, 259 naval officers resigned or were dismissed.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Gideon Welles.

Secretary Welles went energetically to work. Vessels in foreign waters
were called home, the keels of new craft laid in northern dockyards, and
stout merchant ships bought and fitted up for the rough usage of war. By
the end of 1861 the navy numbered 264 vessels. At the close of the war
it had 671 ships, carrying 4,610 guns and 50,000 sailors.

The first work--a gigantic one--was to blockade the southern ports. This
involved the constant patrolling of more than 3,000 miles of dangerous
coast, indented with innumerable inlets, sounds, and bays. But within a
year a fairly effective blockade was in force from Virginia to Texas,
drawn tighter and tighter as the navy increased in size. The
effectiveness of the blockade is sufficiently proved by the dearth at
the South. The South had cotton enough to sell--$300,000,000 worth in
gold at the end of the war--and Europe was greedy to buy; but she could
not get her wares to market. Fifteen hundred prizes, worth $30,000,000,
were taken during the war.

The details of the blockade must be left to the reader's imagination.
Important as the work was, it was comparatively monotonous and
dull--ceaseless watching day and night in all weather, week after week
and month after month. Now and then the routine would be broken by the
excitement of a chase. A suspicious-looking sail would be spied in the
offing and pursued, perhaps, far out to sea. Again, the low hull of a
blockade-runner would be seen creeping around a point and heading for
the open sea. Or on a still night the throb of engines and the splash of
paddle-wheels would give warning that some guilty vessel was trying to
steal into port under cover of darkness. Then came the flare of rockets
to notify the rest of the blockading fleet, the hot pursuit with boilers
crowded to bursting, the boom of the big guns fired at random in the
dark, and the exultation of a capture or the disappointment of failure.

Blockade-running became a regular business, enormously profitable.
Moonless and cloudy nights were of course the most favorable times for
eluding the blockade; but the swift steamers, sitting low in the water
and painted a light neutral tint, could not easily be detected by day at
a little distance, especially as they burned smokeless coal. The bolder
skippers would take all chances. Under cover of a fog they would steal
into or out of