A blockade runner is usually a lighter-weight ship used for evading a naval blockade of a port or strait, as opposed to confronting the blockaders to break the blockade.
 Very often blockade running is done in order to transport cargo, for example to bring food or arms to a blockaded city.
 In other cases the blockade runners would carry mail in an attempt to communicate with the outside world.
The Continental System or Continental Blockade (known in French as "Blocus continental") was the foreign policy of Napoleon I of France in his struggle against Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars.
 As a response to the naval blockade of the French coasts enacted by the British government on 16 May 1806, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree on 21 November 1806, which brought into effect a large-scale embargo against British trade.
 The embargo was effective intermittently.
 It ended on 11 April 1814 after Napoleon's first abdication.
 In terms of economic damage to Great Britain, the blockade was largely ineffective; however, British exportations to the continent saw a loss from 25% to 55% of their total value in between the years 1802 and 1806.
 As Napoleon realized that extensive trade was going through Spain and Russia, he invaded those two countries.
 His forces were tied down in Spain — in which the Spanish War of Independence was occurring simultaneously — and suffered severely in, and ultimately retreated from, Russia in 1812.
HMS "Lizard" was a "Jackal"-class second-class iron paddle gunvessel of the Royal Navy.
 She was built by Robert Napier and Sons at Govan to a design by William Symonds, the Surveyor of the Navy.
 She was launched in 1844, was damaged at the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata, performed fishery protection duties off Scotland and broken up in 1869.
The French blockade of the Río de la Plata was a two-year-long naval blockade imposed by France on the Argentine Confederation ruled by Juan Manuel de Rosas.
 It closed Buenos Aires to naval commerce.
 It was imposed in 1838 to support the Peru–Bolivian Confederation in the War of the Confederation, but continued after the end of the war.
 France didn't land ground forces, but instead took advantage of the Uruguayan Civil War and the Argentine Civil Wars, supporting Fructuoso Rivera and Juan Lavalle against Manuel Oribe and Rosas.
The Restraining Acts of early 1775 were two Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, which limited colonial trade in response to both increasing and spreading civil disobedience in Massachusetts and New England, and similar trade restrictions instituted by elected colonial representatives.
 With time the foment would spread to most of its American Colonies.
 The first restraining act, (15 Geo.
 III c. 10) known variously as the New England Trade And Fisheries Act, the New England Restraining Act, or the Trade Act 1775 (c.10), limited the export and import of any goods to and from only Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies; it also prohibited the New England colonies from fishing in the waters off Newfoundland and most of America's Atlantic coast, without special permissions and documentation, and imposed stiff penalties on both perpetrators and administrators if violations occurred.
 Previously legal or finessed trade between the colonies themselves or with other nations was prohibited, and enforced by naval blockade, effective July 1, 1775.
 The second restraining act, (15 Geo.
 III c. 18) known as the Trade Act 1775 (c.18), similarly limited the export or import of any goods by way of only Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies for most colonies south of New England; it was passed shortly after the first, upon receiving news in April that the colonial's trade boycott had spread widely among other colonies.
 Only New York, Delaware, North Carolina and Georgia would escape these restraints on trade, but only for a few months.
The Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata was a five-year-long naval blockade imposed by France and Britain on the Argentine Confederation ruled by Juan Manuel de Rosas.
 It was imposed in 1845 to support the Colorado Party in the Uruguayan Civil War and closed Buenos Aires to naval commerce.
 The Anglo-French navy trespassed into the internal waters of Argentina, in order to sell their products, as Rosas maintained a protectionist policy to improve the weak Argentine economy.
 Eventually both Britain and France gave in, signing treaties in 1849 (Britain) and 1850 (France) acknowledging the Argentine sovereignty over its rivers.
The Assault on Cadiz was a part of a protracted naval blockade of the Spanish port of Cadiz by the Royal Navy, which comprised the siege and the shelling of the city as well as an amphibious assault on the port itself from June to July 1797.
 After the battle of Cape Saint Vincent the British fleet led by Lord Jervis and Sir Horatio Nelson had appeared in the Gulf of Cadiz.
 During the first days of June the city was bombarded, but causing slight damage to the Spanish batteries, navy and city.
 Nelson's objective was to force the Spanish admiral Jose Mazarredo to leave the harbour with the Spanish fleet.
 Mazarredo prepared an intelligent response and the Spaniards began to build gunboats and small ships to protect the entrance of the harbour from the British.
 By the first days of July, after a series of failed attacks led by Rear-Admiral Nelson, and with the British ships taking huge fire from the Spanish forts and batteries, the British withdraw and the siege was lifted.
 The naval blockade, however, lasted until 1802.
The Venezuelan crisis of 1902–03 was a naval blockade from December 1902 to February 1903 imposed against Venezuela by the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, over President Cipriano Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in the Venezuelan civil war.
 Castro assumed that the United States' Monroe Doctrine would see the US prevent European military intervention, but at the time, US president Theodore Roosevelt and the Department of State saw the Doctrine as concerning European seizure of territory, rather than intervention ""per se"".
 With prior promises that no such seizure would occur, the US allowed the action to go ahead without objection.
 The blockade saw Venezuela's small navy quickly disabled, but Castro refused to give in, and instead agreed in principle to submit some of the claims to international arbitration, which he had previously rejected.
 Germany initially objected to this, particularly as it felt some claims should be accepted by Venezuela without arbitration.
The invasion of Iceland, codenamed Operation Fork, was a British military operation conducted by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines during World War II to occupy and deny Iceland to Germany.
 At the start of the war, Britain imposed strict export controls on Icelandic goods, preventing profitable shipments to Germany, as part of its naval blockade.
 Britain offered assistance to Iceland, seeking cooperation "as a belligerent and an ally", but Reykjavik declined and reaffirmed its neutrality.
 The German diplomatic presence in Iceland, along with the island's strategic importance, alarmed the British.
 After failing to persuade the Icelandic government to join the Allies, the British invaded on the morning of 10 May 1940.
 The initial force of 746 British Royal Marines commanded by Colonel Robert Sturges disembarked at the capital Reykjavík.
 Meeting no resistance, the troops moved quickly to disable communication networks, secure strategic locations, and arrest German citizens.
 Requisitioning local transport, the troops moved to Hvalfjörður, Kaldaðarnes, Sandskeið, and Akranes to secure landing areas against the possibility of a German counterattack.
HMS "Hereward", named after Hereward the Wake, was an H-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s.
 She was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet before and the ship spent four months during the Spanish Civil War in mid-1937 in Spanish waters, enforcing the arms blockade imposed by Britain and France on both sides of the conflict.
 When the Second World War began in September 1939, the ship was in the Mediterranean, but was shortly transferred to the South Atlantic Command to hunt for German commerce raiders and blockade runners, capturing one of the latter in November.
 "Hereward" was transferred to the Home Fleet in May 1940 and rescued Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands after the Germans had invaded.

Question: What naval blockade imposed by France and Britain is responsible for damaging HSM Lizard in 1844?
Answer: The Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata