3. The blockade expanded rapidly throughout 1861
Gideon Welles served as Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War. It was his responsibility to create the fleet necessary to enforce the blockade, and the infrastructure to support the enlarged Navy. Civilian ships were purchased and turned into warships. New warship construction exploded in Northern shipyards on the coast, and along the inland rivers. In 1861 alone, 140 new ships were commissioned into the United States Navy, 80 of which were steam-powered. The construction effort continued throughout the war, as ironclads joined the fleet. At the end of the Civil War, the United States Navy was the largest in the world, with almost 700 ships.
The South could not possibly create a fleet to oppose the Union Naval might. Nor could its shipyards turn out the ships necessary to elude the Union blockade. A few blockade runners were built in the South, but materials and labor shortages kept their numbers low. The majority of the ships used to run the blockade were built in Great Britain, in shipyards at Liverpool and along the Clyde in Scotland. Many were crewed by British citizens and operated by British companies. They carried relatively small cargoes, since they were necessarily built for speed rather than capacity. They were also built to travel relatively short distances – between British possessions and the American east coast – and thus had smaller coal bunkers.