cessary, to
constitute a real danger to blockade-runners, that the blockading
fleet should be in sight? Half a dozen fast steamers, cruising twenty
miles off-shore between the New Jersey and Long Island coast, would be
a very real danger to ships seeking to go in or out by the principal
entrance to New York; and similar positions might effectively blockade
Boston, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake. The main body of the
blockading fleet, prepared not only to capture merchant-ships but to
resist military attempts to break the blockade, need not be within
sight, nor in a position known to the shore. The bulk of Nelson's
fleet was fifty miles from Cadiz two days before Trafalgar, with a
small detachment watching close to the harbor. The allied fleet began
to get under way at 7 A.M., and Nelson, even under the conditions of
those days, knew it by 9.30. The English fleet at that distance was a
very real danger to its enemy. It seems possible, in these days of
submarine telegraphs, that the blockading forces in-shore and
off-shore, and from one port to another, might be in telegraphic
communication with one another along the whole coast of the United
States, readily giving mutual support; and if, by some fortunate
military combination, one detachment were attacked in force, it could
warn the others and retreat upon them. Granting that such a blockade
off one port were broken on one day, by fairly driving away the ships
maintaining it, the notification of its being re-established could be
cabled all over the world the next. To avoid such blockades there must
be a military force afloat that will at all times so endanger a
blockading fleet that it can by no means keep its place. Then neutral
ships, except those laden with contraband of war, can come and go
freely, and maintain the commercial relations of the country with the
world outside.

It may be urged that, with the extensive sea-coast of the United
States, a blockade of the whole line cannot be effectively kept up. No
one will more readily concede this than officers who remember how the
blockade of the Southern coast alone was maintained. But in the
present condition of the navy, and, it may be added, with any
additions not exceeding those so far proposed by the government,[14]
the attempt to blockade Boston, New York, the Delaware, the
Chesapeake, and the Mississippi, in other words, the great centres of
export and import, would not entail upon one of the large maritime
n