Civil War Blockade Running on the Texas Coast

In the last months of the American Civil War, the upper Texas coast became a hive of blockade running. Though Texas was often considered an isolated backwater in the conflict, the Union's pervasive and systematic seizure of Southern ports left Galveston as one of the only strongholds of foreign imports in the anemic supply chain to embattled Confederate forces. Long, fast steamships ran in and out of the city's port almost every week, bound to and from Cuba. Join author Andrew W. Hall as he explores the story of Texas's Civil War blockade runners--a story of daring, of desperation and, in many cases, of patriotism turning coat to profiteering.

Andy Hall is a native of the Texas Gulf Coast and a long-time researcher and author, specializing in local maritime and Civil War history. Working with the Texas Historical Commission, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, the PAST Foundation and other groups, Hall has had the opportunity to help archaeologists record multiple historical shipwrecks, including the famous blockade runners Denbigh and Will o' the Wisp, and the blockaders USS Arkansas and USS Hatteras.