My Worst Fears Have Been More Than Realized" :
Yellow Fever Hits The Union
By Robert Macomber
Robert N. Macomber is a nationally recognized
author who writes and lectures on maritime history. He has over
thirty years of sea experience on both historic and modern vessels
in various areas of the world. His first book "At The Edge Of Honor"
has been nominated for the Michael Shaara Award for Best Civil War
Fiction and the Patrick Smith Award for Best Florida Historical
Fiction. The second book in the series, "Point Of Honor" has just
By late summer in 1864, the fighting between the
Union and Confederate navies included the well publicized battles of
Mobile and Cherbourg, where Farragut and Winslow scored their
decisive victories and earned ever lasting fame. At this same time,
down on the jungle coasts of Florida, the unsung East Gulf
Blockading Squadron (EGBS) was tightening its iron grip on that
long, and previously porous, route of supply to and from the
heartland of the Confederacy. It was a guerrilla coastal/riverine
war for the EGBS, and it was an example of a civil war at its worst.
Confederate guerrillas, blockade runners, and shore batteries were
not the only foes the men of the EGBS faced in that inhospitable
area of operations. Natural dangers abounded also --- from storms
and uncharted reefs, to jungle creatures and debilitating heat and
humidity. But the most effective and dreaded of the squadron's
environmental enemies was the infamous scourge of the South ---
Yellow Fever. And the late summer of 1864 would prove to everyone in
the squadron a severe lesson in the lethality of that mysterious
Just the mere mention of the words "Yellow Fever" was enough to
cause alarm, and subsequent panic, among people of even the
strongest physical and mental powers. For by the time of the Civil
War, Americans knew well what happened when the Yellow Jack, as it
was known by sailors, arrived at a community. Many horrific examples
of the disease's mass destruction had been provided during the
previous half-century in the United States.
Visits to America, from "the Black Vomit"
Yellow fever was well known by many Americans by 1861 because so
many of them had friends or relatives who had been stricken during
the previous fifty years. All along the Gulf of Mexico, and the
South and Middle Atlantic coasts, the fearful host appeared during
summer seasons. The first half of the 19th century saw some of the
worst epidemics in history, which were well reported upon by the
newspapers and magazines of the day. Just as today, fear sold well
The first of the large scale massacres from "The Black Vomit", as
the sailors of the Royal Navy called it from one of the symptoms,
came in New Orleans in 1817, when two hundred seventy four people
succumbed to the disease. In 1819, in the town of Natchez,
Mississippi, the yellow fever was so deadly that the general
population fled in a panic and only nine hundred and ten stayed
behind to take their chances. Of those, two hundred and fifty died.
Even New York had deaths from yellow fever that year, with forty
three dying in agony. On the other side of the Atlantic, 1819 was
just as deadly. Out of a population of 72,000 in Cadiz, Spain,
48,000 took the fever and 5,000 died.
The next decade continued the pestilence, with 1820 seeing 83 deaths
out of 125 patients in Philadelphia. Baltimore lost 173 of its
inhabitants. Throughout the 1830's and 1840's yellow fever ravaged
the Caribbean, South American, and southern United States coastal
areas---shutting down entire colonies or countries because of fear
As the new century progressed in time, so did the malevolent curse
of yellow fever. The decade of the 1850's would prove to be the
worst yet. In Rio de Janiero four hundred seventy died in 1851, one
thousand nine hundred and forty three in 1852, and eight hundred
fifty three in 1853. The curse came to America also in that year of
1853. The target was New Orleans.
New Orleans was to experience a terror the likes of which even that
venerable city of the ages had not seen. When the word spread of the
yellow fever's arrival , the city dwellers panicked and many left.
Of the 125,000 that remained, twenty nine thousand were attacked by
the horror of yellow fever and 8,101 died. Mobile was next, with
1,119 dying out of a population of 18,000.
It did not stop. Every summer there were new body counts from cities
along the coasts. In 1855, it was the turn of Portsmouth and
Norfolk, Virginia. By October the number of people living in those
two neighboring cities had dropped from 27,000 to nine thousand. The
initial exodus then turned into one of the worst panics for those
left behind ever seen in the country, with entire blocks of homes
being burned down in an effort to stop the death from spreading. It
struck everyone, no matter the race, age, sex, or amount of wealth.
Companies and governments ceased to function for lack of employees
able to work. By the 28th of August, even the local newspaper had to
stop reporting, since it was down to one editor and one compositor
and there was no one else left to print the paper. The dead began to
pile up in vacant houses where entire families lay decomposing in
the heat. A shortage of coffins led to an appeal to the rest of the
country for help. In the end, forty five percent of the remaining
population, those who did not panic and leave, or could not leave,
died the tormented death caused by yellow fever.
The nation was stunned by these annual depredations of its cities.
The economic and social impacts were overwhelming. Fear was the
predominant factor as each summer unfolded for millions of
Americans, as communities waited to see if they would be next to
experience the horrible sickness.
Prevention, Symptoms, and Treatments
Doctors were not immune to the panic. They did not wholly understand
the disease, and they knew it. Scientific proof of its origin, its
mode of transmittal, or a cure, was scanty and inaccurate. It was
known that it occurred in the heat of the late summer, usually along
coastal areas, and quite often those who were apparently the least
susceptible were the young, persons who had already survived one
attack, and African-Americans. It was said that they were
"acclimated." Anecdotes and theories abounded as to the origin,
resulting in many different attempts to combat the disease. Some of
these attempts, particularly at prevention, were effective against
the symptoms of yellow fever and other diseases, but other attempts
were as deadly as the disease itself.
It was commonly thought that a good prevention was the improvement
of sanitary conditions in the cities affected by the disease. Not
only human sewage, but trash and animal waste was cleaned up and
removed from the areas of habitation. Even the foul smelling mud of
a harbor bottom exposed at low tide was sometimes considered as an
origin of the disease and attempts made to remove the odor. All of
these factors did result in an improvement of the air quality and a
lessening of other diseases such as cholera and dysentery, but
overall they did not directly impact the disease of yellow fever.
Another prevention technique was to fumigate and/or burn "infected
areas" of a town or building or ship. Various combinations of
noxious fumes were used, frequently with deadly ingredients, which
were supposed to rid the air of the disease. Burning such
concoctions as sulfides and copperas, smoking red hot bolts in tar,
and spreading chloride of lime, were methods of "disinfecting" the
areas where people had been stricken with yellow fever. Clothing of
these people was generally burned, and the waste products of the
patients were buried.
The treatment for a yellow fever victim mainly addressed the visible
symptoms, which included the namesake jaundiced yellowish face,
dangerously high fever, severe headaches, muscle aches, dehydration
and fatigue, muscular pains, nausea and vomiting. The treatment of
these symptoms included giving lots of water, cooling the victim,
oral administration of Peruvian bark, calomel, sugar of lead,
quinine, nitre, and tartarized antimony. In various areas different
herbal and/or superstition remedies were given with diverse results
upon the disease's manifestations.
Doctors who saw their patients continue to decline after four to
five days then observed the most horrific symptoms: Violent vomiting
of black fluid, bloody urine and gums, disorientation turning into
delirium, burning sensations inside the head, convulsions, slowing
pulse rate, then coma and finally death. All within a few days of
the onslaught of the illness. Addressing these final symptoms was
most difficult as the patients frequently became non-cooperative in
their delirium and there was really nothing that could be done other
than to try to reduce the pain through the inhibitors of the day
such as opium and laudanum.
In the Navy, surgeons would try to get the patients out of the
berthing decks and into the fresh air of the weather decks, and
frequently, if enough of the crew had taken ill, the ship would head
for cooler climes where it was thought that the air was healthier.
For in all of the theories of the origin of the disease, the most
common denominator was that the southern air was "miasmatic" when
heated and humid in the late summer, and thus the air itself was
sick. Therefore, leaving the air of that area was the most expedient
method of helping the afflicted.
The ship was still thought to contain the sick air within her
confines---so was smoked throughout by the aforementioned
procedures---and quarantines were established to prevent such ships
from entering places where there was no yellow fever. The signal of
quarantine to this very day is the hoisting of a large yellow flag,
or yellow "jack", from high in the rigging, so that all would know
not to approach that ship until it was cleared by the port doctor.
Once that approval is made, the ship removes the yellow signal as a
sign that she is free from contagious diseases.
And so, when the first signs of yellow fever appeared in a community
or a ship, extreme measures were immediately taken to try to
mitigate the hideous destruction to come. The social and economic
consequences upon the inhabitants of a city that had word of the
sickness arriving there, or just the rumors of it, were
catastrophic. The effects upon military and naval units who still
had to do their duty were heart rendering. Continuing to do that
duty in the face of this dreadful mysterious terror took courage