 Greetings from the National Archives Flagship Building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotch Tank Peoples. I'm David Terry, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's program about Scottish blockade runners of the Civil War. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two programs coming up this month on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, November 16, at 1 p.m., Gail Jessup White, a black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming's family, will discuss her new book, Reclamation, which explores her journey to understand her heritage. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed will join the author in conversation. And on Friday, November 19, at 1 p.m., Michael Burlingame will tell us about his new book, The Black Man's President, and discuss Abraham Lincoln's personal connections with black people over the course of his career. One of Abraham Lincoln's first acts as president in 1861 was to blockade the ports of southern states that had recently seceded from the Union. The blockade intended to deprive those states of the needed materials required to wage war. In response, the Confederate government, some states' governors and private individuals purchased ships that would evade the blockade and bring in the needed goods. They looked to the ship powers of Scotland, particularly Glasgow, to obtain and fit out steamers. Jonas Wiley, commander of the steamer Advance, was one of the thousands of Scottish sailors who ran the blockade of Confederate ports during the Civil War. Beginning with the story of Captain Wiley, our guest speakers will look into why so many Scottish vessels were involved in the conflict, even though Britain remained officially neutral during the American Civil War. Sources for today's story include Civil War prize cases, files from the National Archives at New York City and Boston, which are available in our online catalog and archival sources from Great Britain and the State Archives of North Carolina. It's now my pleasure to introduce our three panelists. John F. Mezner, curator of Transport and Technology at the Glasgow Museums and author of A Scottish Blockade Runner in the American Civil War, Stephen R. Wise, an expert on the blockade and author of Lifeline of the Confederacy, and Van Evans, audiovisual materials archivist at the State Archives of North Carolina, and contributor to Connecting the Dock, a podcast where archivists connect archival materials to fascinating true stories from the past. Thank you for joining us today. Hello and welcome to today's session for the National Archives. My name is John Mezner. I'm one of the curators of the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, and also the author of today's book. From my accent, you might be able to tell that I'm indeed a new Scot, originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I've been in here at Glasgow for the past 15 years, and just to make out some of the mere hair that sense you get. I'm honored to be able to speak to you today about the life of Jonas Wiley and the role that British blockade runners had in the Civil War for the invitation of the National Archives. Some significant items of research for the book on Wiley came from the holdings, and it's a great opportunity to highlight these collections for other scholars and researchers. Joining me today to discuss British blockade running in the Civil War are Dr. Stephen R. Wise. Stephen, in addition to being the author of Lifeline of Confederacy, is also the director of the Paris Island Museum and an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina. Stephen has told me that he's spent countless hours in the National Archives at UC, digging deep into the war records as part of his work on his book, which, if I may say, with a not-for-a-married-time theme today, are by both depth and breadth. This is a stunning example of historic research. I'm also joined by Van Evans, who is the audio-visual material activist at the State Archives in North Carolina. He previously served as the supervisor for public service unit at the State Archives, advising and assisting researchers like myself. He first became interested in blockade running while taking the course on the subject by actor Chris Von Bull, another expert in the subject while a graduate student at UNC Wilmington. So I'd like to welcome both Van and Steve. But before we get to the story of Jonas Wiley, I'd like to ask Steve if you might be able to tell us what was the blockade? What were blockade running and who was trying to run it? Thank you, John. I'd like to go ahead and get started now and have the first picture to be shown of the blockade runner Alice. The short time allotted to me, what I want to do is give a general overview of blockade running during the American Civil War. Blockade running created a supply system based around very specialized vessels, and you're going to see pictures of these vessels as we go forward, that provided the Confederate armies with the means to fight their northern adversaries on equal terms. And what I like to sort of say, it gives the Confederacy, it gives the South the opportunity for victory. Now at the start of the Civil War, no one envisioned the massive international logistical system that would evolve around blockade running. Now initially, and you have to remember the Confederacy that we always talk about Confederacy as an agricultural nation was fairly well industrialized. And initially the Confederate War Department planned to sustain its operations. I'm sorry. Initially the Confederacy planned to sustain its operations through building their own munition plants. And blockade running would only be sort of a short term stop gap measure, something that would fill the void between the depletion of existing stocks of arms and ammunition and the beginning of home production. But try as they might, the Confederacy never to meet their needs through domestic production. They had to depend completely on blockade running. Carry out in the needed supplies and bring in the needed supplies. This is everything from arms, accoutrements, uniforms, chemicals, medical supplies and even food. Confederate agents for the most part are going to primarily contract with private companies, mainly British firms to provide necessary vessels. And since they had to deliver these goods by running through a federal blockade, the ships, their crews, their captains were termed blockade runners. Now there are some exceptions. The Confederacy did operate a small line of vessels as did a few states. John will tell us more about this side of the story. But the vast majority of the runners were operated by private, again often British enterprises. This may seem like a bit of a tenuous setup for a nation that counts so much on foreign businessmen. But what's going to make it work is profit. And if I could get the slide of a cotton bond please at this point. Now early on in the war, the Confederacy purchased 400,000 cotton bales for about $8 million. This is about $200 million in today's currency to help out the cotton producers whose overseas markets had been cut off by the federal blockade. At first they were not sure what to do with it. It was termed a wide elephant. Then they quickly realized the value of cotton as a medium of exchange for the purchasing of supplies. Now following the lead of the Navy Department, the government began using cotton to finance its overseas ventures. By employing the cotton purchased early in the war, the Confederacy began issuing, and you see a great picture of one right here, issuing cotton bonds or sometimes called certificates. There were two ways to make a profit off the bonds. An investor could buy the bond at the low power rate, collect interest on it every month until it could be redeemed at full value. Or, and this is what really makes things work, the investor could immediately make arrangements to turn the bond in for cotton. This particular bond, it's a $100 bond, could be redeemed in the Confederacy for four bales of cotton, which then could be turned around and sold in Great Britain for $1,000. It's the latter method that made the bond so popular. Cotton could be obtained in the south at 10 cents a pound, which would be about $2 today, and sold in Great Britain for 50 cents a pound, about $10 today. This making a bale of cotton purchased in Charleston for $50. This could be sold in Liverpool for $250. You can imagine how British businessmen viewed these extraordinary profits, and you might say, away we go. There's a wide variety of bonds, mostly issued by the Confederacy and some by a few of the states. The bonds are the basis for contracts beginning to south in its suppliers. Private blockade runners, their ventures use them to finance vessels to guarantee outward cargoes. And with the British textile industry starved for cotton and willing to pay dearly any price for the fiber, blockade running was an extremely profitable business. For example, a blockade runner like this one that cost $100,000 to build could be outfitted and crude for all, say $40,000. So say a firm puts $150,000 into its venture. If the vessel made it to the Confederacy to cut 1,000 bales of cotton, the firm would make $250,000 enough to pay for the ship and all overhead. Or in terms of today's money, a $3,750,000 outlay could bring you $6,250,000 gross profit. So we say such profit margins inspired foreign investors. Because of the fortunes that could be made, munitions, uniforms, uniform material, leather, medical supplies, accoutrements flowed into Confederacy on board steam blockade runners. Of course, you had to have the right vessel, a good captain and a solid crew to successfully counter the federal blockade. Early in the war, it was quickly realized that sailing ships would not do. Sailing ships large enough to carry a gainful amount of cargo were easy marks for steam-powered warships. So to counter their pursuers, the blockade runners also turned to steam engines. The first successful blockade runners were small, shallow, drafted packets like the one here was shown. They were maneuverable, but they're not very fast, nor they could really carry a large amount of cargo. So as the war continued, so did the search for the perfect vessel. And so any ship did emerge that became the prototype of all Civil War blockade runners. The class of steamer that came to be the model for blockade runners were found in United Kingdom's coastal and cross-channel passenger trade. Since so many had been built on the Clyde River in and around Glasgow, Scotland, they were nicknamed Clyde steamers. They were rugged, fast, maneuverable, shallow-drafted, large cargo capacity. They were side-wheelers. They were capable of carrying over 1,000 bales of cotton. And some of them have wonderful names like this vessel here, which was termed the letharip. Also as important as the ships were the captains and crews. The sailors were usually foreign-born English, Scottish, and Irish. Captains and pilots could be Southerners who knew the coast of waters of the Confederacy, but many were also English and Scottish. And if you were successful, one could command a very handsome salary. Large cargo vessels will bring supplies in Great Britain to such ports as Havana, St. George Bermuda, and Nassau and the Bahamas. The goods were then transferred to the smaller, faster blockade runners who delivered their cargoes to Confederate ports. The most popular runs were from Nassau to Charleston and Bermuda to Wilmington. During the Civil War, this is a little hard to believe to some, but it's true, during the Civil War, blockade runners were successful on over 75% of their runs. They had the advantage of speed and surprise over their adversaries, and most of the time they passed in and out unseen. Throughout the war, blockade running sustained the Confederate military because of blockade running, the Confederacy was never without the means to fight. The South imported 60% of its modern arms, 30% of its lead used to mold bullets, 75% of the Army salt peater required to manufacture powder, and nearly all the paper needed to make cartridges came through the blockade. The majority of cloth for uniforms, leather for accoutrements, and hundreds of thousands of shoes as well as large amounts of medals, chemicals, medicine, and even by the end of the war canned food arrived on blockade runners. The South never lost a battle due to the lack of equipment. While private ventures dominated the trade, the Confederacy as well as certain individual Southern states operated blockade runners. The state that managed one of the most notable ventures was that established by North Carolina, which operated one of the worst most successful blockade runner, commanded by one of the worst most effective seamen, with both the ship and the captain, hailing from Scotland. And with this, take it away, John. Thank you very much, Steve, for that very concise description of the blockade. If we can go to image one, I'd like to just talk a bit more about British sailors and seamen, as well as captains and officers who were involved in running the blockade. It's estimated that 3,000 Scottish sailors alone were involved in running the blockade. And if you think some of these runners needed 50 or 60 crew, there'd be a large number needed, not only for the running, but as Steve said, for bringing in the materials from Britain, from Europe and depositing them in Nassau or St. George's. What we have in terms of evidence of it is a fantastic contemporary image from the illustrated London News, which showed blockade runners on top of one of these British seamers running and invading the Union fleet. And if we could just go to image two, I'd like to talk a little bit more about Liverpool and Glasgow at the time, and how these were centres of industry producing these vessels. Glasgow and Liverpool are both maritime cities, and they have been some of these centres for the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The first modern paddle steamer or steam vessel to be built in Britain, the comet was built on the River Clyde in 1812. And ever since that time, the 50 years following, the development of steam engines, maritime technology and design had adjunct by leaps and bounds. But also that relates to Liverpool, and Liverpool is there on the right of the screen. Liverpool has always been a maritime city. They were both involved in the construction of all types of vessels, from these coastal steamers to clippers, military vessels, tugs and so on. So these are two of the main maritime ports in Britain. There are others, Bristol and the time on the east side and London. But when it came to blockade running and the vessels that were employed by it, these were the home of the majority of those that ran the blockade. If you just move to image three, please. With that in mind, Glasgow Museums, my employer, we worked to think about how Glasgow's wall in the conflict, the Civil War, had affected the conflict. And so in 2015, we decided as part of the 150th anniversary of the conflict to do a display about Glasgow's wall in the American Civil War. And of course, primarily, the focus is on blockade runs. The display features some of our fantastic ship models, and these were models that were from the actual companies that built the ships. It's not amateur built models, these were models from the shipyards. And we have some models of the giraffe, which became the Robert E. Lee, which was one of the most successful, one of the most successful vessels. But we also have right there in the center, fantastic oil painting of one of these vessels. And that is the advance. So I was working with our maritime curator developing the displays. And one of the things that we find our visitors always like is to know some personal stories about the objects they see. So that could be who crashed on them, who drove them, who owned them, who designed them. And we have this fantastic paint, and the vessel is very well done, very well documented. But when I was doing the research for it, I noticed that there was a small plaque on it, and it mentioned the name Jonas Wiley. So I very quickly consulted Steve's book and some other sources to try to find out a bit more about this captain. Because it said he commanded the vessel. And it only turned out that it was kind of listed in some footnotes, maybe a very little was known about him. Sometimes it said it was an English, sometimes Scottish, which was a very common thing to do, even in today, to confuse the two. So it kind of set me off thinking, well, we have this fantastic painting. But we don't know about the person. It'd be nice to know a little bit more about him before we finish the display. And if we can go to the next image, please. I was able to ask the colleague to put his name in the British Library's newspaper article. And luckily it was a name like Jonas Wiley. It came up with some hits. It came up with some hits right away that confirmed that he was indeed Scottish. That he was from an area of Scotland called Fife, which is on the east side of the country. And when he returned, he gave a number of lectures about his time as a blockade runner. And you see here on the right from the Fife Herald from December of 1869 is actually his first ever blockade runner lecture. And it turns out that these lectures, I will find a lot more about his time at sea, his life and background, as well particularly for this topic today about his time on the advance. The photograph there on the left came with the painting. The painting I should have said actually owned by Jonas Wiley as well. This is the only known photograph we have of the man. And it was dated around 1862, just at the time he started his career on the blockade. So looking through newspaper archives, both on this side of the Atlantic and on the American side. And going through maritime records, crew lists, naval seamen records, really started to build up kind of a skeletal idea of who Jonas Wiley was. His lecture listings gave a little bit more, but they were never fully transcribed. But if we can go to the next image, the source that really brings Wiley's life to life, I should say, is an article that appeared in 1889 in a magazine called People to Friend. Now at this point I feel I should really digress and explain a little bit about the People's Friend. People's Friend, founded in 1869 and is still going strong today, was and is a magazine dedicated to female readers, to women readers. Initially in 1869 it was a more of a working class women's magazine. Today if you ask any person in Scotland about the People's Friend, they'll say, oh yeah, my granny gets that and she has it in her lounge, she likes to read it. So when I came across this listing of Jonas Wiley and risen from the great Scottish blockade runner and started reading it, and luckily there's a copy that survives in the National Libraries here. It's full of some tall tales, some things you might call sailor stories. We're talking shark attack. We're talking poisonings. We're talking love and adventure and romance, all of which sounds too good to be true. But the amazing thing is once I merged these kind of stories with some of the primary source material from Steve Wise's book, from the crew lists and other maritime sources. It quickly became evident that although sometimes maybe with a pinch of salt you have to take, but all the stories were true. So it's a fantastic kind of adding, what I call adding to muscles, the bones of the story. So if we can go to the next image, a little bit about Wiley's life. He's born in 1828, and he's actually born in the Scottish Borders, which is down by England, but his family comes from Fife. His father was a gardener and a farmer. Early on after the family moved back to Fife, and his father took up gardening once again. And he's from an area in Fife near Krakati, which is a large kind of county town, and also a maritime village called Dizer, and that's up in the upper right-hand corner. While his family, to my knowledge, didn't have any maritime connections, they were of the land. So he was going to go into basically farming, that's what it sounded like. But he showed promise, academic promise as a young man. He actually was able to attend the University of St. Andrews, and that's an image of the University there. He attended there for several years, and then he then took up a role of teaching in the area, so kind of a shaper of minds of one of the local schools dedicated to the children of minors. But in 1851, something happened, and we're not quite sure, but there was some kind of trouble, because the teacher of the local school, Jonas Wiley, was declared dead. And although he was very much alive, a local newspaper at the time ran a big story that the teacher was out at the pub one night, got drunk, fell over, and was crushed by a cart. Now the people's friend goes into this, and it kind of sounds like there's some kind of argument with someone else. Maybe over a woman, maybe over something like that, it's not quite clear. But soon after, Jonas Wiley gives up his life as a teacher, and he goes to sea. He starts as an apprentice, so basically the bottom rung of the land, and he spends the next ten years sailing around the world from Australia, New Zealand, Africa, South America, and to Europe. And he rises up the ranks each time he can, so he goes to third mate, second mate, and first mate. And that's where, at that role, at that level, his connection with the war starts, and we can move to the next image. In early 1862, Wiley's aboard a vessel called the Hope, which is a steam vessel. If we could just move to the next image. And the Hope was usually going back and forth from Liverpool to Europe, but it had been chartered to take a thousand bales of cotton from Liverpool to New York City. And these bales of cotton actually come from the Confederates, come from the southern states, and what Steve had just outlined. The war at this point wasn't a year old, but the cotton mills of New England, as well as the cotton mills of Lancashire and Scotland, were in desperate need of the raw material to make their wares. So these cotton bales had been run out of the south, had made it all the way to Liverpool, and now we're going back to America. So Wiley is the first mate on the Hope. He very quickly finished that voyage, and he's due to become, to sit his exam to be a master. He does so, and his very first ship that he commands is the one here on the right, which was called the Benita. Now this image shows it as the economist, because early in 1862 it had run the blockade of Charleston, and that's where this photograph, or this painting I should say, shows. It had run the blockade and returned to Liverpool. So in between going to New York and getting on the Benita, which had been renamed to try to fool the American spies and so on Liverpool at the time, Wiley has definitely become part of this trade trying to run the blockade. The Benita sales for Nassau, and it's going to run into Wilmington, but by the time it gets there, in October of 1862, it's deemed to be too big and too slow to outrun the ever strengthening blockade of Wilmington. So if Wiley had intended to run the blockade at that time, he'd been severely disappointed, and he had to come back to Liverpool with just the usual pay of a commander. I'm going to go the next slide, because on that return journey, his connection with the advance begins. So on that return journey, there are two passengers that are sent by the recently elected governor of North Carolina. That's him in the center, Zebulon Vance. He was elected in the autumn, and one of his policies was to get into the blockade running trade for the state, but to not be dependent on private tears or companies that might not be bringing in the absolute necessities. He wanted to buy his own vessel. They sent three agents over, and two of them are shown here. On the left is John White. He's a businessman. He's tasked to go over with these cotton bonds, sell them on, get the funds, and start buying the equipment. On the right, Thomas Morrill Crossen. He's the Navy man. He's the experienced naval officer where the start of the war gave up his commission, the U.S. Navy commanded some vessels for the Confederate North Carolina Navy, and by this time he sent over to find vessel to become the North Carolina's blockade. And doing my research on why this is where it always comes that Crossen was in command of the vessel when it came over to run the blockade. If we can move to the next slide, we'll see that on all the official kind of documents and everything in the newspaper. Don't it's widely used in command. I think there's a couple of reasons for that. One is he's British. He's Scottish. The Scottish ship and Scottish flag have been owned. And one of the ways you can avoid kind of being captured is to fade your ignorance of the blockade and let the Union Navy know that no one's going about our business. We're not trying to run the blockade. So he could act as a bit of a cover. But I also think that Wiley, through the last 10 years of his maritime career, had experience with modern up-to-date steamship technology. But Crossen was more of a sail man. He had been on some ships that were steamers, but not these kind of Greyhounds at sea, which the passenger paddle steamers were called. And there was also a connection I failed to mention because John White at business, he was Scottish, born in Precati. So the same town that Wiley is from. And it's not out of the bounds of imagination that these two families might have known each other. Well, as these three gentlemen were coming over back to Liverpool on the Anita, they weren't only imaginative kind of conversations they were having about the blockade, about looking for a new steamer. Because Wiley, his very next man, his very next vessel, is the Lord Clyde, which becomes the advance. So if we move into the next image, we can see the only known image photograph of the vessel during the war. So this is said to be a taken in Nassau, 1863. So this is the start of the Lord Clyde, or advance's start as a blockade. Now one of the things they did, and Steve's images from the start, showed this very clearly, is to start hiding themselves on the open waves. They were painted either a gray or light colors. They had lots of changes made to them, which made them be able to carry more cargo. For example, the advance originally ran between Glasgow and Dublin and had a very fine first class saloon for passengers. That's all ripped out so they can fit more cotton bales in, they can fit more clothing and weapons and other materials going in, and importantly more coal in to make sure that the boilers and the engines never run out during a run. Now the interesting thing to me is, you might not be able to make it out on your screens, there's a group of men just on top of that paddle box. Some of them with a big burly beard, which Wiley had, some of them with larger kind of mutton shop sideburns, which Crossin had. So you can't really make out who's who. You have to think maybe one of them is not on top of there, looking out over to us. Now if we go to the next image, talk a little bit about running the blockade and what kind of sources are out there that, one before that please, that you can use to find out a bit more. So there's lots of newspaper accounts in the United States and Britain as well. Sometimes they could be a bit vague, sometimes they could say materials were brought in, sometimes they're very dedicated and detailed. So if you're looking at to try to find any blockade owner, one of the places to go to is some of these newspapers. Also that the customs records in places like Nassau and Bermuda are full of information charting ships going in and out, as well as union northern kind of councils who are there trying to see what's going on, letting the Navy know the most up-to-date information about some of these vessels. But for the purpose of looking at Wiley in the advance, probably the best place to find information is at the North Carolina Archives. So if we go to the next image, the North Carolina Archives have fantastic holdings and specifically Governor Vance, Zebuland Baird Vance papers. At this point I'd just like to ask Vann if you can come in. Vann was in incredible help and he's able to kind of tell us a little bit more about archives from the start, please Vann. And then a little bit more about the Zebuland Vance collection and we'll go through some of them as we progress. Absolutely, thanks John. So the State Archives of North Carolina is located in downtown Raleigh. We're located in the center of a lot of cultural attractions between the governor's mansion and the legislative building. And our routes go back to 1903 to the North Carolina Historical Commission. In fact, the first head of that commission was later appointed the head, the first head of the National Archives, R.D.W. Connor in 1934. And the Office of Archives and History, we form an important part of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, our parent agency, which takes care of things that people love about North Carolina. Everything from A to Z, from the arts to the zoo and so much else. Parks, aquariums, historic sites, archaeology, African-American Heritage Commission, the Science and History Museums, and the State Symphony Library and Archives, land and water stewardship and more. And so all of these things kind of connect the people of North Carolina together and in this case they give us an opportunity to connect across the Atlantic to the researchers and scholars in institutions like Mr. Messner's. Our primary mission at the State Archives is to collect, preserve, and provide access to historically significant archival materials. If you can show us the next slide, that's our building here in Raleigh. And we are the primary repository for all state government agency or department records, including the Governor's Papers, the Treasurer's Office, the Secretary of State, and the General Assembly. And we also collect special materials from private citizens and families that help supplement those government records. We are now back open to the public. If you can show us the next slide. And in the pre-COVID environment, this is a shot of researchers doing research on site. We've steadily opened back up, and we're currently open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 9 o'clock to 5, and on Saturdays from 9 to 1. Great. Thank you very much, Van. If you can move to the next image, Van will be able to provide a huge amount of kind of material that really starts to put a huge amount of detail and information into Wiley's career and the advances career. And I've used this one because this is a bill of exchange. Basically it's a check. It's a payment. It's a paycheck to Wiley. And actually his first paycheck from the state of North Carolina. He was paid 230 British pounds. So this was one of the two paychecks, 54 pounds, three shillings and four pints in the old, old money as we call it here, 230 pounds for work up to by August of 1863. So if you take into account the whole time in between its two vessels, that's about eight months. And previously he was on eight pounds a month as a first offer. So it goes to show you that as Steve said, that it could be immensely profitable if you're successful as a blockade learner. And I'd just like to add that on the back of this, it's endorsed to Wiley's father back in Scotland. So he banked the first one. So he made sure that he had a little bit of money, no matter what else happened and a bit more going forward. If we can go to the next image please. This is a great item from the John Julius Guthrie papers. And Dan, I just wanted to ask if Guthrie papers are a private kind of collection. Is that right? Does it still form part of the Civil War kind of collections as a whole? So that's a great question, John. We have an assortment of materials here. And what we refer to as our private collections, these are materials that were donated to us from individual persons or families. And I think in this particular case, the Guthrie papers came from, I think a descendant of Guthrie relatively early in the history of our organization. We do have a military collection of which we provided some resources to John. And that collection is more an assortment. We refer to it as an artificial collection where it's a combination of materials that came to us early in the years of the North Carolina Historical Commission of private materials that were acquired or in some cases there were materials that were taken out of government agency records to try to make them more accessible to the public since really researchers, scholarly researchers in particular have always had a strong interest in the Civil War and the materials that we have here. Thanks, Phanson. The reason why John Julius Guthrie is important to the story is Thomas Morrow-Crossen, who was definitely on board the vessel and did have official command for some of the voyages, he was relieved of command or he left command and John Julius Guthrie, another American southerner, took over for two voyages. And this is actually a crew list from one of those voyages. And I've blown up Jonas Wiley's names. He looks at his first officer. He spelled, so he wouldn't have been writing his own name that way. But it also lists their nativity where they were born. That was one of the things that if you're captured as a blockheader and if you're a neutral sailor from Britain or Europe or anywhere, you could be held for a short amount of time. The policy was then to release you. As long as you didn't fight back, as long as you didn't cause any havoc or prevent the Union vessel from capturing you. So a lot of these sailors who were British were able to claim that. And some of them, when the vessel was captured on the second, claimed to have some kind of British roots and to escape any kind of punishment. And if we go to the next image, and the archives are also full of a lot of these telegrams. This was to Governor Vance from Wiley talking about the advance sailing in the morning or loses the moon. These vessels tried to sail with the new moon to make it as dark as possible to make it harder to capture. If we go to the next image. In December of 1860, Governor Vance, in order to not have all his eggs in one basket, sells half of the vessel to another company called Power Low and Co. And then he can diversify his holdings and buy into some of the runners. And what Vann was able to provide through the treasure and control of it is what are called the birthsmen's. These are basically the outgoings of the vessel. Because now that it was state and privately owned, I think both parties wanted to make sure that they were both paying the right amount when it came to the costs of the vessel. And these are fantastic. Vann was able to provide several of these and they go everything from listings, and this is from Bermuda, I should say, the Medical Hall for Medicines, the pilot C.C. Morris, a very experienced Wellington pilot who got paid as much or more than a captain to be able to get the ship into the very narrow or shallow areas, a new Confederate flag, all the way down to washing, two pounds for washing for the crew. And you can see there at the bottom, Captain Wiley, 208 pounds, six shillings, that roughly equates to $1,000. That's what he was getting paid for a complete voyage in an hour. 500 in, 500 out. We'll go to the next image. And there's some fantastic correspondence between Governor Vance and Wiley himself. Wiley officially takes over on the 29th of February, 1860. He'd been on the ship the whole time from the left Glasgow. He'd been known as either the first officer or sailing master, or Charlie Marx, 1864. It's him that takes over. This is a letter from Wiley in his own hand through Vance telling him about the trip that he made out for Wellington and basically how he was able to beat the other steamers, the Annie and the Lucy. Because the advance can make 18 knots, almost faster than anything out there. If we go to the next image, there's also some really interesting kind of, I want to say quirky things in the files, but these are things that, if you have a really good archivist like Van Bill at New York and Boston in the National Archives, they can really dig some good stuff out for you. At the top is a letter from the purser of the advance at the time of Wiley's appointment to Governor Vance talking about how the crew think of the change. And the crew are all delighted that there's some outside feeling in the town about the idea of a ferner, and that's how he writes it, ferner, having charged a gallon of old crap. And then at the bottom, we have Jonas Wiley's signature, and we cover the book. So some fantastic little quirky things. And we just go one more image, please. One more letter. This is from another former purser and now an agent from North Carolina in England saying that Captain Wiley has done great for the ship and a better commander cannot be had for. So you can see the kind of, although he was a ferner, a Scotsman, he was still gaining that kind of respect from crew members, former crew members and governors as well. I'd just like to ask Van if we could move on to the next image just to tell us a little bit more about what researchers can look through your collections and what else is being digitized and how they can do some searching. Sure. I would really encourage researchers to, we continue to make our records available digitally and if you visit our website, archives.ncdcr.gov and go specifically to our digital collection, digital.ncdcr.gov, we have a sampling of our Civil War collections, our military collection, Confederate pension applications and also our historical governors papers, just to name a few. Researchers can also visit our doc catalog and search those collections. In the case of our governors papers, so far we've made colonial governors papers from the early 18th century all the way up to 1832 available. That includes the governor of Montford Stokes, who was the governor from 1830 to 1832 and we're gradually progressing to a place where we will get to I think the Zebulon advance papers. One of the unique parts about the advance papers as I shared with John is the volume of correspondence and petitions and material that are in the advance papers really, really increase just because of the number of people who were in contact with the governor's office during his stint in office in the Civil War. So that will be quite a large undertaking. I was fortunate in the course of helping John to be able to make use of a microfilm publication that was created in 1987 and edited by Gordon McKinney and Richard McMurray which attempted to index both by name and subject the governor's papers that the State Archives of North Carolina has and also the University of North Carolina Southern Historical Collection and Duke University. So that was the helpful tool for me to go try to navigate back to our governor's papers and letter books to supply John with the materials that he was interested in. Thank you much, Ben. Can we just go to image number 20 please? So the advance had been running for about a year and this painting this is the painting that's in our collection of Glasgow. It's painted by the famous maritime artist, English maritime artist Samuel Walters. It's made another transatlantic trip in May and June of 1864 to get repairs to the best. Actually quite considerable pairs when it comes to the money that was spent. So the governor in power low and co must have felt that they still had some time and the war obviously was not over yet to invest a huge amount of money into better machinery for the ship and cleaning for the ship and hope that it continued to be a very successful vessel for the state. Now at this point it made 14 runs in and out of the blockades. So Steve at the top of the presentation said one run could bring a huge profit to private companies. But this was a state ship so it was bringing profit but that was all being plowed back into these materials necessary for the regiments of North Carolina as well as the people. But finally, ultimately its luck ran out. We can go to the next image on its way out on its 16th voyage. It's made another trip back into Wilmington. It was delayed in August and early September for various reasons because it was too deep of a draft. It couldn't get over the sands. There was blockaders about why it was actually ill for a while. And we know all of this because there's a fantastic diary written by Mary White. Now Mary White was the daughter, teenage daughter of John White, that businessman who came over originally. He made his way back to North Carolina and he was taking his family over to England to continue his role and Mary White's diary is a fantastic source. It's been very well known for years. It charts about a month's history about the advance and its attempts to leave the Cape Fear River. And it's one of several personal stories and accounts that I included in the book because as I've learned from my museum career, readers and visitors love to hear the personal stories and you can see one of our entrance there at the bottom of September 2nd. They wanted to get out but they spotted a large blockade runner. They had to come back and they had to wait at Smithville. So she didn't make it on the vessel. John White and the family did not try their luck because on the September 9th, 1864, the advance burning quite poor coal that's the excuse was caught up by the U.S. and Santiago de Cuba quite a slower vessel something that should never have caught the advance in any kind of real race. So it was captured and what would happen then was these vessels were taken to the prize courts and we can move to the next image the prize courts in New York in Boston and that's where the National Archives come into play for my research because both Boston and New York have the records for the prize court adjudications for the advance. While he being the commander of the time was taken as one of three witnesses to appear in front of the court and on the left you have his basically his deposition about all manner of means who he was, what the advance was carrying and so forth. It's quite dry trying not to incriminate himself but also there's a huge amount there's everything from invoices for towing the vessel there's the original registry which we saw before, another crew list here on the right which was taken on Liverpool 1864 for a great wealth and we tried to put together history of the vessel when it was captured but also an interesting, we moved to the next image there's something called a cross letter now I was told these are quite interesting this was found in the mails on the vessel, so they carried mail back and forth, carried post to Bermuda or Nassau and that could be taken to Britain, it could be taken to New York, anywhere. And this is an example in the mails, doesn't anything to do with the ship or Wiley there's a cross letter, because paper was scarce one of the ways when you can write a letter is when you're in a space you can then go the other way around but I'm told this is quite an interesting thing for archivists to see and it's one of those also one of those perky things you might find if we go to the next image also a perky thing is this on the left it's a prescription given out to Wiley in Liverpool during that visit and it's in Latin like doctors or pharmacists would do at the time but it's quinine, iron tablets and Nukisvamake basically he might have been suffering from malaria and he needed some iron tablets and Nukisvamake was kind of a bit of a pick me up so for a commander of a vessel that might be very useful now Wiley's captured, taken to New York but as a British citizen he's released and a lot of these sailors and officers did this, they'd be released they'd come back to Britain they'd get on another ship or they'd get on another steamer in Nassau or the Bahamas and he did that he came back over to Britain he took a ship out to Bermuda and he became the commander of the deer another blockade it sailed, not for Wilmington next time that's a bit of a change but for Charles one of the other major ports that Steve identified the problem being it tried to run the blockade on the 18th of February 1865 which was the day the night that Charleston fell unfortunately at least for Wiley's sake and the ships like it grounded and the deer was captured once again as commander taken up north to Boston this time and this is the record of the auction made of all the things that are taken from the ship so if you go to the prize court and a vessel is deemed a lawful prize the ship, all the cargo all of its machinery can be auctioned off and that money is then awarded to the people who bought the vessel so it can be a very profitable trade for blockade runners but also for Union Navy officers and sailors this just gives you an idea of what they were selling so if we go to the next image this is the end of Wiley's blockade run of career he does have a few more years to see which kind of tells me that if he did make a lot of money a blockade runner he didn't feel the need that he needed to retire right away so the next image shows a listing for one of these lectures he comes back to Scotland and he doesn't have a grand house somewhere he doesn't build any land doesn't buy any land he retires to the farm that his father worked on and for the next 40 years or so he's a farmer and he doesn't even own the farm he's a tenant from the local Earl of Roslyn and a lot of these former blockade runners didn't tell their tale there's only a few contemporary sources maybe because they were on the losing side maybe because they were gun running at the end of the day although it should be noted that British built weapons and arms went to both sides going to the war there's always a profit to be made in conflict set so Wiley comes back he gives at least 25 lectures he becomes a bit of a local celebrity from that part of his corner of Scotland but that kind of fame and kind of notoriety or fact doesn't really travel down and that's why we're going to come back to the original kind of start of this story there wasn't much known about Jonas Wiley outside of Scotland and if we go to the next image just to kind of wrap up we get to some questions what happened to him and what happened to the advance well Jonas Wiley dies in 1902 this is one of four images we have of a man he's almost 73 years old he retains quite a nice head of hair I'd quite like to have that one I'm 73 this obituary I think is written by the same author of the People's Friends it's very similar language obviously a man from the area a very well liked individual his lectures I should say were always in the aid of a local charity or someone fallen on hard times other than the last one this is a very big one for him and all the money went to him and his wife that once again tells me that maybe by the end of his life if fortunately found him at the end of his blockade running career it did not kept with him in terms of his life and what happens to the advance of these other blockade runners the poacher is turned into the game it was purchased by the U.S. Navy and became a blockade stopping blockade runners going in it also took part on the assault of Fort Fitcher one of the fort guarding the mouth of the Cape Fear it continued as U.S. Naval vessel it was originally known as the U.S.S. advance and then became the U.S.S. frolic and this is the frolic in Naples Harbor a bit later in the 60s it continued on in various kind of stations North Atlantic, South America and then was laid up and finally sold off and taken off the Navy lists in 1883 one of the things I was able to find is its ultimate fate it didn't just get dismantled in 1883 no spoilers but I'll just say it's quite a not as famous as being either an Irish sea fairy a blockade runner or a U.S. Naval vessel so with that I'd just like to thank once again Steve and thank Van for coming here today first of all for their help in bringing Wiley's story to light but also giving this fine presentation which really kind of gives a great overview of a blockade running luckily we have a couple questions I'll ask the first one here's a question it stated that 75% of blockade runners are successful one, was this percentage for the duration of the war part of it if one looked at the percentage of successful runs by year did this decrease as the war progressed and the number of U.S. Naval vessels increased and this is all one question Steve I think this is good for you if the percentage it decreased by year how do you happen to have that percentage by year the percentage is based on the entire war and by the end of the war more vessels were being successful even though the north was increasing their number of blockaders it was just the specialty the style the new vessels coming out of Great Britain out of Scotland out of England they were just so spectacular they could evade the blockade it was earlier in the war that you start seeing these vessels as you mentioned with the economists that they just weren't made for blockade running and they were easy prey for the federal blockaders but it's an interesting race of technology an individual named Kevin Foster has worked on this as well that as the war goes on these vessels advance so much in terms of their ability of speed and to be able to evade the blockade that by the end of the war they're still very successful well thank you very much Steve there's another one here I'll start out with it but if you have something to add I'd really appreciate it and the question is if Britain were in large part supportive of the Confederate pause what was Britain supportive and can you clarify it's an interesting one as Steve identified at the start of the war the idea was to try to kind of hoard cotton the British economy because the British economy at that time was dependent on cotton grown in the southern states by enslaved peoples so the biggest export of Britain was actually finished cotton goods cotton cloth and so on so if you could deprive the mills of Lancashire in the west of Scotland of this raw material one of the theories was that for economic viability the British could come in on the side of the Confederacy now that could be anything from full on military support you know declare war against the United States the Royal Navy would have made mincemeat of the Union Navy at the time as well as possibly having a second front open up from Canada so British regiments coming in from Canada now that never happened and blockade running took off more as Steve said to be able to provide this kind of equipment one of the other things is there was that support and there was obviously support between shipyards shipbuilders, shipowners but there was also a very strong abolitionists and anti-slavery movement in Britain Britain had officially gotten rid of slavery in its empire in 1834 although it depended on enslaved peoples in the south with cotton so there were very large movements in Glasgow and Liverpool and across the country who were always advocating for the British government to stay out of this conflict do not support the southern states of the Confederacy what they viewed as the continuation of this of the slavery which had been gotten rid of in the British Empire Steve do you want to add anything else to that well what specifically was the question well it was the question about kind of British support in general for the Confederate cause and do you want to is there anything else you kind of add well of course the British knew if you want to war that was bad for business but if you supported other people who were at war that was very good for business well you know what Steve I think on that rather sad and more kind of honest note frankly I'd like to thank you both once again for coming along today I'd like to thank all the staff at the National Archives in New York and the National Archives in Austin who were incredible supporters for the research as well in Van and Steve and thank the National Archives for hosting our presentation here today and if you want to learn anything more about Jonas Wiley or the blockade or the state archives holdings you can see the information there on your screen and thank you very much and have a good day