| rdfs:comment | - The C. S. Navy could never achieve equality with the Union Navy, so it used technological innovation, such as ironclads, submarines, torpedo boats, and naval mines (then known as torpedoes) to gain advantage. In February 1861 the Confederate Navy had thirty ships, only fourteen of which were seaworthy, while the Union Navy had ninety vessels; the C. S. Navy eventually grew to 101 ships to meet the rise in naval threats and conflicts.
- In the Atlantic Ocean the Confederate Navy traditionally relied on the British Royal Navy as it had ever since the British broke the US blockade in 1862 at the end of the War of Secession. In the Pacific, despite President James Longstreet's aspiration to make the CS a Pacific power by acquiring the port city of Guaymas, Sonora from Mexico in 1881, the Confederate Navy's power in the Pacific never amounted to much.
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| abstract | - The C. S. Navy could never achieve equality with the Union Navy, so it used technological innovation, such as ironclads, submarines, torpedo boats, and naval mines (then known as torpedoes) to gain advantage. In February 1861 the Confederate Navy had thirty ships, only fourteen of which were seaworthy, while the Union Navy had ninety vessels; the C. S. Navy eventually grew to 101 ships to meet the rise in naval threats and conflicts. On 20 April 1861 the Union was forced to quickly abandon the important Gosport Navy Yard. In doing so they failed to effectively burn the facility, its large supply and arms depots, or in-port ships. As a result, the Confederacy captured much needed war materials and ordnance. Of most importance the South gained the shipyard's dry docks, sorely needed to build new warships. (The Confederacy's other major navy yard was in Pensacola, Florida). Ships left at the Norfolk shipyard included the scuttled screw frigate USS Merrimack. It was C. S. Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory's idea to raise the partially burned Merrimack and heavily armor the ship's newly rebuilt upper works with thick oak and pine planking, overlaid with two courses of heavy iron plate, turning it into a new kind of warship: an all-steam powered "iron clad". The new ship was christened CSS Virginia and later fought the Union's new ironclad USS Monitor to a draw on the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads. On the first day, Virginia aggressively attacked and nearly broke the Union Navy's sea blockade of wooden warships, proving the effectiveness of its ironclad concept. The final Confederate surrender took place on 6 November 1865 aboard the commerce raider CSS Shenandoah in Liverpool, England; this surrender brought about the end of the Confederate Navy. The Shenandoah had circumnavigated the globe, the only CSN ship to do so.
- In the Atlantic Ocean the Confederate Navy traditionally relied on the British Royal Navy as it had ever since the British broke the US blockade in 1862 at the end of the War of Secession. In the Pacific, despite President James Longstreet's aspiration to make the CS a Pacific power by acquiring the port city of Guaymas, Sonora from Mexico in 1881, the Confederate Navy's power in the Pacific never amounted to much. In the Great War, the Confederate surface fleet did fairly poorly against the U.S. Navy, though its submersible fleet had better success. At the end of the war, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt imposed severe arms restrictions on the C.S. Navy, and, while the C.S. under President Jake Featherston eventually found ways to subvert the Army's arms restrictions, the Navy was always a much lower priority. In the Second Great War, the CS surface fleet scored only one major victory, at Bermuda; and even there, the British did most of the work, and the Confederates saw little serious action. In 1943, when the US retook Bermuda, the British conducted the naval defense of the islands exclusively. Confederate submarines were little more than a nuisance for US ships during the Second Great War, and the CS Navy did not have a single airplane carrier, as the overall focus of the Confederate military was on its ground forces, and the Confederacy's limited shipbuilding industry did not have the ability to build surface warships of any significant size or numbers. With the Confederacy's total defeat and destruction at the Second Great War's end, the Confederate States Navy, like the Confederacy itself, was disbanded and ceased to exist.
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