A Paradise For Smugglers

A Paradise For Smugglers. Nanticoke River, 1861-1863. , During the Civil War, Maryland's Eastern Shore became a "smuggler's paradise," as coasting vessels from New York made daily runs with contraband goods to the unguarded rivers of Delaware. Cargoes were then carried by wagon to the upper reaches of the Nanticoke River and other Eastern Shore watercourses to the transported by boat across the Chesapeake Bay to Confederate Virginia. Men seeking to join the Confederate army also used this general route. Reliance (formerly Johnson's Crossroads), just south of Federalsburg, became a stopping point for travelers to Dixie., The U.S. Navy first realized that the Nanticoke River watershed was a hiding place for blockade runners in July 1861, when two schooners laden with kettles, nails and nearly 100 tons of pig iron bound for Richmond were discovered on the river five miles above Vienna. One of the vessels had loaded in Philadelphia, the other in Baltimore., Capt. Nathan J. Corkran of Federalsburg was among the local blockade runners. Corkran normally enraged in the fruit trade to Cuba, but consisting himself a loyal Southerner, he ran schooner-loads of food and ammunition to the Confederate army in Virginia. As the war progressed, the U.S. Navy flotilla in the Chesapeake Bay tried but failed to completely halt the commerce in human and material contraband from the rivers of the Eastern Shore.