[DiogenesLamp]

Thank you for providing yet another example of how Southern shipbuilders, who had long specialized in building shallow draft river craft to take goods North up inland waterways, could have switched to building blue water craft there were a demand.

Yeah, I think there was that little matter of a war going on to spur this development. They had their very own closed system and economic demand for that production. Would that have occurred with the Northern system still controlling shipbuilding and shipping? Probably not.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“Yeah, I think there was that little matter of a war going on to spur this development. They had their very own closed system and economic demand for that production. Would that have occurred with the Northern system still controlling shipbuilding and shipping? Probably not.”

Exactly, necessity is the mother of invention. If the shipping fees charged by Northern interests were so onerous, would Southern plantation owners and shipping companies NOT gone to the shipyards and asked them to start building ships to carry cotton across the Atlantic?

Probably not.