Like the CSS Alabama, the CSS Florida was a British-made warship built near Liverpool for the Confederacy and financed through connections with Liverpool businessmen. ![]() "The captured Rebel privateer 'Florida' and the United States steamer 'Wachusett," Harper's Weekly, 1864, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Bulloch's subterfuge was blatant, but it successfully confused the legal definition of what could be defined a warship in Great Britain. Through this strategy, the ships could be presented as civilian vessels when they left British jurisdiction, but they would then travel to Terceira, a Portuguese island located in the North Atlantic archipelago of the Azores, where they were armed. British neutrality meant that warships could not legally be built in the country for either side, but Bulloch circumvented this problem by ensuring that the ships, while clearly designed for battle, were not actually fitted with armaments in Britain. in Birkenhead, across the Mersey River estuary from Liverpool, to build warships for the South. He particularly negotiated with John Laird Sons & Co. James Dunwoody Bulloch, the Confederacy's chief foreign agent in Great Britain, led this effort to obtain Confederate ships in Liverpool. The Confederacy also needed merchant ships to evade the Union blockade and run arms and other essentials into southern ports. The Confederacy had almost no navy when the war started, so southern leaders sought warships to attack and defend against the North.
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