s. By the end of 1861, 79 steamers had been purchased along with 58 sailing boats (which were worthless unless the blockade-runners were also sailing ships). The blockading force, although it had grown quickly, was still grossly inadequate. Only 160 vessels patrolled the blockade and only a small proportion of them were capable naval vessels.[1] According to Professor Frank Owsley, author of King Cotton Diplomacy, this fleet was so poor that “Had the ‘Merrimac’ got loose among these boats, it could have sunk every one ad libitum [sic].”[2] Northeastern newspapers of the time harshly criticized the blockade: the New York Herald called Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, a moron, the New York Tribune published its view that the blockade was a “laughing stock,” and the Philadelphia Enquirer stated that there was “no blockade at all.”[3] Most Northern papers can be trusted on this subject because they had special correspondents at blockade-running bases. The effectiveness of the blockade was actually more than just a military and economic matter; it had legal and political implications as well. In the Declaration of Paris in 1856, international law stated that a blockade had to be: formally proclaimed, promptly established, enforced, and, most importantly, effective, to be legal and thus be respected abroad. On August 20, 1861, Confederate agents John Slidell and James Mason, after the Trent affair, tried to convince Europe that it was a paper blockade by showing figures that up to then more than 400 vessels had run the blockade. At the end of the year, James Mason tried again, and together with William Lindsay, a prominent British shipbuilder and Member of Parliament, presented figures that in 1861, 500 to 700 vessels had run the blockade.[4] However, Lord John Russell, the British foreign secretary, recognized the blockade as legal in February of 1862, not because Britain b...
