Matthew - Whenever I have seen the listings of the cargos of blockade runners it seems that in terms of military goods - there was a priority on items that were proving to be impossible to produce in the Confederacy.

There was even apparently a priority of the type of arms that were pushed through - (3 bander Enfields, over Cav. Carbines, over Artillery Carbines - Etc.) There is some logic to the notion that they would try to get guns and other items that could not be made in great quantities - over infantry accouterments and uniforms - especially early in the war (61 and early 62) when home grown supplies in terms of leather goods and cloth items were still around. I am still astounded at the number of items issued and made in the CS in terms of accouterments - both in leather and in cloth - even until late in the war.

Having said that - there is no doubt that there were very large quantities of British equipment that still came in on both sides.

A good gauge of this distribution is to look at the number of British "Snake" buckles found in the Reb Camps and determining the dates that the site was occupied. Another is the distribution of British made buttons found in which dated camps.

Charlie Harris's book has a number of illistrated examples in his book "Civil War Relics of the Western Campaigns"

From a collectors point of view there are some pitfalls to beware of. First the snake form of buckle was used by the British for many, many, years and the number seen at shows is not an indication of the numbers of ones used in the US Civil War. There are a lot of them out there for sale at shows that had to have been made well after the war.

On buttons - There was some question of Reb state seal buttons and Confederate national buttons made by the British firm of Henry Van Wart and son having ever arrived in the CS before the wars' end. There are a lot of great looking ones out there - but I don't think that very many at all have ever been found in camps by diggers.

on the subject - Several years ago I was offered a handfull of Reb buttons, all right as rain, from an elderly British Expat. They were all coated with a different kind of patina than I was used to. After grumping and prodding on my part - it turns out that these buttons had been found in Bermuda decades ago and had never made it into the Confederacy.

Hope that this is of some interest - Gene