The adventures of a blockade runner

"William Watson spent two years evading Union gunboats and dealing with the "sharpers" who fed off the misfortune of the Civil War. In 1892, using log books, personal papers, and business memoranda, he sought to write a "plain, blunt" account of "events just as they happened." Instead, he wrote a classic adventure tale whose careful description of seafaring in the 1860s gives us a glimpse into a world now closed to us." "Watson shares his story with his ship, the Rob Roy, and peoples his account with the good, the bad, and the unlucky. He takes his reader from Havana to Galveston, braving gales and a hurricane, and surviving plots against his ship and his life. Through it all, he maintains his honor and guards his profits." For the reader who wants to ply the Gulf of Mexico under sail, play the lottery in Havana, and visit Texas when it was "a new country," Watson is the perfect guide to run the blockade that time imposes on posterity.