Blockade Runner

A blockade runner is a vessel built or adapted to evade a naval blockade, typically valued for speed, a shallow draft and a low profile that made it hard to spot at night. The term is most closely associated with ships that ran the Union naval blockade of Confederate ports during the American Civil War, carrying cotton out to be sold abroad and returning with weapons, medicine and other supplies the blockaded Confederacy could not produce for itself, at high profit and high risk to the vessels and crews involved.