1.
Blockade runners of the American Civil War
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Blockade runners imported from England most of the guns and other ordinance the Confederacy needed. To get through the blockade these ships, many of them built in British ship yards, specially designed for speed, had to cruise by undetected, the typical blockade runners were privately owned vessels often operating with a letter of marque issued by the Confederate States of America. If spotted the runners would attempt to outmaneuver or simply outrun any Union ships on blockade patrol, most of the guns and other ordnance of the Confederacy was imported from England via blockade runners. Some blockade runners made many successful runs while many others were captured or destroyed. There were an estimated 2, 500–2,800 attempts to run the blockade with at least an 80% success rate. However, by the end of the Civil War the Union Navy had captured more than 1,100 blockade runners and had destroyed or run aground another 355 vessels. When the American Civil War broke out on April 12,1861, the British became the primary ship builders and sources of supply for the Confederate government for the duration of the civil war. Several courses of action soon developed, in 1861 the Confederate naval fleet only consisted of about 35 ships, of which 21 were steam-driven. The Confederacy was also in dire need of basic supplies. Coming to their aid, an experienced and former U. S. naval captain, Raphael Semmes and he proposed a militia of privateers which would both strike at the Norths merchant ships and provide supplies to the south by out running or evading the ships of the Union blockade. Confederate President Jefferson Davis approved of the plan, to this end British investors were the most prolific in offering such aid. I. e. Scotts Anaconda plan extended along the Atlantic, in response Davis countered with threats of retaliation, while the British also proclaimed its refusal to concur with Lincolns proclamation in nearby Nassau and its territorial waters. Lincolns proposed blockade was met with mixed criticism among some of his contemporaries, thaddeus Stevens angrily referred to it as a great blunder and a absurdity arguing that we were blockading ourselves and in the process, would be recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent of war. Soon after Lincoln announced the blockade, the business of running supplies through the blockade to the Confederacy began. Wilmington, NC was not blockaded until July 14,1861, an enormous naval industry evolved which brought great profits for shipbuilders, shippers, and suppliers alike. Throughout the conflict mail was carried also by runners to and from ports in the West Indies, Nassau. This was part of his famous Anaconda Plan that employed a naval blockade around the coastline of the Confederacy with the idea of adversely affecting its economy and supply lines. Because of the thousands of miles of coastline, with its rivers, bays and inlets
2.
Merchant vessel
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A merchant vessel or trading vessel is a boat or ship that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This excludes pleasure craft that do not carry passengers for hire, most countries of the world operate fleets of merchant ships. However, due to the costs of operations, today these fleets are in many cases sailing under the flags of nations that specialize in providing manpower. Such flags are known as flags of convenience, currently, Liberia and Panama are particularly favoured. Ownership of the vessels can be by any country, however, the Greek-owned fleet is the largest in the world. Today, the Greek fleet accounts for some 16 per cent of the world’s tonnage, during wars, merchant ships may be used as auxiliaries to the navies of their respective countries, and are called upon to deliver military personnel and materiel. The term commercial vessel is defined by the United States Coast Guard as any vessel engaged in trade or that carries passengers for hire. In English, Merchant Navy without further clarification is used to refer to the British Merchant Navy, general cargo ships include multi-purpose and project vessels and roll-on/roll-off cargo. A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, thousands of cargo carriers ply the worlds seas and oceans each year, they handle the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usually designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload. Dry cargo ships today are mainly bulk carriers and container ships, bulk carriers or bulkers are used for the transportation of homogeneous cargo such as coal, rubber, copra, tin, and wheat. Container ships are used for the carriage of miscellaneous goods, a bulk carrier is an ocean-going vessel used to transport bulk cargo items such as iron ore, bauxite, coal, cement, grain and similar cargo. Bulk carriers can be recognized by large box-like hatches on deck, the dimensions of bulk carriers are often determined by the ports and sea routes that they need to serve, and by the maximum width of the Panama Canal. Most lakes are too small to accommodate bulk carriers, but a large fleet of lake freighters has been plying the Great Lakes, container ships are cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial freight transport. A tanker is a designed to transport liquids in bulk. Tankers can range in size from several hundred tons, designed to serve small harbours and coastal settlements, to several hundred thousand tons, gas Carriers such as LNG carriers as they are typically known, are a relatively rare tanker designed to carry liquefied natural gas. It has a deadweight of 565 thousand metric tons and length of about 458 meters, the use of such large ships is in fact very unprofitable, due to the inability to operate them at full cargo capacity, hence, the production of supertankers has currently ceased
3.
Blockade
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A blockade is an effort to cut off supplies, war material or communications from a particular area by force, either in part or totally. A blockade should not be confused with an embargo or sanctions and it is also distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually directed at an entire country or region, rather than a fortress or city. While most blockades historically took place at sea, blockade is still used on land to prevent someone coming into a certain area. A blockading power can seek to cut off all maritime transport from and to the country, although stopping all land transport to. Blockades restrict the rights of neutrals, who must submit for inspection for contraband. In the 20th century air power has also used to enhance the effectiveness of the blockade by halting air traffic within the blockaded airspace. Close patrol of hostile ports, in order to prevent naval forces from putting to sea, is referred to as a blockade. When coastal cities or fortresses were besieged from the landward side, most recently, blockades have sometimes included cutting off electronic communications by jamming radio signals and severing undersea cables. Following the British naval victory at Quiberon Bay, which ended any hope of a major invasion of the British Isles. This began to starve French ports of commerce, further weakening Frances economy, hawke took command of the blockading fleet off Brest and extended the blockade of the French coast from Dunkirk to Marseilles. The British were able to take advantage of the Navys position to develop plans for landings on the coast. However, these plans were abandoned, due to the formidable logistical challenge this would have posed. The Union blockade of ports was a major factor in the American Civil War, as was the failure of the U-boat blockade in World War I. Julian Corbett and Admiral Mahan emphasized that naval operations were chiefly to be won by decisive battles, a close blockade entails placing warships within sight of the blockaded coast or port, to ensure the immediate interception of any ship entering or leaving. It is both the most effective and the most difficult form of blockade to implement, in a distant blockade, the blockaders stay well away from the blockaded coast and try to intercept any ships going in or out. This may require more ships on station, but they can usually operate closer to their bases and this was almost impossible prior to the 16th century due to the nature of the ships used. A loose blockade is a close blockade where the ships are withdrawn out of sight from the coast. The object of loose blockade is to lure the enemy into venturing out, British admiral Horatio Nelson applied a loose blockade at Cádiz in 1805
4.
Smuggling
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There are various motivations to smuggle. Examples of non-financial motivations include bringing banned items past a security checkpoint or the removal of classified documents from a government or corporate office, Smuggling is a common theme in literature, from Bizets opera Carmen to the James Bond spy books Diamonds are Forever and Goldfinger. The verb smuggle, from Low German schmuggeln or Dutch smokkelen, apparently a frequentative formation of a meaning to sneak. Smuggling has a long and controversial history, probably dating back to the first time at which duties were imposed in any form, in England smuggling first became a recognised problem in the 13th century, following the creation of a national customs collection system by Edward I in 1275. Medieval smuggling tended to focus on the export of highly taxed export goods — notably wool, merchants also, however, sometimes smuggled other goods to circumvent prohibitions or embargoes on particular trades. Most studies of historical smuggling have been based on official sources — such as court records, according to Dr Evan Jones, the trouble with these is that they only detail the activities of those dumb enough to get caught. This has led him and others, such as Prof Huw Bowen to use records to reconstruct smuggling businesses. Grain smuggling by members of the elite, often working closely with corrupt customs officers, has also been shown to have been prevalent in East Anglia during the later 16th century. In England wool was smuggled to the continent in the 17th century, the principal reason for the high duty was the need for the government to finance a number of extremely expensive wars with France and the United States. The thievery was boasted about and romanticized until it seemed a kind of heroism and it did not have any taint of criminality and the whole of the south coast had pockets vying with one another over whose smugglers were the darkest or most daring. The Smugglers Inn was one of the commonest names for a bar on the coast, in Henley Road, smuggling in colonial times was a reaction to the heavy taxes and regulations imposed by mercantilist trade policies. After American independence in 1783, smuggling developed at the edges of the United States at places like Passamaquoddy Bay, St. Marys in Georgia, Lake Champlain, and Louisiana. During Thomas Jeffersons embargo of 1807-1809, these places became the primary places where goods were smuggled out of the nation in defiance of the law. Like Britain, a gradual liberalization of laws as part of the free trade movement meant less smuggling. In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt tried to cut down on smuggling by establishing the Roosevelt Reservation along the United States-Mexico Border, Smuggling revived in the 1920s during Prohibition, and drug smuggling became a major problem after 1970. In the 1990s, when sanctions were imposed on Serbia. The state unofficially allowed this to continue or otherwise the entire economy would have collapsed, much smuggling occurs when enterprising merchants attempt to supply demand for a good or service that is illegal or heavily taxed. As a result, illegal trafficking, and the smuggling of weapons, as well as the historical staples of smuggling, alcohol
5.
Confederate States of America
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The Confederate States, officially the Confederate States of America, commonly referred to as the Confederacy, was a breakaway country of 11 secessionist slave states existing from 1861 to 1865. It was never recognized as an Independent country, although it achieved belligerent status by Britain. A new Confederate government was established in February 1861 before Lincoln took office in March, after the Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South – Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina – also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The government of the United States rejected the claims of secession, the Civil War began with the April 12,1861, Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. In spring 1865, after four years of fighting which led to an estimated 620,000 military deaths, all the Confederate forces surrendered. Jefferson Davis later lamented that the Confederacy had disappeared in 1865, Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions from those states, while the legitimate governments of those two states retained formal adherence to the Union. Also fighting for the Confederacy were two of the Five Civilized Tribes located in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona. Efforts by certain factions in Maryland to secede were halted by federal imposition of law, while Delaware, though of divided loyalty. A Unionist government in parts of Virginia organized the new state of West Virginia. With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1,1863, the Union made abolition of slavery a war goal, as Union forces moved southward, large numbers of plantation slaves were freed. Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers, teamsters and laborers, the most notable advance was Shermans March to the Sea in late 1864. Much of the Confederacys infrastructure was destroyed, including telegraphs, railroads, plantations in the path of Shermans forces were severely damaged. Internal movement became increasingly difficult for Southerners, weakening the economy and these losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men, materiel, and finance. Public support for Confederate President Jefferson Daviss administration eroded over time due to repeated military reverses, economic hardships, after four years of campaigning, Richmond was captured by Union forces in April 1865. Shortly afterward, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, President Davis was captured on May 10,1865, and jailed in preparation for a treason trial that was ultimately never held. The U. S. government began a process known as Reconstruction which attempted to resolve the political and constitutional issues of the Civil War. By 1877, the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction in the former Confederate states, Confederate veterans had been temporarily disenfranchised by Reconstruction policy. The prewar South had many areas, the war left the entire region economically devastated by military action, ruined infrastructure
6.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864
7.
World war
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A world war is a war involving many of the countries of the world or many of the most powerful and populous ones. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters. The Oxford English Dictionary cited the first known usage in the English language to a Scottish newspaper, the term World War I was coined by Time magazine in its issue of June 12,1939. In the same article, the term World War II was first used speculatively to describe the upcoming war, the first use for the actual war came in its issue of September 11,1939. m. Speculative fiction authors had been noting the concept of a Second World War in 1919 and 1920, due to this fact, a very minute conflict between two countries had the potential to set off a domino effect of alliances, triggering a world war. The fact that the powers involved had large overseas empires virtually guaranteed that such a war would be worldwide, the same strategic considerations also ensured that the combatants would strike at each others colonies, thus spreading the wars far more widely than those of pre-Colombian times. Both world wars had also seen war crimes, the First World War had seen major use of chemical weapons despite the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 outlawing the use of such weapons in warfare. The Ottoman Empire had been considered responsible for the death of one million Armenians during the First World War. The Second World War was the first conflict in which atomic bombs had been used, nazi Germany had been responsible for multiple genocides, most notably the Holocaust, killing six million Jews. The outcome of the wars had a profound effect on the course of world history. The old European empires had collapsed or been dismantled as a result of the wars crushing costs. The United States of America had been established as the dominant global superpower, along with its ideological foe. These two superpowers exerted political influence over most of the worlds nation-states for decades after the end of the Second World War, the modern international security, economic and diplomatic system had been created in the aftermath of the wars. Institutions such as the United Nations were established to collectivize international affairs, the wars had also greatly changed the course of daily life. Technologies developed during wartime had an effect on peace-time life as well, for instance, advances in, jet aircraft, penicillin, nuclear energy. Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, there has been a widespread and this war has been anticipated and planned for by military and civil authorities, and explored in fiction in many countries. Concepts have ranged from purely conventional scenarios, to limited use of nuclear weapons, among these are former American, French, and Mexican government officials, military leaders, politicians, and authors, Despite their efforts, none of these wars are commonly deemed world wars. The Second Congo War involved nine nations and led to ongoing low-level warfare despite an official peace and it has often been referred to as Africas World War
8.
Peloponnesian War
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The Peloponnesian War was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases and this period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched an expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily. This ushered in the phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War. The destruction of Athens fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war, Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved, but Sparta refused. The Peloponnesian War reshaped the ancient Greek world, the economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece, poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens found itself completely devastated, and never regained its pre-war prosperity. Greek warfare, meanwhile, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into a struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a large scale. Indeed, the fifty years of Greek history that preceded the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War had been marked by the development of Athens as a major power in the Mediterranean world. The city proceeded to conquer all of Greece except for Sparta and its allies, by the middle of the century, the Persians had been driven from the Aegean and forced to cede control of a vast range of territories to Athens. This tribute was used to support a fleet and, after the middle of the century, to fund massive public works programs in Athens. According to Thucydides, although the Spartans took no action at this time, conflict between the states flared up again in 465 BC, when a helot revolt broke out in Sparta. The Spartans summoned forces from all of their allies, including Athens, Athens sent out a sizable contingent, but upon its arrival, this force was dismissed by the Spartans, while those of all the other allies were permitted to remain. According to Thucydides, the Spartans acted in this way out of fear that the Athenians would switch sides and support the helots, the offended Athenians repudiated their alliance with Sparta. When the rebellious helots were finally forced to surrender and permitted to evacuate the country, a fifteen-year conflict, commonly known as the First Peloponnesian War, ensued, in which Athens fought intermittently against Sparta, Corinth, Aegina, and a number of other states. The war was ended by the Thirty Years Peace, signed in the winter of 446/5 BC. The Thirty Years Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens powerful ally Samos rebelled from its alliance with Athens, the rebels quickly secured the support of a Persian satrap, and Athens found itself facing the prospect of revolts throughout the empire. The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a war to determine the fate of the empire
9.
Punic Wars
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The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 BC to 146 BC. At the time, they were probably the largest wars that had taken place. The term Punic comes from the Latin word Punicus, meaning Carthaginian, the main cause of the Punic Wars was the conflicts of interest between the existing Carthaginian Empire and the expanding Roman Republic. The Romans were initially interested in expansion via Sicily, part of which lay under Carthaginian control, at the start of the first Punic War, Carthage was the dominant power of the Western Mediterranean, with an extensive maritime empire. Rome was a rapidly ascending power in Italy, but it lacked the power of Carthage. The Roman victories over Carthage in these wars gave Rome a preeminent status it would retain until the 5th century AD, during the mid-3rd century BC, Carthage was a large city located on the coast of modern Tunisia. Founded by the Phoenicians in the mid-9th century BC, it was a powerful thalassocratic city-state with a vast commercial network, of the great city-states in the western Mediterranean, only Rome rivaled it in power, wealth, and population. While Carthages navy was the largest in the ancient world at the time, it did not maintain a large, permanent, instead, Carthage relied mostly on mercenaries, especially the indigenous Numidians, to fight its wars. However, most of the officers who commanded the armies were Carthaginian citizens, in 200 BC, the Roman Republic had gained control of the Italian peninsula south of the Po river. Unlike Carthage, Rome had large disciplined armed forces, on the other hand, at the start of the First Punic War, the Romans had no navy, and were thus at a disadvantage until they began to construct their own large fleets during the war. The First Punic War was fought partly on land in Sicily and Africa and it began as a local conflict in Sicily between Hiero II of Syracuse and the Mamertines of Messina. The Mamertines enlisted the aid of the Carthaginian navy, and then subsequently betrayed them by entreating the Roman Senate for aid against Carthage, the Romans sent a garrison to secure Messina, so the outraged Carthaginians then lent aid to Syracuse. With the two powers now embroiled in the conflict, tensions escalated into a full-scale war between Carthage and Rome for the control of Sicily. In 260 BC, they defeated the fledgling Roman navy at the Battle of the Lipari Islands, Rome responded by drastically expanding its navy in a very short time. Within two months, the Romans had a fleet of one hundred warships. Because they knew that they could not defeat the Carthaginians in the tactics of ramming and sinking enemy ships, the Romans added the corvus. The hinged bridge would swing onto enemy vessels with a sharp spike, Roman legionaries could then board and capture Carthaginian ships. This innovative Roman tactic reduced the Carthaginian navys advantage in ship-to-ship engagements, however, the corvus was also cumbersome and dangerous, and was eventually phased out as the Roman navy became more experienced and tactically proficient
