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Bulloch went to work as soon as he received his legal advice. Within a few weeks he had made two contracts, one for a gunboat and the other for a top-of-the-line warship with copper-plated bunkers and enough storage space to hold a year’s worth of spare parts. For the first, Bulloch used an intermediary to hide the involvement of the Confederacy and invented some Italian owners who were expecting delivery in eight months’ time.60 To give authenticity to the Italian claim, the vessel was called the Oreto for the time being. But the other ship did not require the same subterfuge, since it was being built by Laird and Sons, the Liverpool company owned by Yancey’s friend John Laird. With a nod and a wink, Lairds accepted the explanation that the modifications were innocent. This vessel, Project No. 290 on Lairds’ books, was going to cost a staggering £47,500, to be paid in five installments.61

With the first part of his mission now fulfilled, Bulloch turned his attention to helping Caleb Huse buy munitions. The victory at Bull Run lent urgency to their mission. “We want arms,” implored LeRoy Walker, the Confederate secretary of war, “and must have them if they are to be had … the enemy is daily augmenting his supplies.”62 By the end of August, the agents had amassed so considerable a quantity of supplies that their most pressing problem was the threat of discovery by the authorities.63 Now the Confederates found themselves stymied by the neutrality proclamation. Bulloch was unable to persuade any shipping owner to break the blockade. Finally, after much negotiation, Bulloch and Anderson made a deal with Fraser, Trenholm to rent space on the Bermuda, one of the company’s fastest steamers, which was docked at Hartlepool on the east coast and already slated for use during the cotton season, when the blockade would be tested in earnest.

Henry Sanford knew about the Bermuda and had a plan that involved the U.S. Navy pouncing on her as soon as she reached the open sea “no matter what her papers.” “We can discuss the matter with the English afterwards,” he asserted confidently.64 Seward ignored his suggestion, and Lord Russell turned down Charles Francis Adams’s request to detain the Bermuda, since the minister was unable to show that she was anything other than a private ship on a private commercial venture. The officials in Hartlepool had observed her loading, and even noted that arms and ammunition were being “packed to resemble earthenware.”65 But there was no legal reason for her detention and the vessel sailed away on August 22, despite the fact that everyone concerned knew her real purpose and destination.

Fraser, Trenholm and Co. had great hopes for the Bermuda. Every Southerner, not to mention every British merchant with a half-decent cargo ship, believed that the blockade was a fiction. Latest estimates put the entire U.S. Navy blockading fleet at forty-two steamships. The Southern coastline extended over 3,500 miles, from the tip of Virginia to the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas, and included hundreds of ports, bays, and inlets. Almost two hundred navigable rivers fed into the sea; many harbors had several entrances and numerous channels for hiding ships. Much of the South lay behind enormous sandbars that acted like a double coastline, allowing ships to sail from port to port without ever having to go out onto the open sea. When these considerations were added to the poor condition of the U.S. Navy, it seemed incomprehensible to Southerners that any country, let alone Britain, would accept that the blockade met the main legal requirement for its international recognition, namely, that it was real and being enforced on a daily basis. They were hoping that the Royal Navy would sweep away the miserable little wooden ships stifling the South’s commerce and declare the ports once again open to the world.

Ordered by the Foreign Office to keep a record of blockade activity, the various British consuls responded by saying there really wasn’t any. Phrases such as “totally inefficient” and