James Russell Soley, Professor U. S. Navy, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, The blockade and the cruisers
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[156] carried on a regular trade between Nassau or Bermuda and Wilmington or some other blockaded port. The Government owned three or four such vessels, and was part-owner in several others. These last were required to carry out cotton on Government account, as part of their cargo, and to bring in supplies. Among the vessels wholly owned by the Government was the Giraffe, a Clyde-built iron side-wheel steamer, of light draft and considerable speed, which had been used as a packet between Glasgow and Belfast. She became famous under a new name, as the R. E. Lee; and under the efficient command of Captain Wilkinson, who had formerly been an officer of our navy, and who was now in the Confederate service, she ran the blockade twenty-one times in ten months, between December, 1862, and November, 1863, and carried abroad six thousand bales of cotton The cotton was landed at Nassau, the Government not appearing in the transaction as shipper or owner. Here it was entrusted to a mercantile firm, which received a large ‘commission’ for assuming ownership, and by this last it was shipped to Europe under neutral flags. The firm employed for this purpose is reported to have obtained a handsome return from its transactions.

The trade was now reduced to a system, whose working showed it to be nearly perfect. The short-voyage blockade-runners, destined for the passage between the neutral islands and the blockaded coast, began to make their appearance. In these every device was brought into use that could increase their efficiency. Speed, invisibility, and handiness, with certain space for stowage, were the essentials; to these all other qualities were sacrificed. The typical blockade-runner of 1863-4 was a long, low side-wheel steamer of from four to six hundred tons, with a slight frame, sharp and narrow, its length perhaps nine times its beam. It had