Yet the Confederates needed a navy to break the Union blockade and to defend the port cities. The Southern states had few resources compared to the North: a handful of shipyards, a small merchant marine, and no navy at all. The Union also needed a “brown water navy” of gunboats to support army campaigns down the Mississippi River and in Northern Virginia. The task was daunting the Southern coast measured over 2,500 miles and the Union navy numbered less than 40 usable ships. His plan was to cut off Southern trade with the outside world and prevent sale of the Confederacy's major crop, cotton. Union President Abraham Lincoln set the Union’s first naval goal when he declared a blockade of the Southern coasts. The naval war was one of sudden, spectacular lightning battles as well as continual and fatal vigilance on the coasts, rivers, and seas. Sailors relax on the deck of the USS Monitor, July 9, 1862.Īs the Civil War raged on the land, the two national navies- Union and Confederate -created another war on the water.

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