In the last months of the American Civil War, the upper Texas coast became a hive of blockade running. Though Texas was often considered an isolated backwater in the conflict, the Union's pervasive and systematic seizure of Southern ports left Galveston as one of the only strongholds of foreign imports in the anemic supply chain to embattled Confederate forces. Long, fast steamships ran in and out of the city's port almost every week, bound to and from Cuba. Join author Andrew W. Hall as he explores the story of Texas's Civil War blockade runners--a story of daring, of desperation and, in many cases, of patriotism turning coat to profiteering.

At the beginning of the American Civil War the Federal government imposed a blockade of the southern coast of the Confederate States of America, including the "dark corner of the Confederacy"--Texas. Much of the fighting in Texas during the Civil War took place in the state's coastal counties and the adjoining Gulf of Mexico waters, and nearly all of these engagements were involved in one way or another with the Union blockade of the Texas coast. This book examines all major blockade-related land and sea engagements in and near Texas, and also includes many minor ones. It begins with a discussion of the blockade's creation and then concentrates on the successful Confederate efforts to evade the blockade by shipping cotton out of Mexico and, in return, receiving materiel and civilian goods through that neutral nation. The author also covers political intrigue and the spy activity with the French who had invaded Mexico. The book concludes with an analysis of the effectiveness of the Union blockade of Texas.

William Watson published his account of the two years he spent evading Union gunboats and dealing with the "sharpers" who fed off the misfortune of war in 1892. Using log books, personal papers, and business memoranda, he sought to write a "plain, blunt" account of "events just as they happened." Instead, he wrote a classic adventure tale whose careful description of seafaring in the 1860s gives us a glimpse into a world now closed to us. Watson is the protagonist, but he shares his story with his ship, the Rob Roy, a center-board schooner whose shallow draft and wide beam made it the ideal vessel for slipping over shoals and dashing in and out of blockaded ports. He peoples his account with the good, the bad, and the unlucky, from the likeable and irrepressible Captain Dave McLusky to the loathsome and dishonest Mr. R. M. He takes his reader from Havana, where land sharks greeted incoming sailors, to Galveston, where sharp businessmen and corrupt officials connived to confiscate both profits and ships. He stops at Matamora, a dusty place on "a bare and barren coast," and he visits General Magruder in Houston. His crew brave gales and a hurricane that drives the Rob Roy back thirty miles; and he survives plots against his ship and his life. Through it all, Watson enjoys himself. Blockade running, he declares, was not "unlawful or dishonourable." Rather, it was "a bold and daring enterprise," an "exciting sport of the higher order," like racing yachts, and an almost obligatory act of defiance of a blockade "maintained by no other right than by the force of arms." The "commission merchants" did better than the blockade runners. But Watson recalled his years dodging federal gunboats and outwitting petty officials, treacherous crew, and dishonest businessmen as "much more congenial than the extortions and deceitful wheedling and trickeries of the legitimate trade." This is an adventure story held together by the nuts and bolts of sailing. Watson's discussion of why sail was superior to steam for running blockades is superb; his detailed accounts of surviving gales and outrunning Federal cruisers are fascinating. He takes yellow fever and high sea chases in stride. Through it all, he maintains his honor and guards his profits. For the reader who wants to ply the Gulf of Mexico under sail, play the lottery in Havana, and visit Texas when it was "a new country," Watson is the perfect guide to run the blockade that time imposes on posterity.

From the Introduction to the Dogwood Press Edition . . . The writer is fully aware that several books already exist about Confederate blockade-running, enough so that one might think there is nothing new to be written, but many of those books deal solely with the Atlantic seaboard. Nevertheless, it was the author's desire to write a story devoted solely to blockade-running in the Western Gulf of Mexico, that is, the Louisiana-Texas coast lines. Over a long period of years, the author collected a long bibliography of blockade-running stories, devoted to the heroism and ingenuity exhibited by both the Confederate blockade runners and the West Gulf blockading Squadron. . . The names of Admiral David Farragut and Raphael Semmes will always adorn Civil War naval history books. Much less known were the wiles, skills, ingenuity, and derring-do exhibited by the western Gulf of Mexico blockade runners. . . . The writer believes there is something of special interest and intrigue between the covers of this book for every Civil War buff to enjoy. This republished edition includes six first-hand accounts as appendixes, 56 new figures, and a new introduction putting the work in the context of the Denbigh Shipwreck Project.

One of the finest original works on the Civil War. -- Civil War News

"The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner" by J. Wilkinson is a story about a Confederate Naval Officer that spent some time as a Commanding Officer of two different blockade runners during the American Civil War. These personal accounts are still engaging and relevant over 150 years after they were first written. Though everything in this book is factual, it reads like an adventure novel that could be complete fiction.