deral fortress,
rather marred the attractiveness of the nefarious trade. The profits
of a successful voyage to the owner of the ship and cargo were
enormous. One of the steamers, specially built for the trade, at large
cost, has been known to pay for herself fully in one voyage. Indeed,
the profits must have been huge to induce merchants to take the risk
of absolutely losing a ship and cargo worth half a million of dollars.
It is certain, too, that throughout the war the number of vessels
captured, while trying to run the blockade, was far in excess of those
that succeeded. Up to the end of 1863 the Federal Secretary of the
Navy reported 1,045 vessels captured, classified as follows:
schooners, 547; steamers, 179; sloops, 117; brigs, 30; barks, 26;
ships, 15; yachts and boats, 117. Of course, most of these were small,
coastwise vessels. Even among the steamers captured, there were but
few of the fleet-going, English-built craft.

There was no small amount of smuggling carried on between the ports of
the North and the blockaded ports. The patriotism of the Northern
merchant was not always so great as to prevent his embarking in the
traffic which he saw enriching his English competitor. Many of the
schooners captured started from Northern ports and worked their way
along the coast until that chain of inlets, sounds, and bayous was
reached, which borders the coast south of Chesapeake Bay. Once inside
the bar, the smuggler could run at his leisure for any of the little
towns that stood on the banks of the rivers of Virginia and North
Carolina. The chase of one of these little vessels was a dreary duty
to the officers of the blockading-ships. The fugitives were fast
clippers of the models that made Maine shipbuilders famous, until the
inauguration of steam-navigation made a gracefully modelled hull
immaterial as compared with powerful machinery. Even when the great,
lumbering warship had overhauled the flying schooner so as to bring a
gun to bear on her, the little boat might suddenly dash into some
inlet or up a river, where the man-of-war, with her heavy draught,
could not hope to follow. And if captured, the prize was worth but
little, and the prize-money, that cheers the sailors' hearts, was but
small. But the chase and capture of one of the swift Clyde-built
steamers was a different matter. Perhaps a lookout in the maintop of a
cruiser, steaming idly about the Atlantic, between Nassau and
Wilmington, would spy, far off