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BJK: No, the truth is, you don't know who owned those packets because there were hundreds of them, of all sizes & capacities, many locally manufactured to take smaller loads shorter distances, down river.
The idea that all or even most were owned or "ran" by "New York" is simply not supported by any objective evidence.

From New York Daily Times, Dec 13, 1891 p. 17:

The accomodations [sic] for passengers on the old packet ships were much more confined, mainly owing to the smaller size of the vessels. These ships were the very best as to hull, spars and fittings. Most of them were built in New York by Webb, Smith & Dimon, Westervelt, and other builders on the East River. A few were the outcome of the best builders in the Eastern States.

In their day the sailing vessels were the pride of the New-Yorker and a credit to our merchant marine. They were all American. No foreign flag ever flew at the peak of a packet ship out of New-York that was worthy, and no foreign vessel ever competed successfully for the trade we had inaugurated and made successful. to-day we look in vain for an American vessel among the large fleet of fast European steamers.

BJK: And we know that Southerners did own ocean-going ships because some were famously caught with cargos of slaves in the years just before the Civil war.

Yes, some Southerners did purchase and run slave ships, but New York City was where most slave ships outfitted and set sail for Africa. From the New York Herald of May 22, 1860 [Link, third column]:

There are two parties, and two parties alone, responsible for the fact that the slave trade is more vigorously carried on at the moment than it has been for a long time – namely the British government and the merchants of our Northern cities. The government of England keeps up a show of preventing the running off of slaves from the African coast by maintaining a squadron there; but it happens, as we see, that they are of little of no service. The black republicans of our Northern States, while they are foremost in the agitation against the institution of slavery in the South, are the very men who, for the sake of profits accruing from the slave trade, which they hypocritically denounce, fit out these vessels, destined for the coast of Africa. It requires all the vigilance of government to prevent the sailing of slavers from our Northern ports and the landing of negroes on the coast of Cuba; yet it is remarkable that the very same parties who most loudly condemn the democratic administration as the friends of slavery are the most active instruments if fostering the importation of slaves – a forcible commentary upon the hypocrisy of abolition agitation, both at home and abroad.

From [The New York Based Slave Trade]:

One of history’s curious episodes was a rise in transatlantic slave trading based in the United States in 1850 that continued through 1863. ...

Harris tells how Portuguese and Brazilian slave traders relocated to New York City, establishing a new slave triangle: New York to Southwest Africa to Cuba). New York had everything they needed. The US’s biggest seaport, it was a city of immigrants, and the United States did not ban equipping ships as slaver. US flag ships could only be arrested carrying slaves. (Those of other nations could be seized for having slave decks and shackles.)

Harris tells a fascinating story. He shows how the trade grew, sheltered by US politics in the buildup to the Civil War, and funded by Free-State money. He traces the struggle, often underground, between the slavers and Great Britain. “The Last Slave Ships” is an interesting look at an odd corner of history.

There was a period when Americans jumped ahead in the packet trade. That wasn't the case earlier and it wasn't the case in the 1850s after Cunard and other British firms got into the business. Cunard started in 1840, the British Black Ball Line (not to be confused with the earlier American Black Ball Line which had dominated the trade earlier) in 1851. The White Star Line started in 1845, concentrating on the passage to Australia, but it opened North Atlantic routes as well. So by 1860 it could not be said that New York ships and firms dominated the packet trade.

The New York Herald was a notably pro-Southern paper, as the reference to "Black Republicans" indicates. They aren't to be trusted. The British Navy did police the seas off Africa to stop slave trading. There was only so much that they could do. There were New Yorkers who worked the slave trade, mostly sending slaves to Brazil and Cuba, but slaves that came to the US illegally appear mostly to have come on Southern-owned ships. The Clotilde was built in Mobile and owned by a Mobile businessman. The Wanderer was built in New York, but owned by a Savannah businessman. These were the last ships to bring slaves into the US. There were also Southern-owned ships that took slaves from Virginia to New Orleans for sale. And the Herald leaves out cotton belt plantation owners, whose demand clearly had a role in keeping the illegal slave trade going, so far as slaves were coming to the US.

The topics discussed were whether slaveowners were getting cheated or exploited by New York shipping firms and whether Southerners could own and operate ships and engage in transatlantic trade. Clearly Southerners could. You are changing the topic to a moralistic "The Yankees were guilty too," or even "The Yankees were the real guilty ones." That's a distraction from what was being discussed. It wasn't a moral argument. There was a lot of guilt in those days. It was an argument about economics. Also, old newspapers don't always tell the truth, anymore than today's newspapers do. Nor are they always relevant to the topic at hand.

rustbucket quoting the NY Herald, May 1860: "The black republicans of our Northern States, while they are foremost in the agitation against the institution of slavery in the South, are the very men who, for the sake of profits accruing from the slave trade, which they hypocritically denounce, fit out these vessels, destined for the coast of Africa.
It requires all the vigilance of government to prevent the sailing of slavers from our Northern ports and the landing of negroes on the coast of Cuba; yet it is remarkable that the very same parties who most loudly condemn the democratic administration as the friends of slavery are the most active instruments if fostering the importation of slaves – a forcible commentary upon the hypocrisy of abolition agitation, both at home and abroad."

This is an astonishing piece of "journalism"... that is, until we remember that the New York Herald at the time was a solidly Democrat supporter.
As Democrats, the Herald is here doing what Democrats, by their nature, do -- projecting their own misdeeds onto Republicans.
In 1860 New York elected a Copperhead Democrat mayor, Fernando Wood, whose response to Deep South secessions was to propose New York also secede and form it's own country, to be called the "Free City of Tri-Insula".

The real clue here, that this is partisan propaganda, not credible journalism is in that name, "Black Republicans".
And the whole accusation that it was abolitionists "Black Republicans" not pro-slavery Democrats working to increase the international slave trade would be laughable, except that it did, no doubt, help elect Democrat Woods as mayor in 1860.