Acting Assistant Surgeon E.J. Fuller & Mississippi Squadron Hospital Ship, Albumen Photographs

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American Historical Ephemera & Photography, I...

By Cowan's Auctions

Jun 26, 2020

Set Reminder 2020-06-26 10:00:00 2020-06-26 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : American Historical Ephemera & Photography, Including African Americana:Premier Auction https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/cowans/american-historical-ephemera-photography-including-african-americana-premier-auction-5208
Cowan's Auctions is delighted to present the June 26 American Historical Ephemera and Photography Auction, including 55 lots devoted to the African American experience, over 175 lots dating from the Civil War Era, and more than 60 lots documenting life in the American West. Cowan's Auctions dawnie@cowans.com

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• Lot Description
  Acting Assistant Surgeon E.J. Fuller & Mississippi Squadron Hospital Ship, Albumen Photographs
  
  Lot of 2. Albumen photograph featuring Acting Assistant Surgeon Erwin J. Fuller, 5.75 x 8.5 in., mounted to 9 x 10.5 in. Uncredited, n.d. Ink identification below image reads, "Erwin J. Fuller." Here Fuller wears a plain, unadorned officer's sack coat with military buttons and vest.
  
  Oval albumen photograph of a berthed "USN Hospital Ship," 5 x 7.5 in., mounted to 8 x 10 in. Uncredited, 1863. Period ink inscription below image reads, "Mississippi Squadron 1863." Here the hospital ship is berthed at an unknown location with convenient stacks of cut wood for the boilers in the forefront along the shoreline. 
  
  Junior medical officer EJ Fuller is recorded as having been commissioned as acting assistant surgeon on December 20, 1863. Fuller is not listed in the Navy Register 1775-1900, suggesting that he might have been a contract surgeon not carried on the Navy List. 
  
  The "Hospital Ship" is the USS Red Rover, a side-wheel steamer built in 1859 at Cape Girardeau, MO, and taken up by the Confederacy in November 1861 and first employed as a barracks ship in New Orleans. While in Confederate service she was holed and captured at Island No. 10 by the USS Mound City on April 7, 1862. Red Rover was soon refitted by the civilian Western Sanitary Commission as a hospital ship and put back into service in June 1862 under the auspices of the Army Gunboat Service. On June 11, 1862 she became the first military hospital ship to take aboard a patient, a seaman and cholera victim from the USS Benton. A week later Red Rover came to the aid of USS Mound City survivors numbering 135 sailors, many of whom were badly burned. For the balance of the year she continued caring for sick and wounded of the Western Flotilla and nearly burned off Helena after an accidental blaze.  In September 1862, Red Rover and the other vessels of the Western Flotilla were formally transferred to the navy while the reorganization of the Medical Department was completed under the command of newly appointed Fleet Surgeon Ninian A. Pinckney who came aboard the hospital ship in December. 
  
  Red Rover then steamed in support of operations on the White River, leading to the capture of Arkansas Post, being hit by two shells that miraculously caused no casualties. For the next five months she sustained arduous work in support of Vicksburg operations treating both navy and army casualties always consistent with the tempo of Grant's campaign to strangle and capture the fortress city. While not engaged in treating the constant flow of sick and wounded, Red Rover doubled as a transport supplying "ice and fresh meat" to the fleet and delivering medical personnel where needed. Red Rover remained tasked with transporting casualties north and conveying "medicine and stores" but by the fall of 1864 operations on the upper Mississippi had subsided. During October 1864 the vessel was berthed at Mound City, Illinois where she acted as a floating hospital for navy patients until November 1865 when she was finally decommissioned and sold out of service. Red Rover should be remembered as the Navy's first hospital ship having officially admitted "over 2,400 patients" during her career on the brown waters of the Mississippi.
  
  Provenance: The Richard B. Cohen Civil War Collection

  Condition

  The mottled albumen portrait of Fuller is loose at the corners from the mount, itself with several brown stains and light soiling but otherwise undamaged, G.  The Red Rover albumen is light caused by overexposure due to sunlight but undamaged.  Details are evident but awash in sepia, about G.  Other than by a general medical theme the pair of albumens are unrelated. 
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