![]() ![]() Despite these odds, Confederate and European citizens continued to attempt to run the blockade, due to the high price for imported goods in the Confederacy, and high demand for cotton among European textile manufacturers. By 1865, the Union navy had captured roughly 1,150 ships, costing the Confederate States up to $30,000,000 in damages. With each passing week, as the Union army advanced along the Southern coast and Confederate ports came within reach of Union vessels, the blockade tightened its grasp on Southern commerce by capturing blockade runners attempting to smuggle war supplies into the coastal South. Likewise, the men were paid well, and had the opportunity to split the profits of captured Confederate shipping. Although boring and tedious in nature for those participating, this undertaking was a welcome endeavor to Union men, because the casualty rate of participating sailors was nearly identical with that of the civilian population of the North, meaning that very few died of combat or disease, in stark contrast to the casualty rate of soldiers participating in the land campaigns. The blockade of the South instituted by the Union over the course of the war would become a massive undertaking, utilizing over 500 ships and 100,000 sailors. An artists rendition of the vessels Kearsarge and Alabama doing battle ![]()
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