James Barnes, author of David G. Farragut, Naval Actions of 1812, Yank ee Ships and Yankee Sailors, Commodore Bainbridge , The Blockaders, and other naval and historical works, The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 6: The Navy.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

[84] sailing craft of various dimensions, classes, and armaments had been equipped, while many others were in the process of construction. Of those in commission, twenty-one were steam vessels, most of them small, and chosen for speed rather than power. The armament of all was very light in comparison with the war-ships of the Federal fleets. Several of them carried but one gun, others carried two, and the majority carried less than five.

Quite wonderful was the advance made in other departments than that of shipbuilding. The Navy Department had erected a powder-mill, engine-, boiler-, and machine-shops, and five ordnance workshops. There had been established a rope-walk capable of making all kinds of cordage from a rope-yarn to a 9-inch cable and able to turn out eight thousand yards per month. This was in addition to the eighteen shipbuilding yards already planned and in operation. The ladies of Georgia had presented to the Confederate States a floating battery that was partially finished at the end of the first year of the war. The State of Alabama had turned over an iron-clad ram as a gift to the Confederate service.

Most of the ships that had been completed at the close of the first year of the war were sent to sea as privateers to hamper the Northern merchant marine. Others were used to guard the mouths of the rivers of the Confederacy, while several of them moved on the offensive in the rivers. The George Page (renamed the Richmond), a small steamer, lightly equipped, soon became well known to the Federals for its continual menacing of the forts on the Occoquan River and Quantico Creek, often advancing close and firing shells into them.

Soon after the commencement of the war, the Confederate privateers became such a menace that President Lincoln issued a proclamation that all the privateers would be regarded as pirates, and that their crews and officers would be subjected to punishment as such. Six months after the issuing of this order the crew of the captured privateer Savannah was tried