on board, who so far satisfied themselves that no blockading vessel
was in sight that they issued a declaration to that effect. On the
strength of this declaration some Southern authorities claimed that
the blockade was technically broken, and could not be technically
re-established without a new notification. Is it necessary, 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