Blockade runner

However, the potential profits (economically or militarily) from a successful blockade run are tremendous, so blockade-runners typically had excellent crews.

[1][2] During the 14th century, while Queen Margaret I of Denmark's forces were besieging Stockholm, the blockade runners who came to be known as the Victual Brotherhood engaged in war at sea and shipped provisions to keep the city supplied.

Twelve major ports and approximately 3,500 miles of coastline along the Confederacy were patrolled by roughly 500 Union Navy ships.

British merchants had conducted significant amounts of trade with the South prior to the war, and were suffering from the Lancashire Cotton Famine.

In concert with Confederate interests, British investors ordered the construction of steamships that were longer, narrower and considerably faster than most of the conventional steamers guarding the American coastline, thus enabling them to outmaneuver and outrun blockaders.

[4][5] By the end of the American Civil War, Union warships had captured more than 1,100 blockade runners and had destroyed or run aground another 355.

In particular the North Sea blockade made it nearly impossible for surface ships to leave Germany for the then neutral United States and other locations.

[9] The Marie successfully ran the British North Sea blockade and docked, heavily damaged, in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now called Jakarta) on May 13, 1916.

From 1943 improved Allied air superiority over the Bay of Biscay rendered blockade running by surface ships effectively impossible.

[11] Italian ships, interned in Spain after Italy entered the war in June 1940, crossed the Bay of Biscay to Bordeaux and some of them, such as Fidelitas and Eugenio C, dashed through the English Channel bound for Germany and Norway.

In modern times, tracking equipment such as radar, sonar, and reconnaissance satellites make evading a total blockade by a world power nearly impossible.