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Copyright 2021
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ross, Charles D., 1958 author.
Title: Breaking the blockade: the bahamas during the civil war / Charles D. Ross.
Description: Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020030948 (print) | LCCN 2020030949 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3134-7 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3135-4 (trade paperback) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3136-1 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3137-8 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3138-5 (pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3133-0 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: United StatesHistoryCivil War, 1861-1865Blockades. | United StatesHistoryCivil War, 1861-1865. | Nassau (Bahamas)History.
Classification: LCC E480 .R67 2021 (print) | LCC E480 (ebook) | DDC 973.7/21dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020030948
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020030949
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Pages iiiii Ports Important in the Civil War: The front endpaper contains a map of a portion of the United States and the Caribbean, including especially the Bahamas. In order to present the ports of the Atlantic Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico without crowding, the map is not projected. That is, latitude and longitude lines are shown at right angles. This has the effect of stretching the upper portion of the map, compared to the lower portion. Do not use the map to scale distances from point to point. The projection and the datum are WGS 1984. The scale is 1:20 million.
Bahamas Overview: The back endpaper contains a map of the Bahamas. The projection is Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zone 18 North and the datum is WGS 1984. The map scale is 1:4 million.
Acknowledgments
Researching and writing this book has been one of the great joys of my life. The story of what happened in Nassau during the US Civil War is fascinating and complicated, and working to understand that story and convey it to readers was both exhilarating and exhausting. There are so many pieces to the tale that I sometimes felt I was taking the perceptions of the blind men about the elephant and melding them into a cohesive narrative. Much of the information in this book is new, while some of it was previously known but unconnected. The saga of the Great Carnival is worth telling, and I hope I have done it justice.
Two of the first people I contacted about the book were extremely generous in sharing what they knew and became friends of mine over time. Ann Morley Carmel, who probably knows more about Bahamian genealogy than anyone else, helped me with mountains of information and with key contacts in Nassau. She has blockade running in her blood. Her great-great-grandfather, Charles Robert Perpall, was directly involved in the game, and his sister Mary Ann Perpall married Henry Adderley, the king of them all. She is also related to two of the others most involved in Nassau, Robert Henry Sawyer and Henry Rowland Saunders. Carol Bass, great-great-granddaughter of John Lafitte, was equally generous with her time and materials that she had collected over the years. Carol passed away before she could see the final product, but I hope her husband Bill and family will enjoy the book.
I want to also thank two more relatives of people involved in blockade running for their time. I am indebted to Robert Lafitte Howells, another direct descendant of John Lafitte. I was honored to speak with the late Ethel Trenholm-Seabrook Nepveux before she passed away. She paved the way for many historians with two excellent books about her great-grandfather George Trenholm. My pathway to understanding the Great Carnival was aided by work done by a number of early researchers in addition to Mrs. Trenholm. Id like to particularly acknowledge the work of Thelma Peters, the work of Frank Tousley Edwards, and the classic book Lifeline of the Confederacy by Stephen Wise.
The digitization of books, journals, and manuscripts by Google Books, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive has made life so much easier for researchers than it was during the time period when I wrote my first three books. Services like ancestry.com and Fold3.com have also opened up information that would have been almost impossible to find before the internet. I have my mother-in-law Lila Reach and my sister-in-law Bev Perry to thank for their generosity in helping me learn to take advantage of the nuances of these sites.
Some of the images in the book are being seen on a wide scale for the first time. Id like to thank Ron Lightbourn for his time and generosity in providing many of these images and my father-in-law Bill Reach for helping me get them ready for publication. Walter Witschey applied his expertise to the four maps that I hope will help readers put the actions of the various characters in the book in geographic context. Id also like to thank my former research student Garrett Josemans for his excellence as a research assistant and travel companion and for his work in obtaining a number of images in the book.
I was assisted by many kind people at various repositories of information around the world. Thanks to Dana Owen and her colleagues at Greenwood Library at Longwood University for their work in securing my numerous inter-library loan requests. Thanks also to the following people and organizations: Mrs. Strachan and the other kind folks at the Bahamas National Archives, Jim Lawlor at the Bahamas Historical Society, Karen Stokes at the South Carolina Historical Society, Kate Gregory and Ryan Semmes at the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, Elizabeth Dunn at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, Cate Brennan and others at the National Archives, Graham Duncan at the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, Anna Bolch of the Diocese of Charleston, and those helpful folks at the University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, the Mariners Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Louis Round Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina,
So many people have helped me along the way that I am sure I will forget someone, and I apologize to anyone missing from this list: Tony Stellato, Trish Kaufmann, William Crozier, Kathie Gutierrez, Lolita Taylor, Charles Rigg, and Trudy Hawley.
My greatest thanks go to my wife Julie, who makes every part of my life better. She accompanied me on many fact-finding trips, proofread my drafts, and graciously put up with my often-distant stares as my mind was back in 1860s Nassau. When we were married in Nassau in 2003, neither of us knew that we took our vows only steps from the site of the Royal Victoria Hotel.
