Blockade runners: The grim history of the Bristol ships that helped US slave states
The largest portion of the cargo consists of cases or boxes, 2 feet square, from 2 feet to 3 ½ and some 4 or 5 feet long. They are generally iron bound. They are handled by the loaders as if they were very heavy. Some of them are not only bound with iron hoops or bands, but have their corners strengthened and stayed by clasps or angle irons.
My impression from appearance is that these are packages of arms in part mixed with contraband goods of considerable variety.
– Bristol’s U.S. Consul Zebina Eastman on the blockade runner Calypso, to U.S. Secretary of State W.H. Seward, December 4 1862
The duties of a foreign consul in the cities of Victorian Britain were rarely demanding. The job involved some paperwork and helping sea captains and other compatriots with legal and bureaucratic issues, and maybe extracting the occasional drunken sailor from jail.
But Zebina Eastman (1815-1883), United States consul in Bristol from 1861 to 1869, would have a much heavier workload.
An anti-slavery activist and former journalist, Eastman had been appointed to Bristol by Abraham Lincoln personally. An upright Yankee from the same mould as his president, he likewise had a line in dry humour and homespun philosophy.
From the US Consulate on Queen Square, he regularly sent reports on events in Bristol to Washington, including what might nowadays be called OSINT – open-source intelligence – information that was freely available locally. His letters to Secretary of State William H Seward regularly included cuttings from the British press.
Eastman also resorted to outright espionage. He and some trusted staff kept careful watch on the comings and goings in the port, gathering as much information as they could on ships and cargoes bound for the Confederacy.
Profiting from the slave states
Following the election of Lincoln, a number of southern states, fearing that the slavery on which their economies depended would be outlawed, seceded to form the breakaway Confederate States of America. Lincoln was determined to maintain the Union, and the result was the 1861-65 American Civil War.
The Union side (aka the Federals, ‘the North’, Yankees, the United States – the soldiers in blue in the movies) far outmatched the Confederacy (‘the South’, the Rebels; their troops wore grey at the start and rags at the end). The Union had huge advantages in population and industry, but the Confederates could hope to fight them to a standstill, securing independence by making continuing the war too costly in blood and money.
With its overwhelming naval superiority, the Union blockaded Confederate ports to try and prevent trade going in or out. But the rebels, grown wealthy on exports of cotton, tobacco, grain and rice – much of it produced by generations of enslaved black men, women and children – had plenty of money.
They sent agents to Britain to purchase all the things they couldn’t produce themselves, particularly modern cannon, muskets, rifles and pistols. The Union side bought British arms, too – manufacturers were happy to sell to both sides.
The Confederacy also bought ships, both to evade the blockade and as commerce raiders targeting Union shipping, but many more were bought by British investors specifically to evade the U.S. Navy and trade with the Confederacy. It would be a profitable business.
‘Blockade runners’ were to sneak supplies past Federal warships and into Confederate ports. On their return journey they would usually bring out raw cotton to feed the mills of northern England (and the Great Western Cotton Works at Barton Hill in Bristol).
They didn’t only transport weapons, either. When captured by the Federal navy in June 1863 the Calypso was carrying mackerel, linseed oil, stationery, boots and shoes, coffee, ales and spirits, plus soap, ginghams, haberdashery and crinoline skirts. No Southern belle was to be deprived of finery as long as someone was paying for it.
Tracking Bristol’s blockade runners
Blockade runners were fast steamers, with a good chance of evading patrolling warships by simply outrunning them. Liverpool was their main hub, but Bristol, also Atlantic-facing, played a supporting role in this trade. Eastman estimated that around 40 runners passed through the port of Bristol during the war, and he monitored them with great care.
On one occasion, he went as far as to hire a photographer to capture images of a new ship known to be fitting out for blockade running, sending them to Washington to help the Union Navy identify her. This use of state-of-the-art 1860s technology was almost James Bond stuff.
At least five ships were sold by Bristol owners to the shadowy blockade running investors. Most were built on the River Clyde, but one, Juno, had been constructed locally by GK Stothert’s yard in Hotwells.
Bristol runners were mostly crewed by Bristol men, though recruiting them wasn’t always easy. Men signing on for the Calypso had to be offered a £20 bonus, equivalent to half a year’s wages for a working man, if the voyage succeeded. Some sailors returned for repeat runs, having found the risks only slightly worse than normal seafaring.
Blockade runners were fast steamers, with a good chance of evading patrolling warships by simply outrunning them. Liverpool was their main hub, but Bristol, also Atlantic-facing, played a supporting role in this trade.
So did this mean Britain, and Bristol, supported the Confederate cause? The answer is both yes and no.
Investors, shipbuilders and sailors were clearly in this business for the money. Yet many Britons were definitely rooting for the South.
They saw the Confederacy as the underdog, resisting oppression – conveniently ignoring that the cause they were defending was built on slavery. Most believed slavery would naturally fade away in time, and so could be overlooked.
Eastman quoted British MP John Bright, one of just a handful of Union supporters in Parliament when the war began: “The English are sympathetic to everyone’s rebels but their own.”
Indeed, when the Flora departed Bristol in July 1863, thousands of well-wishers turned out to see her off. One press report gushed: “Cheer after cheer burst forth from hundreds and thousands of British lungs, such cheers as Englishmen only can give.”
Shifting public opinion
Years later, Eastman reflected that “the aristocracy led against us”, adding that they “often stoked the baser instincts of the public”.
But he had also found allies in Bristol, noting: “The middle and intelligent classes were with us.” Support was strong among nonconformist religious communities, long associated with the campaigns to do away with slavery in Britain and her overseas possessions a generation previously. Prominent among them was the Liberal politician and Kingswood mine owner Handel Cossham, whose estate later helped build the east Bristol hospital that still carries his name.
Eastman attended local meetings on the war and other causes, including temperance. His name regularly appeared in donation lists for charitable efforts, presumably combining Christian duty with some diplomatic PR.
A newspaperman himself, he was disdainful of the British press (he didn’t much like the American press either), which he said misled readers about the Confederacy’s chances of success and about Lincoln’s unpopularity. Opinions began to change with Union victories in battle and Lincoln’s reelection in 1864.
And yet a public meeting chaired by Cossham at the Broadmead Rooms to congratulate Lincoln on his triumph was disrupted by dozens of drunken men who had been hired, said Eastman, for the purpose by Confederate sympathisers.
Lincoln’s assassination shortly afterwards sealed his elevation to martyr and ‘Great Emancipator’, the man who had ended slavery in North America and reunited the bitterly divided states.
The Union blockade had been effective. By 1865 almost 1,500 runners had been captured or sunk, and the Confederates’ cotton exports reduced to just 5% of their pre-war levels.
With the war’s end in the spring of 1865, Zebina Eastman asked Secretary of State Seward’s permission to take his first holiday since becoming consul.
His request was granted.
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