{"id":1435,"date":"2013-04-10T23:51:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T06:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2013-04-10T23:51:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T06:51:55","slug":"history-hospital-ships-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/history-hospital-ships-part\/","title":{"rendered":"A brief history of hospital ships; part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to historian and author \u00a0J. David Davies<\/a>, the concept of a hospital ship was well established in 17th<\/sup> century Britain.\u00a0 During the Anglo-Dutch wars most casualties were taken ashore in small boats, though several dedicated hospital ships including the Loyal Katherine<\/em>, the Joseph,<\/em> the Maryland Merchant<\/em>, and the Helderenberg<\/em> were commissioned during the second Anglo-Dutch war.<\/p>\n

Yet during those “neighborhood wars” many injured sea men were cared for in private homes in seaport towns.\u00a0 In Davies\u2019 book Pepys\u2019s Navy; Ships, Men & Warfare 1649-1689<\/i>, he describes\u00a0 private citizen Elizabeth Alkin, known as Parliament Joan, who nursed seamen at Portsmouth before 1653, when she moved to Harwich.\u00a0 She used her own resources for the men\u2019s care, which included Dutch prisoners of war and was partly compensated by the government before she died in 1655.<\/p>\n

During Queen Anne\u2019s wars women served on hospital ships, says Christopher Lloyd in The British Seaman<\/em>.\u00a0 Suzanne Stark has more to say on the subject in Female Tars; Women aboard ship in the Age of Sail<\/a>.\u00a0 In 1696 each of England’s six existing hospital ships was to be assigned six nurses and four laundresses.\u00a0 They were paid able seamen\u2019s wages. There were continual complaints that the women were drunk and disorderly, but there were also complaints of the male assistants being drunk and disorderly.\u00a0 According to Stark, hospital ships were usually worn-out sixth-rates or converted merchant vessels.\u00a0 There was usually only one surgeon aboard, about four suregeon\u2019s mates, six nurses, and four laundresses.<\/p>\n

In 1703 Admiral George Byng and Daniel Furzer, surveyor of the navy, recommended that the women nurses be replaced by men.\u00a0 The navy ruled that women would not be hired to serve in hospital ships, \u201cexcept when circumstances required.\u201d\u00a0 Such circumstances quickly developed that same year.\u00a0 (Incidentally, Admiral George Byng was not the Admiral John Byng who was court-marshaled and put to death in 1757 during the Seven Years War with France \u00a0pour encourager les autres \u2013 or, failing to do his utmost to prevent Minorca from falling to the enemy.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found a few mentions of American vessels serving as temporary hospital ships during the early nineteenth century, the most famous being the ketch, Intrepid<\/em>. A few months after Stephen Decatur used the Intrepid<\/em> to sneak into harbor to\u00a0 destroy the U.S. frigate Philadelphia<\/em> which had been captured by the Tripolitans, the ketch served briefly as a hospital ship in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

During the American Civil War the Sanitary Commission and the U.S. Army charterd steamers as makeshift floating hospitals on the Western Rivers.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until December 26, 1862 that the United States Navy commissioned its first hospital ship. The Red Rover <\/i>was a sidewheel steamship the Union Army captured from the Confederates.\u00a0 The Illinois Prize Board sold the Red Rover<\/em> to the Navy \u00a0\u00a0The ship\u2019s first patient as a commissioned hospital ship was a cholera victim.\u00a0 The medical staff included 30 surgeons and male nurses, and four female nurses; sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross.\u00a0 They were joined later by several other nuns and some black female nurses.\u00a0 When a naval hospital was built in Memphis, Tennessee, the Red Rover<\/i> was relieved of some of her duties and she was removed from the service November 17, 1865.<\/p>\n

\"Nurse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to historian and author \u00a0J. David Davies, the concept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[240,236],"class_list":["post-1435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-hospital-ships","tag-nurses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1441,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}