Just a thought...was New Orleans a large cotton shipping port? Serving the Mississippi drainage,I would guess that it was.If so,knowing that Britain was a huge market for American cotton,might there have been a route that would have allowed shipping of cotton to a port like Kingston Jamaica? A ship might have done quite well to take cotton to a British port,and haul rum and wool to Virginia.The constraints of wind and tide may have made this difficult for sailing craft,though.Were steamships in operation at the time?