Blockade Running at Mobile Bay

Steam sloop USS Pocahontas capturing a blockade runner off Mobile Bay (source; Library of Congress archives): In a prior post ( 18 February ...

Union occupation of Ft. Clinch, Fernandina, Florida

Ft. Clinch, at the northern tip of Amelia Island, after recapture by Union forces: While attention focused, then and now, on the impending b...

Mobile in the Confederacy

Images of Mobile, Alabama. From Harper's Weekly: After New Orleans, Mobile was the most important port on the Gulf coast for the Confed...

Salt Works Raids

Destruction of a salt works by the US Bark Kingfisher on the Florida Coast. Source: Fla. Dept. of State on-line photo archive. As the Civil...

Naval Actions at Seahorse Key, Florida 1862

The Cedar Keys, on the Gulf Coast of Florida (consisting of Way, Depot, Atsena Otie, Seahorse, Snake, and North Keys), was an important port...

Key West and the East Gulf Blockading Squadron

Sketch of Key West in Civil War period In a prior post (" The Blockade Begins "), I covered the formation of the Union Navy block...

Preparing for Battle in Northeast North Carolina

 The combined fleet of the "Burnside Expedition," as it left Hampton Roads for Cape Hatteras With Cape Hatteras secured Union gr...

Dinner Party Talk that Changed the Civil War

In this rendering, President Abraham Lincoln has finished reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Sitting immediately to Linco...

The Blockade comes to Florida

I think historians of the Civil War Navies have established that blockade duty was boring, drudgery, tedious, taxing, (fill in your favorite...

NOAA Day at Nauticus and HRNM Report

This past Saturday, the Hampton Roads Naval Museum participated in NOAA Day at Nauticus in Norfolk, VA.  HRNM Educators and Interns conducte...

The Blockade Begins !!

Following President Lincoln's declaration of a blockade of the southern coast on 19 April 1861, the US Navy moved to implement the Presi...

Any Ship Will Do-The Blockaders

This is an 1861  Harper's Weekly engraving entitled "Preparing Merchant Vessels for the Blockade."  When the Lincoln Administ...

The Stone Fleet

The sinking of the Stone Fleet- Harper's Weekly On April 19, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Blockade again...