19. The popular image of the Civil War blockade runner is a largely mythical one
Rhett Butler has long been the image of the successful blockade runner, a Southern gentleman of dash and courage. There were, of course, captains of blockade runners from the Southern states. But they were relatively few. One of the problems which faced the Confederate Navy at the war’s outset was a shortage of trained seamen in the South. The majority of the blockade runners which penetrated to deliver valuable cargoes to the Confederacy were foreign born, and the majority of those were from Great Britain. Both British and American firms hired them to serve. They served in ships which were, for the most part, built in Great Britain.
The image of a ghostly ship unloading its cargo in a hidden inlet or unknown cove in the dark of night is also, for the most part, a myth. It may have happened at one time or another, but ships needed ports in which to unload their cargoes, which then needed a means of being transported elsewhere to be of service. By the 1860s, transport of large cargoes meant railroads. Some blockade runners did operate in lesser known and used ports, but they dealt almost exclusively with consumer goods, rather than those intended for the support of the Confederate Armies in the field. The organized blockade runners relied on the ports to operate, and by 1864 they were running out of them.