12. The Royal Navy participated in the blockade running through some of its officers
Many of the officers of Britain’s Royal Navy, unemployed and on half-pay, requested and were granted extended leave. This freed them to serve in the blockade runners owned by British merchants and shipping consortiums. British investors poured the equivalent of nearly $3 billion in 21st century dollars into blockade runners, and their profits were sufficient to allow them to pay high salaries to their officers, and high wages to their crews. Often the pay was hundreds of times more than they could make during the same time period in the Navy. Expenses, which included pay of crews, were usually about one-third of the revenue received from a given voyage.
Ships left the American ports laden with cotton, tobacco, pine-tar and turpentine, and pulpwood, and returned carrying rifles, medicines, spirits, and coffee. During the American Civil War, the ports in the Bahamas and Bermuda bustled with commerce, with regular freighters delivering the goods from Europe and picking up those carried by the blockade runners. There was, in 1863 and most of 1864, about a one in five chance of being caught for a blockade runner. The risk seemed bearable to professional seamen, especially when compared to the potential financial rewards. Beginning in late 1863 the practice changed. Smaller, faster hulls meant that heavy cargoes were smaller and less profitable.