in 9 ended in capture; in 1863 and 1864, one in 3. By war's end, imports had been choked to a trickle as the number of captures came to 50% of the sorties. Some 1,100 blockade runners were captured (and another 300 destroyed). British investors frequently made the mistake of reinvesting their profits in the trade; when the war ended they were stuck with useless ships and rapidly depreciating cotton. In the final accounting, perhaps half the investors took a profit, and half a loss.

The Union victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in July 1863 opened up the Mississippi River and effectively cut off the western Confederacy as a source of troops and supplies. The fall of Fort Fisher and the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, early in 1865 closed the last major port for blockade runners, and in quick succession Richmond was evacuated, the Army of Northern Virginia disintegrated, and General Lee surrendered. Thus, most economists give the Union blockade a prominent role in the outcome of the war. (Elekund, 2004)