Fort Fisher - The South's last outpost on the sea

Warning, this section may be boring to many.
We packed up today and moved on, but as we left Carolina Beach we called in at Fort Fisher. This fort was the last to fall in the Civil war. The visitor centre tells the story of how the South was able to get supplies during the war. Any group of fighting men in 'modern' warfare is only the sharp end of a long line of logistics tht stretches, ultimately, back to factories and farms. The North had the advantage of a well established industrial base. The South had to rely mainly on foreign governements to supply arms in exchange for cotton. So its 'supply line' stretched all the way to europe. In order to strangle the supply of materials the North moved quickly to blockade as many sourthern ports as it could. By 1864 the only port which remained open was Wilmington, which has a direct rail link with Richmond and so was very important.
Wilmington remained open because of its position on an estuary, which had two openings to the sea and a lot of dangerous sand bars. This meant that to blockade it required covering a length of coast 50 miles long. very difficult. As the noose tightened on Wilmington there were up to 62 ships blockading the port. Another factor was the building of Fort Fisher on the outer sand banks at the entrance to the River Neuse. As the war progressed what was a small gun battery was developed into a huge fort with sand ramparts, the biggest of which was 60 feet high. Cannon and large rifle enabled Fort Fisher to very effectively protect the entrance to the estuary.
Materials coming into the port were brought from the Bahamas, Bermuda or Nova Scotia on ships called 'Blockade Runners'. Small, fast, steamships which would navigate the estuary at night, dodging the blockade ships and the dangerous sand banks, until they caould come under the protection of the guns of Fort Fisher. Dangers were many, but profits were high. The development of naval and marine tecnology leapt ahead as people tried to outwit the blockaders.
The town of Wilmington grew at a tremendous pace as it was the only route left to supply the war needs of the the South.
Fort Fisher ultimately fell in January of 1865, just 1 month after Shermans march to Savannah, 100 miles to the south and 2 months before Johnstone surrendered to Sherman a hundered miles to the north. The battle for Fort Fisher was a major combined assault by both naval and land forces. An armada of ships bombarded the fort, up to 10,000 shells and cannonballs landed on the fort. While a force of up to 10,000 men were landed to the north of the fort and advanced on it. Inside fort tere were barely 2000 men and only 44 large guns. It did not really stand a chance. It fell within the day, with 4000 killed or injured.
The stranglehold was now complete and Wilmington became impotent as a port. Not a shot was fired on it. The fall of Fort Fisher was another major blow to the South's war effort, no longer could the South get arms and materials. This action made it's capitulation as inevitable as the loss of any, or all, its armies would have done.