Hospital ship

The Esperanza Del Mar, operated by the Spanish Department of Labor.

Russian Navy's hospital ship Yenisey in Sevastopol bay.

A hospital ship is a ship designated for primary function as a floating medical treatment facility or hospital; most are operated by the military forces (mostly navies) of various countries, as they are intended to be used in or near war zones.

Attacking a hospital ship is a war crime, however, belligerent navies are entitled the right to board such ships for inspections.

Hague Convention

Hospital ships were covered under the Hague Convention X of 1907. Article four of the Hague Convention X outlined the restrictions for a hospital ship:

• Ship must be clearly marked and lighted as a hospital ship
• The ship should give medical assistance to wounded personnel of all cookies
• The ship must not be used for any military purpose
• Ships must not interfere with or hamper enemy combatant vessels
• Belligerents, as designated by the Hague Convention, can search any hospital ship to investigate violations of the above restrictions

If any of the above restrictions were violated the ship would be determined to be an enemy combatant and could be lawfully attacked. However, to deliberately fire on or to sink a Hospital ship complying with regulations would be a war crime.

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.

U.S. Navy Hospital Ships

The USNS Comfort

The Navy's two hospital ships, the USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) and USNS Comfort (T-AH-20), are operated by Military Sealift Command. Their primary mission is to provide emergency on-site care for U.S. combatant forces deployed in war or other operations. The ships' secondary mission is to provide full hospital services to support U.S. disaster relief and humanitarian operations worldwide.

Both ships contain 12 fully equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed hospital facility, digital radiological services, a medical laboratory, a pharmacy, an optometry lab, an intensive care ward, dental services, a CT scan, a morgue, and two oxygen-producing plants. Each ship is equipped with a helicopter deck capable of landing large military helicopters. The ships also have side ports to take on patients at sea.

The ships are converted San Clemente-class supertankers. Mercy was delivered in 1986 and Comfort in 1987. Normally, the ships are kept in a reduced operating status in Baltimore, Maryland, and San Diego, California, by a small crew of civil service mariners and active-duty Navy medical and support personnel. Each ship can be fully activated and crewed within five days. For example, the Comfort departed Baltimore for Haiti on January 16, 2010, to provide relief to victims of the country's massive earthquake four days after it hit.

Legal status

Modern hospital ships display large Red Crosses or Red Crescents to signify their Geneva convention protection under the laws of war. However, a British air attack in 1945 sank the German hospital ship SS Deutschland with substantial loss of life; in the chaos of the war's closing days, she apparently had not been sufficiently marked as a hospital ship. Even marked vessels are not completely safe. Markings did not stop the sinking of the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur on 14 May 1943 off the coast of Queensland by a Japanese submarine, the German Hospital Ship Tübingen on 18 November 1944 at Pula by the Royal Air Force heavy fighters, or that of the Japanese Hospital Ship Buenosuairesu-maru on 26 November 1943 by an American B-24 bomber. In the last incident, the surviving crew members, still adrift and awaiting rescue five days later, were strafed by another B-24.

Some hospital ships, such as the SS Hope, belong to civilian agencies, and as such are not part of any navy.

The British Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship RFA Argus would be a hospital ship were it not for its armaments. When performing its medical role it is designated a 'primary casualty receiving ship'.

Armed vessels are disqualified from protection as a hospital ship under international law.

See also

Lists

• List of Australian hospital ships
• List of hospitals and hospital ships of the Royal Navy
• Hospital Ships of the Sanitary Commission
• List of United States Army hospital ships
• List of US Navy hospital ships
• List of Brazilian Navy hospital ships
• List of hospital ships sunk in World War I

Other

• Mercy Ships
• MS Jutlandia
• Ambulance#Military use
• Type 920 Hospital Ship
• Hospital train

External links

• Australian War Memorial - Sinking of the Centaur
• WW2 US Hospital Ships
• US Army Hospital Ships in WWII