A Floating Hospital
Illustration by Andrew W. Hall
IN THE SPRING of 1862, the U.S. Western Medical Department obtained and outfitted a number of vessels to be used as “floating hospitals” on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Among the ships enlisted for this purpose was the sidewheel steamer D.A. January, which, after its purchase by the government on April 1, was placed under the charge of Assistant Surgeon Alexander H. Hoff. For the next 18 months, the medical officers and crew of D.A. January treated and transported the sick and wounded (at battles including Shiloh and Milliken’s Bend) to northern hospitals. In the fall of 1863, the ship, which had been built in 1857, was furnished with new boilers and (as Hoff, who supervised the upgrades, later wrote) “completely fitted up … with all the requirements of a general hospital,” including a massive fan for ventilation and cooling, numerous drinking water stations supplied by pipes from a central refrigerated tank, and two kitchens (with a dumbwaiter able to deliver meals between decks). By the time its mission ended in August 1865, D.A. January—which one postwar admirer called “the most perfect of the western hospital boats”—had ferried 23,738 patients, only 530 of whom died on board. Shown here is a recreation of D.A. January, with a focus on the cabin floor, one of the ship’s four decks.
D.A. January
- Length: 230 feet
- Burden: 450 tons
- Beam: 34 feet
- Extreme Width (including paddlewheels): 65 feet
- Capacity: 400 beds
- Surgical staff: 4 (1 surgeon, 3 assistant surgeons)
Sources
The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Part III, Vol. II (1883); The World’s Industrial Cotton Centennial Exposition, New Orleans, LA, 1884–85, Medical Department, United States Army, Exhibit-Class 3, No. 2: Description of the Models of Hospital Steam-Vessels from the U.S. Army Medical Museum, Washington, D.C. (1884).
Related topics: medical care
