to the blockading fleet, although not in proportion to the increased fleet of blockade-runners. By April 7, 1862, the Navy had 226 ships at their disposal for blockade duty and by the end of the war Gideon Welles had gathered up a fleet of over 600 vessels.[15] One of the men responsible for the tightening was Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, who commanded the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from 1862 to 1864, whose most important port to block was Wilmington, North Carolina, a famous haven for blockade-runners. When Lee arrived in September 1862, he had 48 ships and during 1864 his fleet fluctuated from 84 to 119 vessels.[16] With this enlarged fleet he developed a blockading tactic of using two rows: a first row with slow ships would warn the faster outer row of any blockade-runners to chase with rocket signals.[17] This plan increased the number of captures being made; by 1864, Lee reported that the rebels were losing a steamer about every eight days.[18] However, this wasn't quite a brick wall, since Wilmington alone averaged 1.5 attempts per day to run the blockade.[19] For most of 1861, one in fourteen ships was captured or destroyed, but the final ratio for the year was one in ten. In 1862, the capture (including destroyed ships) rate rose to one in eight, and the average blockade-runner still had a "life expectancy" of seven voyages. In 1863, the blockade finally started to tighten as the capture rate rose to one in four. In 1864, the capture rate climbed to one in three and in 1865 (when only several Gulf Ports remained open) the capture rate rose to one in two. The total for the whole war is that one in six attempts to run the blockade failed.[20] Below, these general figures will be broken down by geographic location and type of ship (sail or steam). These odds were good enough to make blockade-running a lucrative opportunity, enticing enough people into the trade. Cotton prices were high and profits on cotton were phenom...
