Topic starter
20/11/2007 5:21 pm
Any references to the number of sick and wounded men who were brought to various hospitals along the Ohio River hospitals during the Civil War.
There were 32 steamboats that brought sick and wounded soldiers to Cincinnati during the Civil War. These were supported by individual states, cities, sometimes the Army, and sometimes by the United States Sanitary Commission. Since there were also prisoners who were transported, where did they go? Since there was a military hospital or two in Columbus, how did the patients get there?
The Little Miami Railroad had tracks that went across the top of Cincinnati's Public Landing, and it is known that some of these sick men were transported from the river via the LMRR to Camp Dennision, which was split by the LMRR - intentionally - as the tracks were there before the camp.
Recently google has begun to digitize various books and put them on the web. J S Newberry's report of the U S Sanitary Commission is available. The story of the steamboat Allen Collier, which was used for local runs in Cincinnati, and appears to have been the first steam boat that was used on the Ohio complete with 10 physicians and 30+ nurses, journeyed to Fort Donelson, completely supplied, and removed 81 local wounded men and returned them to Cincinnati. That story is in the reference below. The first Allen Collier was destroyed in 1863 by the Confederates.
There is another steam boat that transported 50 wounded men from the Western Virginia campaign to Cincinnati in September 1861.
The Allen Collier was the first boat equipped with physicians, nurses and supplies, and preceeded the Red Rover by 6 months -- there may have been others, but none that I can find that were prospectively organized and simply waited for the opportunity.
Question - since there were no dams on the Ohio River, and the flow width of the river varied from 1500 feet to 58 feet in width, is there any record that indicated when the water was too low to support river traffic?
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