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When the Gertrude was first launched, the Union’s blockade was a bit of a joke. Actually, it was rather worse than a joke. By declaring a “blockade” of Southern ports, rather than simply declaring them “closed,” President Lincoln had by implication recognized the sovereignty of the Confederacy over them. That meant that foreign powers were, by international law, free to trade with them, so long as they could get past the blockading warships. And so they did. It’s pretty unlikely that anything the Union had on blockade duty in 1863 could catch the Gertrude. In fact, the blockade ships couldn’t catch much of anything at first. The Union had put all sorts of awful old scows out there, because they didn’t have much to spare. Only one of them was even steam-powered when the blockade was first declared, back in ‘61. There were 3,500 miles of coastline to cover. It seemed impossible. But over the following years, the federal navy got stronger and stronger. By the end of the war, there were 600 ships on blockade duty, in addition to the warships that were regularly shelling Confederate port towns. The blockade was really hurting the South, which didn’t make a lot of the stuff it needed to continue the fight. By that time, though, the Gertrude was on the other side. The ship had barely started its career as a blockade runner when a federal ship, the U.S.S. Vanderbilt, managed to sneak up and capture it. The Union Navy people knew a good thing when they saw one. So they mounted some artillery on the little speedster and sent it out under the stars and stripes to help enforce the blockade. And in this role, the Gertrude was a wonder. Ten days into its new career as a Navy ship, the Gertrude captured the blockade runner Warrior after a nine-hour chase. Then it sank the Ellen the following January, followed the next year by the Eco. The Gertrude’s brush with stardom came when it almost caught the legendary Confederate runner Denbigh, which only managed to get away by pitching $10,000 worth of cotton overboard to lighten the cargo load. After the war, though, the Gertrude’s glory days were over. Technology had raced ahead in the few years since it was built. What had been the fastest thing in the Gulf of Mexico back in 1863 was now, three years later, just another aging, slowish, tiny, obsolete freighter. Now re-named the Gussie Telfair, the old warhorse soldiered on for twenty mundane years making the Portland-Victoria run before finally being sold to Frank Bernard and put to work out of Coos Bay. And that, of course, led to what was very likely an undignified little bit of dirty work in the line of insurance fraud, and the end of a once-proud warrior that had done a yeoman’s job on both sides in the war of the century. According to historian Don Marshall, as of 1984 it was still possible to spot parts of the wreck near the jetty on the east side of Rocky Point at very low tides. Those bits may still be there, and if so, it’s probably worth taking an afternoon to hunt them up. They’re all that’s left of one of what was, 150 years ago, one of the most storied warriors of the high seas.
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