History
Such ships possibly existed in ancient times. The Athenian Navy had a ship named Therapia, and the Roman Navy had a ship named Aesculapius, their names indicating that they may have been hospital ships. During the 17th century, it became customary for naval squadrons to be accompanied by special vessels with the job of taking in the wounded after each engagement. On 8 December 1798, unfit for service as a warship, HMS Victory was ordered to be converted to a hospital ship to hold wounded French and Spanish prisoners of war. Another early example of a hospital ship was USS Red Rover in the 1860s, which aided the wounded soldiers of both sides during the American Civil War. It was the sighting by the Japanese of the Russian hospital ship Orel, correctly illuminated in accordance with regulations, that led to the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War. Orel was retained as a prize of war by the Japanese after the battle. During World War I and World War II, some passenger liners were converted for use as hospital ships. RMS Aquitania and HMHS Britannic were two examples of ships serving in this capacity.
The last British Royal Yacht, the post World War II HMY Britannia, was ostensibly constructed in a way as to be easily convertible to a hospital ship, but this is now thought to be largely a ruse to ensure Parliamentary funding, and she never served in this role - reputedly her lifts were too small to take standard-sized stretchers.
A development of the Lun-class ekranoplan was planned for use as a mobile field hospital for rapid deployment to any ocean or coastal location at a speed of 297 knots (550 km/h). Work was 90% complete on this model, the Spasatel, but Soviet military funding ceased and it was never completed.
The Brazilian Navy currently also operates several hospital ships on the Amazon and its tributaries. The Brazilians have an innovative and well-developed program of small, shallow-draft hospital ships that can provide medical care to the people in the interior of the vast Amazon region.
Read more about this topic: Hospital Ship
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