As the Bat approached the Cape Fear River in the early morning hours of October 10, 1864, Union warships in the vicinity, which had been alerted thanks to Consular Dudley, were expecting her. The ship sailed for the North Carolina coast after refueling in Halifax. Thomas Dudley, American consul in Liverpool, learned of the purchase of the Bat by the Confederacy and that she had already left Liverpool and immediately informed Washington. The Bat put to sea on Septemand proceeded to Halifax, Nova Scotia for refueling. The ship’s cargo was to include heavy machinery, food stuffs, coal, medical supplies, and a large quantity of office supplies needed immediately by Jefferson Davis’ administration. Confederate agent James Bullock, who had purchased the ship for the Confederate Government, requested that the military supplies be sent on another ship. The original plan had called for the Bat to run through the Union blockade with military supplies desperately needed by the beleaguered South and then to slip back out to sea again, laden with cotton for the idle textile mills of England. One of the ships purchased by Confederate agents in Great Britain was the ship Bat, a fast, steel hulled, side-wheel steamer built in 1864 in Liverpool, England by The Jones and Quiggins Ship Building Company. Soon after Lincoln announced the blockade, the profitable business of running supplies through the blockade to the Confederacy began. Scott’s plan emphasized a Union Naval blockade of the Southern ports and called for infantry divisions to advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott proposed to President Abraham Lincoln the Anaconda Plan to subdue the rebellion. Although officially neutral, the British became the primary shipbuilders and source of supplies for the Confederacy for the duration of the civil war. Many private industries in England secretly worked with the Confederate government since much of their industry depended on cotton exports from the plantations of the South. In the months leading up to the war, the Confederate government sought the help of Great Britain to overcome this deficiency. When the American Civil War broke out on April 12, 1861, the newly formed Confederate States of America had no ships to speak of in its navy. Keefe, Archives Specialist at the National Archives at Boston.
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