David, thanks for your e-mail message, which I have already answered, in respect to Sidney Auter. It is a definite certainty that pilots, and even those who had been appointed as masters in the Confederate Navy, were very familiar with the waters that they had operated on for years, and thus were used in this capacity on the very same waters during the war. Some of them may also have had experience on other waterways or sea lanes in other ports, so were also sent on detachment to some of these other areas that they were familiar with. Very often, the familiarity with a particular area in which they operated is helping to locate their residences, both before and after the war, and the general region in which they resided, mostly all of their lives.
It is an interesting aspect of the personnel of the Confederate Navy, and is helping us to locate more data on many of these personnel. I say us because there are a couple of other researchers heavily involved in this research, and with whom I am in contact with.
And, as I stated previously, there are many trends that are being noted, in all of this research. Trends that were not previously known.