![]() ![]() Fell’s Point’s answer to that was swift blockade runners, also known as “flyers”.Of 175 issued letters of marque authorizations for Baltimore merchant ships, 114 were for traders instead of for privateer ships. They wanted to starve our economy into ruins. BLOCKADE RUNNINGĪ key part of Britain’s war strategy was to chop off America’s commerce with a naval blockade. And Fell’s Point shipyards had created something so innovative it could just about outrun the wind. In order to even have a hope against those long odds, America’s blockade runners and privateers would desperately need some kind of edge. Our tiny nation had found itself at war with the mightiest navy on the planet. Created for shallow local waters and the bay’s fickle winds, these schooners proved to be providentially the right innovation at the perfect time. In the shipyards of Fell’s Point and others nearby in the Chesapeake. The kind the British, for all the might of their vast navy, could not catch. Their proper maritime name was “Chesapeake Pilot Bay Schooner” In layman’s terms let’s just call them “seaborne hot rods”. ![]() Shallow in draft and impossibly crammed with sails. ![]() They were like nothing the world had ever seen. ![]()
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