The other night i was watching an episode of Clyde Built, the ships that built the Commonwealth.
The episode featured the Confederate blockade runner paddle steamer Robert E Lee. She was one of a number of blockade runners built on the Clyde for confederate army use running the Union Blockade of Southern U.S. ports during the American civil war. Based in Bermuda they were used to transport munitions, food and clothing from ships coming from Europe to the confederate army. Although Britain had abolished slavery some years previously clyde ship builders and cotton mill owners tacitly supported the confederate cause as the return cargoes was cotton from the southern states. At one point Bermuda became one of the busiest ports going and the town of saint georges became a hot bed of drinking establishments and brothels to such an extent that riots actually broke out between drunken British and American sailors.
During the american civil war britain had declared itself neutral but the situation of blockade runners using Bermuda as a base almost led the Britain and the Union states going to war with each other.
The profits made by the ship owners and their captains of the blockade runners were immense, after only a couple of trips they had recouped the cost of the ship and its cargo and from then on it was all profit. The Clyde built the largest number of blockade runners and profited greatly from the American civil war.
The Robert E Lee was eventually captured by the Union Forces and was turned into a Union gunboat, after the war ended she was sold to the Chilean navy and was eventually wrecked in an unknown position.
The crews of the blockade runners faced execution as pirates if their ship was captured by the Union forces but their rewards if successful outweighed the danger of being captured.
Rgds
J.A.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Robert_E._Lee