Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper/Volume 18/Number 451/Chasing a Blockade-Runner

CHASING A BLOCKADE-RUNNER.

"What is our Navy doing? Why is not Welles dismissed? Another blockade-runner has entered Mobile." Such are comments we often bear. Are we not unjust? The blockaders are known, their positions certain: the blockade-runners uncertain and everywhere, with friends ashore to guide and signal them. No sooner does a blockader have a chance to pursue a blockade-runner, cruise, get supplies or reconnoitre, than the fact is made known, and in the darkness the blockade-runner creeps in with lights extinguished, fires low and silence absolute. So great is the caution that two blockade-runners have been known, when fairly in, to have descried each other's dark hull, and each supposing the other to be a blockader, stole out to sea again. An officer doing blockade duty sends us the sketch of a pursuit of a blockade-runner at midnight, under these difficulties.