Civil War nurse Clara Jones spent the summer of 1862 assisting aboard U.S. Army hospital ships evacuating the wounded from the fighting on the Virginia Peninsula.

But military hospital ships weren’t the only ones navigating the rivers and creeks near the the battlefields. The United States Sanitary Commission also had ships assisting the wounded. Frederick Law Olmsted, head of the Sanitary Commission, wrote a brief memoir of his experiences aboard these ships of mercy. He published Hospital Transports in 1863. You can find the full memoir courtesy of archive.org below:

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About the Author

Jake Wynn is the Program Coordinator at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. He also writes independently at the Wynning History blog.