The Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner

The Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner is William Watson's firsthand account of two years spent running the Union naval blockade during the American Civil War, originally published in 1892 as The Adventures of a Blockade Runner .

Watson was a Scottish-born shipbuilder who settled in Louisiana in the 1850s. Though he opposed secession, he served in the Confederate army and was wounded at Corinth, which left him unfit for further combat duty. He made his way to New Orleans and turned to blockade running instead, spending the war's final years dodging Union gunboats aboard his schooner, the Rob Roy, running goods between Texas, Havana, and the Caribbean. Along the way he survived storms, disease, and dishonest business partners, worked with a colorful and often unreliable crew, and outwitted corrupt officials on both sides of his trade.

Drawing on his own logbooks, papers, and business records written decades after the fact, Watson set out to describe events plainly, as they happened, and in doing so produced a detailed, highly readable memoir of a little-known corner of the Civil War, one driven as much by opportunism and improvisation as by military strategy.

This new edition has been carefully re-edited for the modern reader. Spelling, punctuation, and formatting have been corrected throughout, and the text has been cleaned of the errors and layout issues common in older public-domain reprints. It is not a facsimile. It is a readable, faithful edition of Watson's original memoir, prepared for readers who want the text itself rather than a scanned copy of it.

This book will interest readers of Civil War history, naval and maritime history, and firsthand memoirs of the Confederacy and its irregular war economy.