The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-12
BLOCKADE RUNNING
THE MOST EXCITING SPORT
 hNOWN TO MAN.
Incidents Connecttd with the Civil Wsr-Nothtne Like 1t will Ever be Known Again-One Experts Story.

ting sport invented by man. said pr,
 William Allen, of Buffalo, in the Fifth
 Avenue hotel recently The runners
 have everything at stake: their ship, if
 captured becomes prize of the enc
 my, and they lose their own liberty un-
 til the end of the war. Their only
 weapons are stealth and speed. The
 aim of the captain is to get past the
 blocking squadron without being seen,
 and if seen to get away as quickly as
 he can. No weapons may be used.
 The firing of a single gun against a
 man-of-War instantly constitutes the
 runner a pirate and if captured her
 captain and crew are given a short
 shrift The runner, if she does not
 come to when challenged by a man of
 war, is liable to be sunk
 During the American war" went on
 the doctor, who had seen service at sea
 during the great conflict, many of the
 captains, when their vessels were
 chased, made for the coast and ground
 
 ing to the woods in boats. few shells
 fired into the stranded hull made the
 vessel useless. The shores were streWn
 with the bones of these vessels, whose
 crews assembled in the various ports,
 only too ready to escape from idleness
 by taking fresh service upon some
 more fortunate runner which had lost
 members of her crew from disease or
 other cause.
 ''The most daring of all runners was
 Hobart Pasha, as he was afterward
 called when he commanded the Turk
 ish fleet with such success We knew
 him as Captain Roberts, of the Robert E. Lee. He was fine sailor man, staut and sturdy. In all he made sixteen
 trips and cleared about three hundred thousand dollars without being cap tured. His method was strikingy audacious, Arrived off a port he would take the bearings of the nearest war ships, and as soon as night came would make a dash right through them. Slip ping between two in the first line, he changed his course, passed the second line, changed again, and made straight for the harbor. He was finally cap tured, however.
 Coming out of the harbors was per haps less risky than going in. When trying to enter the pilot had to find the port on the darkest night, without a 1 light of any kind to guide him, with the certainty that if day broke before the ship was safe under the guns of the shore forts capture would follow In leaving, after getting through, the smaller war vessels, which clustered about the mouth of the river, just out of the reach of the poor guns of the shore forts, there was the open sea to run to, with the immense advantage which su perior speed gave the merchant vessels. | These on their return voyages, were | heaped with cotton. They had very lt l tie in their holds and the bales were | piled on the decks until they stood as high as hay on a lumber barge. Nar- row gangways were left between the | mass of cotton TOT the crew to move about in, every other available inch of | space being covered with the cargo.
 Both in entering and leaving the port the runners were favored in being able to hug the shore closely. Drawing no more than six feet of water, they could go much further in than the heavy war vessels. Before the end of the American war, however, this ad- vantage disappeared, for the blockaders obtained number of small patrol steamers. which moved up and down the coast, and by this means all the blockade runners were eventually cap- tured These vessels rendered the past between the shore and the nearest cruisers practically impossible. and so, before the war ended, the blockade was effective,
 "On one trip blockade runner on which I was got safely out of the har- bor, when next morning we were sight ed by cruiser, which immediately gave chase. We steamed round An dros with the engines doing their best, the cruiser altering her course and steering out for the foot of the island, hoping to catch us as we came round We got past the point first and made for the coast of Cuba, down which we steamed, with the cruiser pressing us hard As soon as night came we put the ship about doubled back like a barge and set our course for Nassau, where we arrived in safety, never hay Ing seen the cruiser after dark, Mas sau as have said was our headquar . ters. There, when our hardly won car goes were safely landed, the cotton was shipped into fast sailing vessels and , ,arried with all speed to Liverpool, , England. ,
 Far more destructive than the men i ,f-war was the yellow fever All the , West Indian islands reeked with the r disease While we were blockade run | ling men were dying like flies in Mas x ;au. We lost almost the whole of our f rev and the vessel had to be idle for f ack of men to work her. At that time
 started for the Bermudas, paying l f wenty-fve dollars for a passage on . ,oat which was little better than a sail f ng barge She was manned by the il aptain. a Rermudan, and two negroes. t Ter cargo consisted of thirty tons of 6 ugar cane and on that trip she carried n 10 less than fifty passengers, all of i, whom had to sleep on the back deck. f With no chronometer or navigation in- 6 truments the captain lost her reckon Q ng. and when we sighted and spoke a f essel we found that we had drifted i, hree hundred miles out of our course a nto the Atlantic d Water became scarce. We had a tarted with two hogsheads, This was p