The holy day of rest has come again. Another Sabbath day has to be spent in St. Simons; hope to have the pleasure of spending many more Sabbaths at this anchorage, it being so lovely a place to be at. Paymaster Murray read the service at 10 a.m. Antonio the cook returns to duty. None to report sick today. Actg. Ensign Thomas returned on board at 7 a.m., being disgusted with hunting. Dined on a roasted pig today. The starboard watch being on liberty today, one of them, Dowd by name, brought me an owl, a live one, he calling it a St. Simons canary. My steward, clipping its wings, intends to keep it in the sick bay as a pet. The day was rather cool.Feb. 8, 1865: from the journal of Kate Cumming, a confederate nurse:
-More woe and sorrow in store for us! The Egyptian will not let us go! Our commissioners have returned unsuccessful! No peace for us without going back to the Union!...Notes:
What castle-building we have had in the last few days! The thought of such a thing as our enemy asking us back to the Union never once entered our heads. I really did think that they had come to their senses, and resolved to let us go. Well, "we'll but to prouder pitch wind up our souls," and commence again.
Boyle was a Pennsylvanian who served as part of the naval blockade of the south. It was a tour of duty characterized by dull routine. There was little fighting as the enemy did their best to be surreptitious. His medical practice therefore did not entail much surgery, but "ran the whole gamut of disease--pthisis, hemorrhoids, anthrax, cholera,erysipelas, scrofula, bronchitis, and what not." And unsurprisingly "Venereal disease was the chief medical curse."
Kate Cumming was a nurse in the hospitals of the Army of Tennessee. Born in Scotland in 1835, she grew up in Mobile and served the confederacy for three years. Her photographic portrait indicates that she was not an unattractive woman, and she was not quite the abuser of exclamation points that her journal entry for 2/8/1865 would indicate.
