RED ROVER and since…
6 FEBRUARY 1908
RED ROVER AND SINCE…
When early American naval forces fought in distant locales our Navy often had to supply her own hospital facilities. In our earliest days this was accomplished by designating certain of the expeditionary warships as temporary hospitals. As late as the Civil War, the storeship USS BEN MORGAN and the blockader USS HOME served intermittent stints as floating hospitals. But the first US Navy vessel designated wholly and exclusively as a hospital ship was the Civil War side-wheel river steamer RED ROVER, converted after her capture from the Confederates. She admitted over 2400 patients during the Mississippi River campaign of 1862-64.
Post-Civil War, the US Army maintained its own fleet of hospital ships. For example, the Army converted the steel-hulled passenger liner John Englis for medical use, renamed her RELIEF, and sent her off Cuba for the Spanish-American War. Four years later she was transferred to the Navy, where she rusted at Mare Island for several years while the Navy line and the Medical Department argued over who should command hospital ships. Anticipating the “Great White Fleet’s” world cruise, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that a physician, Surgeon Charles F. Stokes, would skipper the Navy’s first modern hospital ship. Thus, from February to November 1908 RELIEF accompanied the Fleet across the Pacific, seeing to the medical needs of the 14,000 servicemen. But on 17 November she was heavily damaged in a typhoon and limped to Subic Bay. Here she was declared unseaworthy but was retained as a floating hospital at Olongapo. In April 1918 her name was changed to REPOSE to allow the first Navy ship built from the keel up as a hospital ship to bear the name RELIEF (AH-1).
AH-1 was a 500-bed facility that went to sea under the command of Richard C. Holcomb, CDR/MC/USN. She and her WWI sisters SOLACE (AH-2), COMFORT (AH-3) and MERCY (AH-4) had been replaced before Pearl Harbor, an attack to which SOLACE (AH-6) was a witness. WWII saw thirteen more hospital ships, COMFORT, HOPE, MERCY, BOUNTIFUL, SAMARITAN, REFUGE, HAVEN BENEVOLENCE, TRANQUILITY, CONSOLATION, REPOSE, SANCTUARY and RESCUE in order of ascending hull number. CONSOLATION (AH-15) accepted the first direct helicopter medevac from the battlefield during the Korean Conflict. Our most decorated hospital ship is REPOSE (AH-16) who served off Korea and Vietnam, earning 18 Battle Stars over her career. In 1980, the Navy considered a fourth tour for the three-war veteran SANCTUARY (AH-17) to fill a Cold War maritime pre-positioning mission. Instead, the Navy acquired two newer ships, the supertankers Worth and Rose City. These were converted to the MERCY (T-AH-19) and COMFORT (T-AH-20) respectively.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 11 FEB 25
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1991, p. 310.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A-B”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1959, pp. 115-16.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 89, 152, 169.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 271-72, 296, 359.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, pp. 331-32.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, pp. 51-52, 60-61, 68-69, 77-78, 305-06, 543-44.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 256-57.
Navy Historical Foundation. “The Resignation of Admiral Brownson.” NHF Publication Series II (20), Spring 1976.
Polmar, Norman. The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 16th ed. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, pp. 235-36.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Roosevelt’s decision to have a Medical Officer command RELIEF turned into a disaster. Currently Staff Officers are barred from tactical command.
Our current system of hull numbering took effect in 1920. Ships already in service on 17 July 1920 were retroactively numbered, the hull number AH-1 being assigned to the oldest hospital ship then in service, our second hospital ship named RELIEF. Ships that had left service prior to 1920 never received a hull number, hence RED ROVER and the first RELIEF have no such designators.
The refitting costs for SANCTUARY (AH-17) in 1980 proved prohibitive, and this graceful lady was stricken from the NVR in 1989 and sold to a civilian humanitarian organization for $10. She was never reactivated as a hospital ship, rather she rusted at the dock in Baltimore while ownership was transferred a half dozen times. She was finally scrapped in 2011.
