During the Civil War the Confederation ships began to be coat the sides of their ships with dark gray paint to avoid being seen during their nocturnal trips by the blocking patrols belonging to the Union.
Under the government of Abraham Lincoln in the United States began in 1861 the North American Civil War, where the Confederate States of the South faced that proclaimed that they wanted to separate of the United States against the States of the North that continued under the constitutional regime of the United States .
The General Commander of the United States Army Winfield Scott diagrammed the so-called Anaconda plan, which was approved by Lincoln and implemented immediately.
The Anaconda plan was a strategy of attrition that was based on blocking the Confederation's international trade by blocking all the ports along the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico from Virginia to Texas and taking the Mississippi River to divide the Confederation into two. sections without contact with each other.
This strategy partially fulfilled its objective (seized or destroyed more than 3000 ships) but was very well faced by the Confederation, which generated with the help of English merchant companies and the collaboration of experienced British war captains, an efficient system of circumvention of the blockade naval of the Union Navy, whose ships had a technology far superior to the ships of the Confederation.
The strategy was based on using fast and camouflaged ships from the blocked coasts to ports of the Caribbean Sea Islands considered neutral to the conflict, such as Nassau, Bermuda and Cuba and from there to transfer the merchandise to ships of greater size across the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe. and vice versa. Generally the trips were made on new moon nights to take advantage of the darkness.
In this way there arose the ships called "The short-voyage blockade-runners", which were small steamships built or modified to be able to transport mainly cotton, tobacco harvested in the Confederation and armament and elaborate products of high necessity brought from England without being captured by the blocking patrols of the American Navy.
In these every device was brought into use that could increase their efficiency. Speed, invisibility, and handiness, with a certain space for stowage, were the essentials; to these all other qualities were sacrificed. The typical blockade-runner of 1863-4 was a long, low side-wheel steamer of from four to six hundred tons, with a slight frame, sharp and narrow, its length perhaps nine times its beam. It had feathering paddles, and one or two raking telescopic funnels, which might be lowered close to the deck. The hull rose only a few foot out of the water, and was painted a dull gray or lead color, so that it could hardly be seen by daylight at two hundred yards. Its spars wore two short lower-masts, with no yards, and only a small crow's-nest in the foremast. The deck forward was constructed in the form known as "turtle-back," to enable the vessel to go through a heavy sea. Anthracite coal, which made no smoke, was burned in the furnaces.This coal came from the United States, and when, in consequence of the prohibition upon its exportation enforced by the Government, it could not be obtained, the semi-bituminous Welsh coal was used as a substitute. When running in, all lights were put out, the binnacle and fire-room hatch were carefully covered, and steam was blown off under water.