<P> Ordinary freighters were too slow and visible to escape the Navy . The blockade runners therefore relied mainly on new steamships built in Britain with low profiles, shallow draft, and high speed . Their paddle - wheels, driven by steam engines that burned smokeless anthracite coal, could make 17 kn (31 km / h; 20 mph). Because the South lacked sufficient sailors, skippers and shipbuilding capability, the runners were built, commanded and manned by British officers and sailors . Private British investors spent perhaps £ 50 million on the runners ($250 million in U.S. dollars, equivalent to about $2.5 billion in 2006 dollars). The pay was high: a Royal Navy officer on leave might earn several thousand dollars (in gold) in salary and bonus per round trip, with ordinary seamen earning several hundred dollars . </P> <P> The blockade runners were based in the British islands of Bermuda and the Bahamas, or Havana, in Spanish Cuba . The goods they carried were brought to these places by ordinary cargo ships, and loaded onto the runners . The runners then ran the gauntlet between their bases and Confederate ports, some 500--700 mi (800--1,130 km) apart . On each trip, a runner carried several hundred tons of compact, high - value cargo such as cotton, turpentine or tobacco outbound, and rifles, medicine, brandy, lingerie and coffee inbound . Often they also carried mail . They charged from $300 to $1,000 per ton of cargo brought in; two round trips a month would generate perhaps $250,000 in revenue (and $80,000 in wages and expenses). </P> <P> Blockade runners preferred to run past the Union Navy at night, either on moonless nights, before the moon rose, or after it set . As they approached the coastline, the ships showed no lights, and sailors were prohibited from smoking . Likewise, Union warships covered all their lights, except perhaps a faint light on the commander's ship . If a Union warship discovered a blockade runner, it fired signal rockets in the direction of its course to alert other ships . The runners adapted to such tactics by firing their own rockets in different directions to confuse Union warships . </P> <P> In November 1864, a wholesaler in Wilmington asked his agent in the Bahamas to stop sending so much chloroform and instead send "essence of cognac" because that perfume would sell "quite high". Confederate patriots held rich blockade runners in contempt for profiteering on luxuries while the soldiers were in rags . On the other hand, their bravery and initiative were necessary for the nation's survival, and many women in the back country flaunted imported $10 gewgaws and $50 hats as patriotic proof that the "damn yankees" had failed to isolate them from the outer world . The government in Richmond, Virginia, eventually regulated the traffic, requiring half the imports to be munitions; it even purchased and operated some runners on its own account and made sure they loaded vital war goods . By 1864, Lee's soldiers were eating imported meat . Blockade running was reasonably safe for both sides . It was not illegal under international law; captured foreign sailors were released, while Confederates went to prison camps . The ships were unarmed (the weight of cannon would slow them down), so they posed no danger to the Navy warships . </P>

January 1865 the last confederate port open to blockade-runners fell