Hello Valerie- I believe the use of individual blockade runners to supply the industry deficient South was not the way to go. Convoys, a practice already long in use by the nations of the world, would have ensured an entry of larger amounts of material into the South at any given time. This strategy could have been put into practice with the purchase of the British East India Company's merchant fleet, in ordinary in ports in England at the time the Civil War began, armed with the mass of weaponry gained by the South with the withdrawl of the Federal navy from the naval yard at Norfolk, Virginia. James Chesnut proposed such an organization of resource. His proposal, obviously, was never acted on and within one year of conflict Federal naval abilities made the point moot. The weaponry gained at Norfolk was spread around various points in the South, much of which was recaptured as Wilmington and New Orleans fell to Federal incursion.