USS Red Rover

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 11th of June 1862, USS Red Rover received her first patient. His name was David Sans, a sailor from the gunboat USS Benton who had fallen sick with cholera. By the 14th of June, there were 55 patients on board. Those few days placed Red Rover in the historical record as the United States Navy's first hospital ship. She had not always been a Union vessel, nor always a medical one. How she became both, and at whose hands, is a stranger story than most Civil War histories tell. That first day of service was the start of a legacy that still carries the ship's name.

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• 2. Born Confederate

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  Red Rover was a side-wheel steamer built in 1859 at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The Confederate States of America purchased her on the 7th of November 1861 and put her to work as a barracks ship supporting a floating battery at New Orleans, Louisiana. From the 15th of March 1862, she served at Island Number Ten, a position on the Mississippi near New Madrid, Missouri. Union bombardment punched holes in her hull sometime before the 25th of March. Her Confederate handlers abandoned her there. Island Number Ten fell to Union forces on the 7th of April 1862, and a Union gunboat claimed the vessel. She was a 650-ton steamer with holes in her hull and no clear purpose. What the Union did next would take months, two cities, and a team of civilian volunteers.

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• 3. A Sicker War

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  By 1865, disease had killed more Civil War soldiers than combat had. Typhoid fever, typhus, dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, smallpox, measles, and malaria together claimed more lives than gunshot. When fighting broke out, both sides mobilized far faster than their medical institutions could follow. Vaccination moved slowly. Sanitation was generally poor. The U.S. Sanitary Commission, founded in June 1861, coordinated volunteer medical societies to fill the gap. Steamers like the City of Memphis moved casualties upriver as medical transports but lacked sanitary accommodations and trained staff. Contagious cases, primarily smallpox, went onto canvas-covered barges moored in shaded spots along the riverbank. Red Rover's conversion was designed to answer what those barges could not provide.

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• 4. From Hull to Hospital

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  Refitting Red Rover began at St. Louis, Missouri, and was completed at Cairo, Illinois. The Western Sanitary Commission oversaw the work, aiming for both sanitation and patient comfort. Workers installed a separate operating room and a dedicated galley for patients, kept apart from the crew's kitchen. The cabin at the stern was opened to improve air circulation. A steam boiler was added for laundry. An elevator, multiple bathrooms, and nine water closets went in. Gauze window blinds were fitted to prevent "cinders and smoke from annoying the sick." On the 26th of December 1862, Acting Master William R. Wells of the United States Navy took command. Her complement stood at 47. Her medical department, initially about 30 personnel, drew on both military staff and civilian volunteers. Among them were individuals who had never previously served on a Navy vessel.

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• 5. Women Who Served

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  Three nurses from the Catholic order Sisters of the Holy Cross came aboard when Red Rover entered Navy service in December 1862. A fourth joined them shortly after. They were the first volunteer women to serve on a United States Navy ship. Yet they were not the only women on the medical staff. Five African-American women, formerly enslaved, were enlisted under the designation "Boys" and paid to work as nurses. Their names were Ann Bradford Stokes, Ellen Campbell, Alice Kennedy, Sarah Kinno, and Betsy Young, who later became Betsy Young Fowler. These five women predated the formal founding of the Navy Nurse Corps, making them its forerunners in fact if not in title. The Western Sanitation Commission, which coordinated the volunteer work, donated over $3,000 worth of equipment to the ship. Fleet Surgeon Ninian A. Pinckney took charge of the Navy Medical Department of Western Waters in December 1862. He set such strict standards that by 1865 he could make an extraordinary claim. In his words: "there is less... sickness in the Fleet than in the healthiest portion of the globe."

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• 6. Along the River

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  Six days into Red Rover's service as a hospital ship, the river sent her an emergency. On the 17th of June 1862, the gunboat Mound City exploded during a battle with Confederate batteries at St. Charles, Arkansas. Of a complement of 175, 135 were casualties. Red Rover took on survivors with severe burns and wounds at Memphis, Tennessee, and transported them to hospitals in Illinois. She then moved south to join the Western Flotilla above Vicksburg, Mississippi. Through the summer, she treated the sick and wounded as the Ram Fleet operated along the river toward Helena, Arkansas. Off Helena, Red Rover caught fire. The gunboat Benton assisted in putting it out, and she continued her work. In January 1863, she joined the expedition up the White River. While Union troops captured the Post of Arkansas, she waited at the river's mouth for the wounded. On her departure, Confederate fire sent two rounds into the hospital area but caused no casualties. She supported the Vicksburg campaign from February through the city's fall in early July. She provisioned other ships with ice and fresh meat and sent medical personnel ashore as needed. She then delivered medical stores to ships along the White, Red, and Yazoo Rivers, transferred her remaining patients to Hospital Pinckney at Memphis, and headed north.

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• 7. The Name Carries On

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  Red Rover arrived at Mound City on the 11th of December 1864. She remained there, caring for Navy patients, until the 17th of November 1865, when she was decommissioned. Over the course of her service, she had admitted more than 2,400 patients. Her last 11 were transferred on that date. On the 29th of November 1865, she was sold at public auction to A. M. Carpenter. At the Recruit Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, new recruits' first medical stop is a clinic named BMC Red Rover. It is there that they receive their first inoculations, immunizations, optometry screenings, female examinations, and dental screenings. That first appointment mirrors, quietly, the vessel's own place as the beginning of American naval medicine.

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