The Blockade Runners

"The Blockade Runners" (French: Les forceurs de blocus) is a 1865 short story by Jules Verne. In 1871 it was published in single volume together with novel A Floating City as a part of the Voyages Extraordinaires series (The Extraordinary Voyages). An English translation was published in 1874.The American Civil War plot centers on the exploits of a British merchant captain named James Playfair who must break the Union blockade of Charleston harbor in South Carolina to trade supplies for cotton and, later in the book, --SPOILER--.Verne's tale was inspired by reality as many ships were actually lost while acting as blockade runners in and around Charleston in the early 1860s.