natural advantages, it was the most difficult of all the Southern
ports to keep guarded. With the rest of the Confederate ports,
Wilmington was declared blockaded; but it was long after, before a
suitable blockading-fleet was stationed there. In July, 1861, the
British brig "Herald" left Wilmington without molestation. When two
days out, she ran across a United States man-of-war, that promptly
captured her. The courts, however, decided that a port so little
guarded as Wilmington was at that time could not be legally called
blockaded, and the brig was therefore released.

But it did not take many months for the energetic men of the Navy
Department to get together such a fleet of boats of all kinds as to
enable them to effectually seal all the ports of the Confederacy. A
blockading vessel need not be of great strength or powerful armament.
All that is necessary is that she should be swift, and carry a gun
heavy enough to overawe any merchantman that might attempt to run the
blockade. And as such vessels were easy to improvise out of tug-boats,
ferry-boats, yachts, and other small craft, it came about that by the
last of 1861, the people of the seaport towns of the South, looking
seaward from their deserted wharves, could see two or three Federal
cruisers lying anchored off the outer bar, just out of reach of the
guns of shore-batteries. It was a service of no little danger for the
blue-jackets. The enemy were ever on the alert to break the blockade
by destroying the ships with torpedoes. Iron-clad rams were built on
the banks of the rivers, and sent down to sink and destroy the vessels
whose watchfulness meant starvation to the Confederacy. The
"Albemarle" and the "Merrimac" were notable instances of this course
of attack. But the greatest danger which the sailors had to encounter
was the peril of being wrecked by the furious storms which continually
ravage the Atlantic coast. The sailor loves the open sea in a blow;
but until the civil war, no captain had ever dared to lie tugging at
his cables within a mile or two of a lee shore, with a stiff
north-easter lashing the sea into fury. In the blockading service of
our great naval war, the war of 1812, the method in vogue was to keep
a few vessels cruising up and down the coast; and, when it came on to
blow, these ships would put out into the open sea and scud for some
other point. But in '61 we had hundreds of vessels stationed along the
enemy's coast; and where a ship was