x:
"The Confederate Navy and the private firms commissioned ships to be built in England and Scotland during the war." A mere handful of custom built especially fast, and therefore expensive, blockade runners.
But blockade runner statistics suggest there were thousands of ships in Southern ports in 1861, and we have to suppose most or all owned by Southerners.
You would think any owned by Northerners would quickly depart the region.
Or, we could hypothesize those thousands of Confederate ships were not there in early 1861, that all Northern owned ships withdrew leaving Confederate ports without shipping, so Confederates themselves in just months built up the thousands of ships which were later captured or sunk by the Union blockade.
That even more suggests any pre-war shortage of Southern ship building was a matter of choice, not necessity, a choice quickly reversed when need arose.
Special built blockade runner, about 900 tons and one of only a few, CSS Vance:
CSS Vance was captured in September 1864 when high-quality anthracite coal was used by CSS Tallahassee, a commerce raider, leaving only lower grade bituminous coal for Vance:
CSS Tallahassee about 700 tons, a commerce raider:
Both of these ships were custom built in England and sold to the state of North Carolina.
There was a lot of small boat traffic to Bermuda, the Bahamas and Cuba.
Some of them may have been smuggling even before the war.
Then there were some ships in Southern ports seized by state governments.
In addition, Confederate agents bought older ships in the British Isles and outfitted them as blockade runners.
The top of the line blockade runners were commissioned by the Confederate government to be built in Britain and Scotland.
I don't know how many there were, but it looks to me that if you come across the name of a ship that had some renown in its day, odds are it was specially ordered by the CSN to be built in Britain.
Before the war, ownership was a lot more fluid than one might think.
Fraser & Trenholm operated on both sides of the Atlantic. Were they Southerners or just Americans or some mix of Anglicized Southerners or Americans?
Charles Morgan controlled railroads and shipping in Louisiana and Texas, and he started regular steamer service between New York and Charleston, but this great Southern tycoon was from Connecticut. I don't know where he lived or where his headquarters were or what he did during the war. Both sides commandeered his boats for their own use.
I don't know if people actually in business with each other before the war were particularly hostile towards each other. Cotton planters might be very suspicious of shippers and bankers, but that represented landowners' traditional prejudice against trade, something that those actually involved in commerce didn't share.
