Although the U.S. Navy operated improvised hospital ships during the Civil War and the Spanish American War, and an earlier hospital ship named Relief had accompanied the Great White Fleet around the world, the first and only ship ever designed from the outset as a hospital ship for the U.S. Navy was the Relief (AH-1). The brainchild of Navy Medical Corps Commanders E. M. Blackwell and Richmond C. Holcomb, the elaborately equipped Relief was laid down at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 14 July 1917 and commissioned on 28 December 1920 with Holcomb in command. Holcomb was relieved by a line officer in September 1921 after a Judge Advocate General decision reversed a 1908 decree by then-president Theodore Roosevelt that Navy hospital ships should be commanded by physicians.
For most of her pre-World War II career, the Relief was based at San Pedro, California, where she acted as the naval hospital for the up to 35,000 Navy personnel assigned in the area, although she did make cruises as far as New Zealand and Alaska. The 10,112-ton, 483-foot ship had capacity for 409 patients as of the mid-1930s, and her crew included 9 line, 10 medical, 3 dental, and 2 supply officers, a chaplain, 7 warrant officers, 10 civilian female nurses, 124 medical corpsmen, and 224 other enlisted personnel. In a typical year, 1935, nearly 900 operations were performed on board, about half of them in the massive two-deck operating room located directly beneath the pilothouse.
The Relief was reassigned to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1941, and was based primarily at Argentia, Newfoundland, and Casco Bay, Maine. Sent to the Pacific in February 1943, she provided direct medical aid, acted as a floating dispensary to other ships and shore facilities, and made numerous casualty evacuation voyages, having been present during the Solomons campaign and at the invasions of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. After her only refit during the war, from November 1944 to February 1945, the heavily used ship returned to the Western Pacific to participate in the invasion of Okinawa.
After the conclusion of hostilities, the Relief evacuated former prisoners of war from Dairen, Manchuria, at the beginning of September; supported Marines at Taku, China, into October; and then made a final voyage to Japan and Guam, picking up 282 patients and 1,717 returning troops bound for San Francisco. Arriving at Norfolk, Virginia, on 28 February 1946, she was decommissioned there on 11 June and sold for scrap in March 1948. The Relief, which had evacuated nearly 10,000 wounded personnel during the war and saved the lives of countless others, earned three Battle Stars for her service during combat.
The far left view of the white-painted Relief (AH-1) in 1926 shows to advantage the two-deck-high, 48-foot-wide operating room beneath the bridge. The space had 75 18-inch deadlights, which were intended to provide natural light for operating but usually were covered by mechanical shades; the ports were plated over around 1935.
While based at Casco Bay, Maine, early in 1942, the Relief appeared in a three- tone camouflage paint scheme, a most unusual garb for a hospital ship. The steam-turbine powered, twin-screwed ship could achieve 16 knots when new, but by 1945 her best speed was about 14 knots.
In full hospital ship regalia at the completion of her final overhaul in February 1945, the Relief displays the typical wartime hospital ship paint scheme: all white, with red crosses on the hull sides, on the front of the pilothouse, on either side of the after face of the superstructure at the stem, and on either side of the stack (outlined at night by white lighting), and with broad green horizontal stripes running down the hull sides.