State’s first true hospital was located in Portsmouth

In the early 1800s, there was some scuttlebutt about Portsmouth, N.C., becoming the “Boston of the South” – the next great thriving American port city. 

In those days, more than 1,400 cargo vessels a year came into Portsmouth. The island village population swelled to about 800 people at its peak. 

As many as “30 to 60 sail of ship” were routine in the roadsteads around Portsmouth, said Dr. Marvin P. Rozear, a neurologist at Duke University in Durham, N.C. He authored an article about Portsmouth’s early history that was published in the North Carolina Medical Journal in 1991. 

With the boost in commerce, however, came an influx of “sick seamen…with scurvy, smallpox, dysentery, fractures, infected wounds, venereal disease, insanity, yellow fever, ague and miasmas,” Dr. Rozear said.

 

“Being unfit for duty…these sick sailors were ‘dumped’ on the island more or less to fend for themselves,” Dr. Rozear said. “They…were a major problem for the islanders. Care was provided in homes, haphazardly. There was no physician within 40 miles of Portsmouth until 1828. 

The first doctor to establish a practice at Portsmouth was Dr. John W. Potts, who came in 1828, but “he subcontracted with Dr. Samuel Dudley the next year,” Dr. Rozear noted. 

“Everyone could see this was an intolerable situation. The lightering business kept building, and the sick and disabled seamen kept coming,” Dr. Rozear said. 

The U.S. Congress first recognized the need to provide medical care for sick and disabled mariners in 1798, but funding for a U.S. Marine Hospital in Portsmouth was not appropriated until 1842. 

The 16-room hospital opened in 1847. It was the very “first facility in North Carolina to be built specifically as a hospital.” And Dr. Dudley was proud to be the medical director. 

However, the effects of the Hurricane of 1846 put a damper on the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Two new inlets had been created by that savage storm. 

One inlet was just below Hatteras, and the other was formed between Bodie and Pea islands. It became known as Oregon Inlet, named for the first ship to sail through it. 

As a result, sea trade moved farther north up the Outer Banks. The Hatteras Inlet became the preferred sea lane. It was a punch in the breadbasket of Portsmouth. Jobs began to vanish.

 

More “damage” was caused by the arrival of railroads in eastern North Carolina. The smaller “inner banks” ports diminished in their importance. 

Next came ominous clouds associated with The War Between the States. Oh, Lordy. 

The approach of Union troops toward the Outer Banks during Civil War in 1861 drove most Portsmouth residents off the island. They were fearful of what might happen. 

North Carolina seceded from the United States on May 20, 1861, and Gov. John Willis Ellis immediately dispatched the “Washington Grays,” an artillery company based in Beaufort County, to “proceed to Portsmouth.” 

Orders were to “seize the U.S. Marine Hospital” there “and to hold it to be used as quarantine,” reported historian James E. White III of New Bern. 

Led by Capt. Thomas Sparrow III of “Little Washington,” about 500 Confederate soldiers established Camp Washington at the hospital. 

Camp Washington and Fort Ocracoke on Beacon Island were strategically positioned to defend Ocracoke Inlet. 

For most of the summer of 1861, White shared that the Confederate troops had “quite a pleasant time fishing, crabbing, clamming and oystering – nothing much to do but drill and keep guard.” 

Pleasantness evaporated, however, when Union forces invaded the Outer Banks in late August 1861.