union numbers, so they experimented with new technology. here in hampton roads, they hoped an armored warship could achieve that objective. after the stunning success of the virginia on the 8th of march, sinking the cumberland and congress, inflicting the worst defeat on the united states navy in its history until december 7, 1941. on march 8th, confederate authorities then agreed to build more, as many as they possibly could. they actually started a total of 52 of them. although the industrial bottleneck for them is availability of iron armor and maritime engine plants, which they simply could not build themselves and had trouble getting in through the blockade. vicious circle. they did build some, however. and in january, 1863, two of them chased off the union blockade squadron off charleston for a day or two, which prompted

a confederate commander at the time in charleston to declare the blockade had been lifted. though it was black in place again the next day. charleston authorities also tried to use, again, playing the technology card, semisubmersible david boats as these were known. these have a steam engine plant. they don't generally completely go under water. just a little crest showing above the water so that stack had access to air. the forerunners of modern torpedo boats today. as well as we know, as a working submarine, the hl hundley which did successfully sink a ship in february 1864. and all along the south atlantic coast, the confederacy sowed

to torpedoes, today we would call mines. in the end however these innovative weapons and tactics while troublesome did not lift or break the blockade. and the union managed a few naval innovations of her own. like this one. more about which, of course, later today. by 1863, the blockade was becoming increasingly -- effective. whatever the perception in the in new york and much of the confederacy, the difficulties of the southern economy were becoming impossible to ignore. to be sure, many of the difficulties were the product of a collapsing internal transportation system and another problem was that many in south began to resent the fact that as one contemporary put it, blockade running was fast degenerating into an illicit and unpatriotic trade. with unconscious irony, i love this passage -- confederate planters, planters, complained that the fabulous profits made by blockade runners were enriching a small class of monied men at the top of the

income scale. imagine that. small class of wealthy men making decisions for the whole society. what made planters think of that? the richmond enquirer, decried the unbecoming vanity, displayed by the elaborate wardrobes of the richest merchants, unsuitable for a nation fighting for its survival. the way was for the government to regulate all trade. this, of course, flew directly in the face of that doctrine of state's rights -- state rights, i'm told to say -- the increasingly desperate condition of the rebel armies and weakening confederate economy led to a popular clamor for the richmond government off to talk over regulation of trade entirely. in february 1864, jefferson davis got the confederate congress to pass a law that

required all outbound blockade runners to reserve half of their space for government owned cotton. a month later he urged on congress, a law, forbidding importation of any high value and profitable luxury goods that had been the common cargos in the first two years of the war. it was a long list. and i'm going to share some of it with you. see if you can catch a hint of a theme here. here is what was banned. ale, beer, rum, brandy, billiard tables, furniture, carpeting, tapestry, lais, jewelry, dolls, toys, glass, marble, fur, hats, capes, paintings, statues wallpaper, bricks, roofing slates, perfumes, playing cards, and velvet. as well as any kind of wine including champagne, claret, madera, port, and sherry. now that's a violation of state

rights. and, of course, there was considerable grousing about all of this. not only from the companies that stood to lose future profits from the importation of these goods. but also from state rights conscious governors like vance in north carolina and joe brown in georgia, who believed that richmond was becoming altogether too intrusive in the lives of southern citizens. the key question here of course is, did it work? i promise you i would try to answer this question. and so i shall attack that. most historians who try to answer the question about the legitimacy, the value, importance, impact of the union blockade do so by appealing to statistics. now, you have all heard the old saw, that there are liars and there are damned liars and then there are statisticians. and as we'll see in effort to answer the question by relying solely on statistics is as likely to breed skepticism about the process as to resolve the question.

since numbers can be used to make very different and, indeed, opposite points. for example, let me give you two facts. here is one. during the civil war, a total of 300 different steam-powered vessels attempted to run the blockade, including our friend, the banshee. and those steamers made an average of four successful trips that is two per vessel. 1,300 attempts to run the blockade of which over 1,000 were successful. in other words, statistics prove that steam-powered blockade runners made it successfully through the blockade 77% of the time. fact two, of those 300 steamers, union warships captured 136 of them and 85 more were destroyed, run into the shore, by pursuing vessels or lost at sea, for a total of 221.

thus statistics prove that 73% of all steam-powered vessels that tried to run the blockade were destroyed or captured. in other words, both statements are through. three-quarters of all attempts to run the blockade were successful. three-quarter of all ships that tried it were destroyed. a better way perhaps to measure the impact of the blockade is calculate how much the confederacy was able to import during the war to sustain its economy. it must be acknowledged the confederacy did, indeed, manage to import a sufficient number of rifles, cannon, powder, shot to sustain its armies for four years. the south imported at least 400,000 rifles. 3 million pounds of lead, 2.2 million pounds of salt, and statistics from a book by steven

wise, undoubtedly correct in concluding that without blockade running the nation's military would have been without proper supplies of arms, bullets and pounder. conceded. the fact that rebel armies managed to sustain themselves despite the blockade does not mean that the effects of the blockade were not felt elsewhere in the confederacy. coffee and tee became luxury goods. so prized, one atlanta jeweler, perhaps as a gag, set coffee beans into pins in place of diamonds. the shortage of these and goods contributed to hoarding, to speculation, inflation, and affected civilian morale. moreover, in assessing the impact of the blockade it is necessary to consider not only what was brought in, but what was sent out. as a union assistant, navy secretary fox put it in a conversation the rebellion was sustained not by what entered

into their ports but by what proceeded out. both before and during the war, the southern economy was almost entirely dependent on its production of cash crops for export. especially, of course, cane cotton. measuring how much the blockade affected cotton exports turns out to be relatively simple. in the last year of peace before the blockade was in place, the cotton states exported just under 3 million bales of cotton. in the first 12 months of the war, south exported just over 50,000 bales of cotton. less than 2% of the war-time total. and over the next two years, as union forces occupied more and more of the southern coast, cotton exports fell further. to be sure the price of cotton also went up, as exports declined, but if the price of cotton rose, so, too, did the price of goods the south was trying to buy overseas. railroad machinery, modern breach loading rifles.

in the end, the south used stock piled bales as armor for coastal gun emplacements. the economic historian, david sordham, concludes that the shortfall in revenues from cotton rivaled if not exceeded the federal government's total expenditures on its navy for the whole war. given that relatively simple cost effective analysis, suggests that the union blockade was worth the effort. so, what its the bottom line here? i think it is this. that despite the apparently porous character of the union blockade, the cumulative effect of the reduction in the south cotton exports, the loss of its coastline, and eventually the occupation of its major sea ports seriously undermined the confederate government and its war effort. if the blockade was never

airtight, which it wasn't, it was constricting enough that south was constantly gasping for economic breath. i love that phrase. i borrowed it from william roberts in his book. that slow asphyxiation, combined with the reduction in the size of the logistic base from which the confederacy could draw supplies from its armys so isolated lee's indominable army in virginia that, in the end, it had no choice but to surrender. now almost certainly the north could have won the civil war without the blockade. but almost as certainly the blockade made the war shorter and in doing so probably saved many thousands of lives. now this weekend, of course, we observe the attempt southerners made to lift that blockade by employing revolutionary technology. and the union responds to that effort in producing an even more revolutionary warship. the union not only matched the

south in employing this new weaponry. it then went on to build more than 80 monitors and the blockade remained intact. thank you very much. i look forward to your questions. if you will, come to the microphone right over here then they can get it on the tape for c-span. yes, ma'am? >> thank you. were all of the blockading ships steam powered, or were some of them dependent only on sail? >> that's a great question. the short answer is they really needed to be steam powered. but it took them a while to figure this out. initially they did send sailing ships to the blockade. remember, the union is gathering together whatever ships it can. it's sweeping the harbors of philadelphia, baltimore, new

york for anything that floats that will carry a gun. early on there were many sailing ships that attempted it. sailing ships couldn't hold their position close in shore with the making tide for fear of running aground. by late 1862, certainly by 1863, all sailing ships had been taken out of service on the blockade, sent to do some mission overseas, touring the mediterranean, for example, and all the blockaders were steam-powered ships. most famous sailing power ship of the blockade was the u.s.s. america, which had one a very famous sailing race off the isle of -- and that we still compete for. the america's cup. so, america was one blockading ship. but sad it say it wasn't very good at it. yes, sir? >> could you speak to some of the details of the prize money

system that would incentivize it? >> he was a great motivator for sailors, first of all, encouraging them to enlist at all, and then stay enlisted in boring, tedious jobs off the southern coast. the way it worked was that any vessel captured by a united states warship, the value of that vessel sold at auction, the value of its entire cargo sold at auction, assuming a court declared it a legitimate prize, the value went to the captain and his crew. in late 1862, keeping aside some small percentage of that for widows and/or fans of sailors lost at sea. and as usual, it went to -- as any of us who served in the military knows, most of it went to the officers. the captain normally got half off the top. then the officers themselves shared another quarter in the war room. the final quarter was shared out among the entire enlisted crew. if you made a couple of pretty good captures off the coast,

that could set you up for life. there was real money to be made doing this. and the real of thumb was any vessel in sight at the time of capture got to share in the prize. so that was kind of a bummer. if you were on the blockade, captured the ship, made all the risks, and every other ship you can see they get to share. that is no good. if the ship made it out of the blockade and you chased it for 150, 200 miles over the horizon and caught it and you quickly look around the horizon. nobody else in sight. that's yours. okay. sailors used to say, you know, it's a shame that bullets and wounds aren't passed out the same way as prize money. but, anyway, that's the way it worked. so -- yes? >> love that prize money. >> see? >> i'm up from florida. kind of wondered, the taking of the port of fernadina, how

important was that? should it have been done sooner? >> yeah, it's one of the ports near jacksonville, north florida, on the atlantic coast. it was one of the early 1862 efforts by the union to gobble up pieces of the shore. there were several motives involved here. one was to have a safe haven further south on the blockading squadron. one was simply to gobble up as much land as possible. part two, now, after the emancipation proclamation and the legitimate prize of war that did not have to be returned to enemy, never mind the fugitive slave law, an attempt to recruit sailors for the fleet. so there are several motives involved here. and the squadron that went down as part of dupont's command went to fernadina, pretty much a pattern we had seen at ft. clark, ft. hatteras and elsewhere shelled the confederates ashore.

they found they couldn't stand up to artillery and abandoned the position. the union went in and took occupation of that small village, really, not even a town or a city. this was repeated all along the coast, the atlantic ghost and the gulf coast as well. simply one of many such forays. whether it should have been done sooner, i'm not sure out could have been. remember the union is building up forces. by the time, late 1864 there are more than 30 ships off charleston. and blockade runners are still getting in and out. so dupont was loathe to take a half dozen ships from the blockade and send them off for other operations. so i've don't know that he could have done it any sooner than he did. yes? >> the question concerns the profits from the confederate blockade runners. were they typically invested in south, did some build fortunes overseas does any of it contribute to the postwar reconstruction of the south? >> that's a complicated question. the short version of -- certainly during the period when

entrepreneurs were making decisions about blockade running and what to bring and what to do, it was entirely their money. they did with it what they liked. and, apparently, according to the descriptions in "the richmond enquirer" they suited themselves up very nicely and pranced around downtown richmond. but there was no fund early on that that money should go to the benefit of the war effort. or that it should establish credits overseas for the purchase of -- of weapons and other material. which is exactly why the confederate government felt that it needed to get involved in this. not only did it begin to require certain percentages of the cargo to carry government-owned cotton to get credits overseas so it could buy material to be brought in. but by late 1864, davis actually took over blockade running, the ships were commanded by confederate officers. and, all of that money, by then, of course, very late in the war. all of that money did go to the benefit of the confederate government.

but by the late 1864, the confederate government was already in trouble financially. the great assistance overseas was from the exchange company that advanced credits to -- in liverpool, advanced credits to the confederate government to make purchases early on. blockade running, especially in the first, 2, 2 1/2 years of the war did not go to the benefit of the war effort. it went to the benefit of the entrepreneurs whose owned the ships and that, of course, was the source of the complaints. yes? >> i was wondering if you agree or disagree with the proposition that one of the great hidden effects of the blockade was the way it contributed to the destruction of the confederate railroad system, because of its disruption of the intracoastal trade, quite apart from anything dealing with external trade. >> absolutely true. i actually had that in my talk

and took it out. you see anna lurking over here. i am over time. i removed that in interest of time. a very important point. i mention how one of the problems the south had was the transcoastal trade went through what today we would call the intercoastal waterway. you saw the map earlier of the north carolina sounds. once those sounds are occupied by union naval forces, all of that has to be moved onto an already overburdened confederate railroad system. and remember, a lot of the southern railroads are short lines that have different gauges. five feet, 4 1/2, 4 feet. this is long before it stabilized at 4'8 1/2". which is what it is now. that didn't happen until the 1880s. so these are little pieces of railroads. and in addition to which the confederacy, a non-iron-producing generally society, often used railroads, what was known as the strap and stringer. it was a wooden rail with a little thin layer of iron on the top. so you overburden those lines with heavier rolling stock now carrying three, four, five times as much as they're designed to

carry and they'll break down, too. so yes, not only did the blockade interrupt international trade, it interrupted internal trade as well because of the impact that it had on southern railroads. you're absolutely correct. one more? we're out of time now. i'm sorry. we have to stop. i'll be glad to talk to anybody that wants to out in the foyer. thank you for your attention. i appreciate it. all right. i think we'll go ahead and get started here. so if you want to find yourself a good seat, we will begin this next. it's a very brief section. but dave alberg has something really important to say and he's brought lisa stansbury with him to help him out. i think some of you may have met a couple of new faces here at the mariners' museum.

they're up in the lobby. and that's who dave alberg is here to talk about. i've known dave for i'm not sure how many years now. a lot. and he has been such an incredible partner to this institution running the monitor national marine sanctuary. their office is maybe here, but their sanctuary is 1600 miles off the coast of cape hatteras, 240 feet down. it's a little hard to go there to the visitors' center, so we brought the visitors' center here to newport news. it is my extreme pleasure to bring david ahlberg up here to the stage. [ applause ] >> it worked. that's always a first test right there. good afternoon, everybody. and thank you for coming out. we are here today to talk about the work noaa has been involved with in the last, gosh, since 2002 really to identify the two sailors who were recovered in

the turret of the "uss monitor." on tuesday, i don't know if you caught the news. we unfailveiled the faces of wh those two men were. and they are on display in the front lobby of the museum. we brought them down from washington. they are on temporary display in the front lobby as we prepare a permanent display for them here. and i can't think of a more fitting home for them than at the mariners' museum where they will be able to tell their own stories and the stories of their shipmates who were lost the night the "monitor" sank. as anna said, i work for the office of marine sanctuaries which is part of the department of commerce under noaa, and we manage 14 sites around the world and u.s. territorial waters that protect the marine environment. this is most notably important because it all began in 1975 with the designation of the "uss monitor" national marine sanctuary off the coast of cape hatteras. and that -- the designation of that one site to protect the

remains of the "uss monitor" have now grown into the premier marine protected network in the world. it was done -- "the monitor" was -- in fact we have some people who can tell more about this than i can. the "monitor" was discovered in 1973 by john newton. phil sheridan, doc edgerton, and gordon watts as part of a research expedition off the coast of north carolina testing out new technologies and sonar with the "monitor" as their target. and lo and behold they found the shipwreck at the time sitting on the high seas 18 miles off the coast of -- or 17, demanding you how measure it, about 18 miles off the coast of north carolina but outside of state waters and outside of u.s. territorial waters at the time. so in '74, a year after she was found, the governor of north carolina requested that congress establish the monitor national marine sanctuary to protect the site and the rest is history. it was established on january

30th, 1975. so -- which was the date, the anniversary date of the launching of the "monitor." and what i want to talk about specifically -- we'll be covering much of the history of the ship over the rest of the day. but i want to talk about the two remains. when noaa went out to recover the shipwreck and congress asked noaa after the designation of the sanctuary and after about a decade of monitoring the "monitor," it was noted that the ship was deteriorating, which is a notion that we fight a little bit against today, trying to help -- people ask me what is the congress condition of the ship? and i will point out that as a ship it's in terrible shape obviously. but as an archaeological site, it's in pristine shape. 85% of the wreck is still sitting on the seabed. we consider it a war grave, as does the navy. it is a national historic landmark. the first national marine sanctuary. so -- but congress said what is the plan? do you raise the entire thing?

do you raise segments of it? do you leave it alone? and the answer was after a careful study, one that involved many partners, including the mariners' museum, was that selective pieces would be brought up. between 1998 and 2002, the navy working with noaa and of course the navy was the workhorse in this effort bringing their professionalism and expertise and technical abilities began to recover those pieces of the wreck. and as noaa worked with the military, we acknowledged from the beginning that there was the likelihood that human remains would be found. and lo and behold, in july of 2002, while the navy was removing overburden -- if you know the story, "the monitor" sank upside down with the turret upside down. filled with coal and material and artifacts. but the roof of the turret, you have to understand how it was constructed, was just railroad rails. so it was known from the beginning that if an attempt was made to lift that with all that

material in there there was a high likelihood that the roof would give way, spilling the contents of the turret, which is something nobody wanted to have happen. so navy divers working 24 hours a day began removing all that coal and sediment, which is tougher than you think. because it was not soft silts. this material was the equivalent of concrete. and as they worked down in july of 2002, they hit a layer and found the first set of human remains. and i think if you talk to the navy team that was on board, that was a benchmark moment for them. for years working on this project, the challenges were technical and it was very much an engineering challenge, an archaeological challenge and suddenly it became very personal. and in talking with folks that were on the barge that were working that day, they have described it very much as it went from being an engineering feat to being one of recovering their shipmates. and even though the uniforms may have been different by 111 years

this was -- or gosh, 130 years at that point, this was very personal. so excavation continued around them, as much as it could be. but at that point the decision was made to raise the turret. the turret came up, excavation continued on the surface. and shortly after that, a second set of remains were found lying just underneath -- oh, what did i just do? oops. there we go. a second set of remains were found just lying underneath the first set, an individual named monitor 2. on the barge working with us was a team from an organization that is now called the joint p.o.w. accountability -- m.i.a. accountability command. they're located in pearl harbor, hawaii. and these are the individuals who heroically work to return to their families members -- service members who are found in vietnam, korea, world war ii, from any war, found in the jungles of vietnam or the

pacific. they bring them back. they work to -- with the navy to identify them and then return them. there's really two teams. there's jpac itself who do the science. and then there is an office called the naval casualty office who -- not to simplify their work, but they're the ones that flip through the phone books and they're the ones that try to get back, now that they've got information on who this individual was, and get them back to the families. dr. eric emory was with us when these remains were found. and he participated with the excavation. but the removal of the human remains actually continued here on site at the mariners' museum and all the remains were sent back to hawaii to the jpac facility. this is one of their technicians. these are the two "monitor" sailors. jpac has produced a report which is in draft format. it cannot distributed yet because it is consideredn