In order to meet the new difficulty, a new device was adopted. Cargoes were sent out to Nassau, and were there transshipped, sometimes directly, from vessel to vessel, in the harbor, sometimes after being landed on the wharf; and thence were transported in a new conveyance to the blockaded port. Return cargoes were transshipped in the same way. This had a double advantage. It made the continuity of the transaction much more difficult of proof, and it enabled the capitalists engaged in the trade to employ two different classes of vessels, for the service for which each was specially adapted. For the long voyages across the Atlantic heavy freighters could be used, of great capacity and stoutly built; and the light, swift, hardly visible steamers, with low hulls, and twin-screws or feathering paddles, the typical blockade-runners, could be employed exclusively for the three days run on the other side of Nassau or Bermuda. But here again the courts stepped in, and held that though a transshipment was made, even after landing the cargo and going through a form of sale, the two voyages were parts of one and the same transaction, and the cargo from the outset was liable to condemnation, if the original intention had been to forward the goods to a blockaded port. Nor did the decisions stop here. As all the property, both ship and cargo, is confiscated upon proof of breach of blockade, it was held that the ships carrying on this traffic to neutral ports were confiscated, provided the ultimate destination of the cargo to a blockaded port was known to the owner. In the words of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, ‘The ’
