Markers of History

Markers of History is going to take a hol­i­day week­end off from post­ing, but I didn’t want to leave you high and dry, so we’ll close today with a bumper load of his­tor­i­cal markers.

Path of History
Fort Nelson Park

Location: Fort Nelson Park, cor­ner of Crawford Pkwy & Effingham St, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:55pm

On my last trip to Portsmouth, I came across Fort Nelson Park which con­tained roughly a dozen Path of History mark­ers about Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I’m cross­ing my fin­gers, hop­ing that I man­aged to get all of them. (I’ll have to double-check next time I’m in Portsmouth.)

Given the large num­ber of images and mark­ers included in this post, I will spare the front page of this site and ask you to click the link to see the mark­ers and their texts, but I’ll break with my tra­di­tional order and open this post with:

My impres­sions: I was impressed with the pleas­ant set­ting for these mark­ers. That said, I was dis­ap­pointed (on a hot June day) not to find more shade. Thinking back, I’m won­der­ing what may have stood on that site before the park, which only opened three years ago.

Related to this: See Monday’s post for a state his­tor­i­cal marker about Fort Nelson.

Transcriptions of markers:

[I entered the park from the south-east cor­ner. When I reached the cir­cle of mark­ers, I moved from that point counter-clockwise until I got back to the start. Then, I looked at the mark­ers mov­ing towards the south-west cor­ner. Markers are tran­scribed here in the order that I found them. (If there are any mark­ers out­side the cir­cle in the north-west cor­ner, I will have to return to find them. It was not clear from my pho­tos if there were mark­ers in that direction.)]

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Early Naval Medicine”

Naval reg­u­la­tions of 1798 state: “A con­ve­nient place be set apart for sick or hurt men, to which they are to be removed with their ham­mocks and bed­ding when the sur­geon shall advise the same, and some of the crew appointed to attend them.” Aboard ship, the sick were usu­ally cared for in an area on the main deck between two gun ports. This space became known as “Sick Bay.” The ship’s med­ical offi­cer car­ried the title of Surgeon or Surgeon’s Mate. In those days, med­i­cine was prim­i­tive. It con­sisted of “reme­dies,” dress­ing of burns and wounds, blood let­ting and amputations.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Hospital Fund”

The British had a cus­tom of tax­ing its sailors for their health care. In 1798 Congress estab­lished the “Hospital Fund” based on the British sys­tem. 20 cents per month was deducted from the pay of each offi­cer, sailor and marine to pro­vide for his health care. At that time, shore-based med­ical treat­ment took place at the Gosport Shipyard. Patients were treated, not in hos­pi­tals, but in sail lofts, store­rooms, or other work spaces. They had to con­tend with noise and the odors of the ship­yard and the sur­geon couldn’t pro­vide proper care. Enough money had been col­lected by 1821 to build naval hos­pi­tals in key ports. In 1830, the Navy’s first hos­pi­tal opened in Portsmouth.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Hospital Point”

The Naval Hospital faces a penin­sula sur­rounded by the Elizabeth River. In 1636, Captain Thomas Willoughby received a land grant from the King of England that included this penin­sula. The land was used as a plan­ta­tion and changed own­ers sev­eral times. It has been known by var­i­ous names: Mosquito Point, after the pesky crit­ters that inhab­ited the adjoin­ing swamp; Tucker’s Mill Point, after the fam­ily who oper­ated a wind­mill on the site; Musket Point and Fort Point, after the rev­o­lu­tion­ary port of 1776 to 1824; and now Hospital Point, the site of the first U.S. Naval Hospital.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“The U.S. Navy’s First Hospital”

In 1826, Philadelphia archi­tect John Haviland sub­mit­ted con­struc­tion plans for this hos­pi­tal. This build­ing, which houses offices is now known as Building 1, was made of gran­ite and free­stone. Its style is clas­si­cal Greek Revival archi­tec­ture, which was pop­u­lar for pub­lic build­ings at that time. Construction began on April 2, 1827. Workers removed more than 500,000 bricks from old Fort Nelson and re-used them in the foun­da­tion and inner walls. In July 1830, Surgeon Thomas Williamson, who was sta­tioned at the ship­yard, was ordered to make the hos­pi­tal ready to receive patients. Dr. Williamson became Medical Director of the nation’s first naval hos­pi­tal. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Naval Burying Ground 1838″

There are 840 graves of sea­men and sol­diers in the naval ceme­tery on the hos­pi­tal grounds. They include the remains of sea­men from the U.S., Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Brazil, Denmark and Japan. The old­est known bur­ial was a sailor who fell from the rig­ging of the USS CONSTITUTION (Old Ironsides). There are Union and Confederate graves, includ­ing those of sol­diers, as well as vic­tims of the 1855 Yellow Fever epi­demic. The ceme­tery con­tains 113 graves marked unknown and three recip­i­ents of the Medal of Honor. Some head­stones were erected by ship­mates and include the names of famous ships.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Yellow Fever Epidemic”

In June 1855, the steamer Franklin put into Norfolk for repairs while sail­ing from the West Indies to New York. Mosquitoes car­ry­ing yel­low fever escaped when the ves­sel docked. The Naval Hospital’s first yel­low fever patients came from Gosport’s Marine bar­racks. As the mos­qui­toes spread, the local pop­u­la­tion quickly suc­cumbed to the dis­ease. By August, 20 to 70 cit­i­zens per day were stricken. In des­per­a­tion, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Portsmouth appealed to the Navy to treat towns­peo­ple. The hos­pi­tal was then opened to the local pop­u­la­tion and 587 cit­i­zens were treated. In appre­ci­a­tion, the Common Council of Portsmouth pre­sented gold medals to six naval surgeons.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“The Navy’s First Corps School 1902″

On June 17, 1898, President William McKinley signed a bill estab­lish­ing the Navy Hospital Corps. Navy Corpsmen are trained in the sci­ence of health and nurs­ing skills nec­es­sary to pro­vide proper patient care at hos­pi­tals, ships at sea and to the U.S. Marine Corps. The first Navy Corps school grad­u­a­tion took place at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in December 1902 when 28 stu­dents com­pleted the course. The out­stand­ing life­sav­ing record of the Corps, while car­ing for the sick and wounded dur­ing bat­tle and peace­time, has made it one of the most dec­o­rated among the mil­i­tary services.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Building 215, Tidewater’s First Skyscraper 1960″

Building 215 was con­structed to pro­vide a much needed mod­ern hos­pi­tal and to cen­tral­ize the med­ical depart­ments scat­tered around the base. The 500-bed hos­pi­tal became the command’s sec­ond pri­mary hos­pi­tal facil­ity when com­mis­sioned in April 1960. Towering 17 sto­ries, it was the tallest all-welded steel-framed build­ing from New York to Miami. Along with the lat­est med­ical equip­ment, it had a cob­bler shop, tai­lor shop, enter­tain­ment audi­to­rium, Navy Exchange and mod­ern gal­ley. In 1973, twelve American pris­on­ers of war from Vietnam were received on the 12th floor, where they were reunited with fam­ily and given time to recuperate.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Hospital Renovation 1907 – 1910″

By 1900, time and use had taken its toll on the hos­pi­tal build­ing. In October 1907, the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery ordered hos­pi­tal per­son­nel to remove patients to tent-covered wooden plat­forms con­structed sev­eral hun­dred yards away from the build­ing. Patient care took place in these tents for nearly a year and a half while the hos­pi­tal was ren­o­vated. During this period, two new wings and the Jeffersonian dome were added. The hos­pi­tal reopened in February 1909. From 1910 to 1940, surg­eries were per­formed under the dome by sky­light. The dome is now a Hampton Roads land­mark for locals and mariners who travel the Inland Waterway.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“World War II and Korea 1937 – 1953″

World War II cre­ated the need to rapidly expand the hos­pi­tal in 1941. The $1.5 mil­lion pro­gram increased the num­ber of hos­pi­tal beds to 3,441. A den­tal clinic, ships ser­vice, library and a bank were added. The staff — med­ical offi­cers, nurses, corps­men, marines and civil­ians — swelled to 3,055. On a sin­gle day in August 1944, there were 2,997 patients. Between 1937 and 1948, res­i­dency and intern pro­grams were estab­lished through the Graduate Medical Education sys­tem. The sprawl­ing facil­ity escaped post-war down­siz­ing from the expan­sion of two world wars and went on to serve dur­ing the Korean War.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“World War I 1917 – 1918″

When the United States entered World War I, imme­di­ate steps were taken to expand the hos­pi­tal. Several tem­po­rary wood-framed build­ings were con­structed to accom­mo­date the ever-growing num­ber of patients. These build­ings included 34 patient pavil­ions and four Hospital Corps bar­racks. In the course of one month dur­ing 1917, the patients increased from 200 to 1,405. The largest monthly admis­sions were in October 1918 when the num­ber of patients reached 2,257. Treatment of measles and mumps accounted for half of the patients. The hos­pi­tal also treated large num­bers of patients dur­ing the Great Influenza Outbreak of 1918.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Navy Nurse Corps 1908″

The Navy Nurse Corps was cre­ated by Congress in 1908, allow­ing women to per­form duties that pre­vi­ously had been done by men. They held no rank and were titled “Nurse.” The first 20 to grad­u­ate were known as the “Sacred Twenty,” and of them, three reported for duty at Portsmouth in April 1909. Among them was Lenah Higbee, who became Chief Nurse at Portsmouth, and later became the sec­ond Superintendent of Nurses for the U.S. Navy. In 1964, the Secretary of the Navy signed his approval to allow male nurses in the Corps.

* * * * *

[The sun­light reflect­ing off my photo of the next marker made some words dif­fi­cult to deci­pher. Square brack­ets below indi­cate uncer­tainty in transcription.]

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Spanish — American War 1898″

After the Spanish defeat at the bat­tle of Santiago, Cuba, in July 1858, the sick and injured needed treat­ment. The newly con­verted hos­pi­tal ship USS Solace trans­ported 55 sick U.S. Navy and 48 wounded [sailors] to the hos­pi­tal. The Spanish pris­on­ers suf­fered mostly from burns and were placed in the North [Wing. The] hos­pi­tal staff treated these patients, not as ene­mies, but as fel­low sea­men in dis­tress. After the war, [Admiral] Pascual Cevera and Captain Victor M. Concas of the Spanish Navy praised the com­pas­sion and [humanitari-]an acts of kind­ness extended to them and their coun­try­men by Portsmouth Naval Hospital.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL HOSPITAL
“Civil War 1861 – 1865″

Virginia seceded from the Union on April 17, 1861. On April 20, the Governor ordered the 3rd Virginia reg­i­ment to occupy and for­tify the Naval Hospital grounds. A bat­tery of earthen works was hastily erected on the point and renamed Fort Nelson, after the rev­o­lu­tion­ary fort of 1776 to 1824. During the Confederate occu­pa­tion, the hos­pi­tal served as a med­ical facil­ity and a fort. The Union retook the area on May 10, 1862, and until the end of the war, the hos­pi­tal cared for Union sol­diers and sailors. In 1865, the hos­pi­tal treated nearly 1,300 patients.

And there, we have more than I expected to find on his­tor­i­cal mark­ers about the naval hos­pi­tal at Portsmouth.

Have a great Fourth of July week­end, and I’ll be back with more his­toric sites and mark­ers begin­ning Monday!