Monday, June 25, 2012

Digging Those Blockade-Runners-- Part 1

From the June 24th Raleigh (NC) News & Observer "Historians seek answers from a different sort of buried treasure" by Jay Price.

A rather lengthy, but informative article inspired by tomorrow's symposium on the blockade-runner Modern Greece, which ran aground 150 years ago on June 26, 1862.

Blockade-runners were a  "rakish, speed-at-all-costs breed of ship."  Dozens and dozens went aground or were sunk coming into or leaving Wilmington, NC, making the area the largest collection of Civil War-era shipwrecks anywhere.  And that would include my own personal favorite, the Beauregard (Havelock) that was run ashore off what was my grandparent's beach home in Carolina Beach.  You can still see the upper works of it at low tide.  I always dreamed of swimming out to it but was too afraid.

Even with the losses, these sleek ships got through hundreds of times and war-time Wilmington was overrun with rowdy crews spending their big bucks for their efforts at carrying their "fabulously valuable" cargoes, including weapons and military supplies.

Historian and author Stephen Wise, who will be speaking at the symposium said, "For me, its role made Wilmington the single most important place in the Confederacy."  as a very biased person, I would have to agree.  Wise wrote "Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade-Running During the Civil War," which for me is the bible of the subject.

More to Come.  --Old B-R'er

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