The Blockade Runners

Kirkus' Review The author, an enthusiastic diver and amateur historian, has rounded up a number of dashing portraits of men and ships involved in blockade running on behalf of the Confederacy during the Civil War--and invites, the reader underwater to view some of the relics, a few perhaps swishing with treasure. ""When blockade-running collapsed, the South collapsed,"" the author insists, and it seemed that, encounters between sea-borne Rebels and Feds had the effect of major battles. Among the ships--The Phantom (now reposing beneath the waves, with an octopus in the boiler); the Condor which carried Rebel Rose to her death; the Greyhound, captured by the Union forces and commanded by a young ensign who married his prisoner, the notorious Belle Boyd; the Night Hawk, and her resourceful Captain Taylor. Scraps of history, but the author's journeys below (near Cape Fear, the Bermuda reefs, and reefs off the Carolina coast) are tantalizing, and yes, there is still gold and treasure aboard--dangerous to get to and deep down. Elementary adventure with blandly anecdotal history.