In battle reports from the age of fighting sail, we learn details of the events reported: the identities of the ships involved and their commanders, and the outcome. Of the human cost, we learn the number killed and wounded, but little or nothing of the causes, nature, and care of these wounds. It is a rare piece of good fortune that an 1812 medical day book kept by the Constitution's 27-year-old surgeon, Amos A. Evans, has been preserved, providing a vivid picture of the fortunes of that famous frigate's wounded following her battle with HMS Guerriere.
The two ships encountered each other on the afternoon of 19 August that year, some 600 miles east of Boston. After a period of indecisive maneuvering, the impatient British captain, James R. Dacres Jr., turned downwind, a signal for the American captain, Isaac Hull, to close in and get on with it. Hull double-shotted his guns and came into very short range so that his green crew would not have to worry about accuracy. In the ensuing exchanges, the big American frigate suffered little material damage, while the Englishman lost all masts, reportedly had a section of hull between two gun ports stove in, and had taken 30 shot between wind and water.
After the Briton's surrender, one of those to go aboard was Midshipman Henry Gilliam, who found her decks littered with "pieces of skulls, brains, legs, arms & blood . . . in every directions [sic] and groanes of the wounded were almost enough to make me curse the war." The Guerriere had 15 killed and 63 wounded. Hull, on the other hand, had seven men killed and eight wounded. His heavily constructed man-o'-war absorbed all her foe could deliver and largely protected her men from harm.
Surgeon Evans took no note of the American dead in his day book. We know from other sources that Marine Lieutenant William Sharp Bush was shot through the head while preparing to lead a boarding attempt (the first Marine Corps officer to die in combat), and Seaman Robert Bruce died when the carronade he was serving went off prematurely as he worked at its muzzle. How the remaining five were lost has gone unrecorded.
Evans' notes on the wounded, however, are clear and complete. These unfortunate souls included a commissioned officer, a warrant officer, five seamen or ordinary seamen, and a Marine private. Five had been wounded by musket fire, and one each by round shot, langrage (scrap iron and glass meant to shred sails), and a splinter. Four had leg wounds, two chest wounds, and one each wounds to the head, an arm, and the abdomen. The surgeon and his two mates, John Armstrong and Donaldson Yates, both natives of Ireland, had an interesting assortment of wounds facing them in their first exposure to battle casualties.
Senior among the patients was Lieutenant Charles Morris, Hull's next-senior officer, who had taken a musket ball in the abdomen as he prepared to succeed Lieutenant Bush at the head of the boarding party. The ball entered nearly dead center about an inch-and-a-half above his navel, went clear through him, and came out near his spine. Evans had warm poultices bandaged over the entry and exit wounds, and being a believer in the antiphlogistic course of treatment, he bled Morris and promptly gave him an emetic—which did not work. He repeated the emetic, and then enemas until some "slight foecal discharge" resulted. Cooling drinks followed, and, amazingly, Morris' stomach retained everything given him. His pain, reported the surgeon, was no "more than might be expected from a wound of the muscle alone."
A word about "antiphlogistical" treatment: Several decades earlier, a Frenchman had come to the conclusion that the reason there was less material to be seen and weighed after burning was because an invisible, tasteless, and odorless "something" had been formed that accounted for the difference. This he called "phlogiston." The idea was extended to the medical field in the belief that inflammation, fevers, and other heated conditions were indicators that a form of combustion was occurring and this mysterious something was present. To remove the unwanted heat, then, one must bleed or otherwise cause the removal of its likely sources: make the patient vomit and/or have bowel movements. Such was the basis for Evans' treatments.
Morris survived this traumatic initial treatment well, and just three days later Evans was noting that "he feels easy & has some appetite & but little fever." On the 24th, he had no fever and pleased the doctor with "a copious foecal discharge," an event he repeated on succeeding days. On the 27th, some small particles of clothing worked their way out of the frontal wound.
Sailing Master John Cushing Aylwin, another denizen of the quarterdeck, was wounded by a musket ball in the shoulder, apparently fired at long range, for it did not completely penetrate beneath the skin and popped out quite easily. In three days' time, he was being advised to be less active because his coat was causing irritation and inflammation. Thereafter, the shoulder healed steadily without complication.
The greatest challenge for Evans and his mates was the case of Seaman Richard Dunn. From the looks of the wound, he had been hit by langrage just above the ankle, shattering the tibia and shredding a lot of muscle. Amputation occurred the next morning, the cut coming below the knee. Dunn's life for more than the next week was a hell of sleeplessness and pain, somewhat eased by opiates. At various times he experienced muscle spasms and stinging in the stump. On the night of the 23rd, in his restlessness he threw himself out of his cot and crashed to the deck. Fortunately, nothing more than a loosening of bandages involved the stump. Evans did what he could for him, dosing him with laudanum and keeping the stump wrapped in bandages soaked in the stuff. By the 28th, the doctor was noting a healthy appearance in his handiwork, and that night Dunn finally got some needed sleep.
Seaman Owen Taylor received a fluky musket ball wound. It entered his back from the side, traveled laterally, came out of the muscle short of the spine, reentered muscle again on the other side of the spine, and finally exited behind and below the other arm. Initially, he suffered much pain and had trouble breathing. Evans cured the "heat" by bleeding him and giving him cooling drinks. However unreal the treatment may seem, the next day Taylor was "much relieved" and healing proceeded without further incident.
David Lewis, another seaman, was hit in the head by something that gave him a concussion while cutting his scalp and causing a brief bleeding from one ear. No damage to the cranium could be detected. He also was struck by a musket ball through the arm. Whether his reaction to the bullet caused him to strike his head or it was a second event is not known. Evans' initial entry concludes with the ominous notation: "Strict antiphlogistic plan to be pursued." He began with a blood-letting and a cathartic. Lewis' recovery proceeded without much difficulty. His headaches persisted for ten days before the "pain of head is removed."
It is unknown where Private Francis Mullin was when a musket ball struck him in the lower leg, but it apparently passed through without doing any serious structural damage. Treatment was limited to simple bandaging and no drastic antiphlogistic action. Looks can be deceptive, however, and Mullin's wound did not recover as might have been expected. On 11 September, bits of cloth were noticed working their way to the surface. Several days passed before the cloth was out and the healing process resumed. Mullin finally returned to duty on the 23rd.
Seaman George Reynolds and Ordinary Seaman John Craig both received contusions. Reynolds had two, one above and one below the knee, caused by a British shot rebounding from the mainmast into him. While the wounds themselves apparently were nothing more than scrapes, the shock of the strikes evidently wrenched Reynolds' knee, and it was also 23 September before he was returned to duty. Craig's was but a slight contusion below the knee caused by a passing splinter. Treated with a simple dressing on the evening of the battle, he needed no further medical attention. (And he was excluded from the count of wounded by the captain in his report.)
The Constitution returned to Boston on 30 August. Lieutenant Morris was taken ashore immediately, Surgeon Evans recording that he was "rapidly recovering." Seaman Dunn was sent to hospital on the 31 August or 1 September. Everyone else completed his recovery on board and was present when the ship again went to sea near the end of October.
It was traditional in the Royal Navy to promote the first lieutenant of a victorious frigate up one grade. In the euphoria of the unexpected victory, Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton jumped Charles Morris right past the rank of master commandant to captain. It brought howls of protest from some officers, but the decision stood. Morris continued in service until 1856, when he died while serving as chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. A sidewheel steamer was named for him in the Civil War.
Sailing Master Aylwin was promoted to lieutenant and continued in the ship. He died of a terrible wound received in the battle with HMS Java four months later while serving as the forecastle division officer. His service has been commemorated by a galley later in the War of 1812, World War I and II destroyers, and a more recent frigate.
Seaman Dunn, in keeping with Navy policy at the time, was retained in service and given a billet at the Boston Navy Yard and a lifetime pension of $6 a month dating from 24 September 1812. He subsequently was warranted a gunner and is known to have served at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire for more than two decades. Historians are indebted to him for having recorded the amount of ammunition the Constitution expended in defeating the Guerriere.
Seaman Lewis and Private Mullin continued in the ship until after the Java victory, and Seaman Reynolds remained throughout the war. Four years after the war, Mullin was seeking a pension for his wound. The subsequent activities of Seaman Taylor and Ordinary Seaman Craig are unknown.
Surgeon Evans, a Marylander, remained in the ship through her subsequent war cruise and then came ashore to serve in the Boston Navy Yard. In 1814 he received his Doctor of Medicine degree—with distinction—from Harvard. He continued to serve in the Navy for another decade before resigning his commission and returning home to private practice.