Jim Kosinski America’s Maritime Civil War

Jim Kosinski is a historian/researcher and volunteer at Channel Islands Maritime Museum. His interest in American and European history has taken him to libraries, museums and historical sites both here and abroad. Today’s Civil War presentation will cover some of the less-well-known aspects of the conflict—the naval war.

Maritime conflict, during the Civil War, was fought both as sudden, spectacular lightning battles as well as continual vigilance on the coasts, rivers, and seas.
Union President Abraham Lincoln set the Union’s first naval goal when he declared a blockade of the Southern coasts. His plan was to cut off Southern trade with the outside world and prevent sale of the Confederacy’s major crop, cotton.
The Southern states had few resources compared to the North: a handful of shipyards, a small merchant marine, and no navy at all. Yet the Confederates needed a navy to break the Union blockade and to defend the port cities.