In this week in military history, we explore the Navy Nurse Corps, which was created by Congress on May 13th, 1908.
Women have served aboard ships in support of men at sea, on rivers and lakes long before 1908.
During the American Civil War, Ann Bradford was one of five African American women aboard the USS Red Rover .
On the steamboat Daniel Webster, No.2 , Katherine P. Wormeley served as a transport nurse doing her best to treat the wounded on the overcrowded ship.
And, the transport ship North America.
which sank in December, 1864, was chronicled by survivor Eleanor Ransom.
During the Spanish American War, private funds helped the Navy pay for volunteer nurses who supplemented the work of Navy doctors and corpsmen.
This long history of service led directly to the establishment of the Navy Nurse Corps in 1908.
The first nurses to formally serve in the US Navy were named “the Sacred Twenty,” When World War I began, there were approximately 466 Navy nurses, some of whom worked overseas, including in Cuba, Samoa, and the Philippines.
By wars end, 1,386 women had served.
many of them on transport ships, caring for influenza patients.
Four were awarded the Navy Cross, three posthumously, having become victims of influenza themselves.
During World War II more than 11,000 women served in the Navy Nurse Corps.
They included women from all ethnic and racial backgrounds, providing care and comfort to sick, wounded, and dyingmen.
Of the 77 American nurses who were captured in the Philippines and became POWs Eleven were Navy Nurses.
During World War II Navy nurses were finally granted relative rank.
As a result, in December, 1942 Sue Dauser became the first woman sworn in as a Navy captain.
Navy nurses symbolically paved the way for the additional opportunities granted in the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 signed by President Harry S. Truman.
2023 marks the 75th anniversary of this act, which called for greater opportunities for women in the United States Armed Forces.
The Navy Nurse Corps still exists today with nurses deployed throughout the globe.
Join us next time for another segment of This Week in Military History with the Pritzker Military Museum &
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