Eliza’s journal.
May 14.
I can’t keep the record of events day by day, but last Friday we came down again from West Point to Yorktown, and G. and I went to Fortress Monroe on two hospital ships, G. on the Knickerbocker with the sick of Franklin’s Division, and Miss Whetten and I on the Daniel Webster No. 2, with two hundred of the Williamsburg wounded. Since the day of the battle they had lain in the wet woods with undressed wounds. Some one had huddled them on to a boat without beds or subsistence, and then notified the Sanitary Commission to take care of them; and we were detailed to attend to them on the way to Fortress Monroe, with basins, soap, towels, bandages, etc. We washed and fed them all, Moritz going round with buckets of tea and bread. The poor fellows were very grateful, but we had a terribly hard experience. One man had lost both legs and had one arm useless, but was as cheerful and contented as possible. Colonel Small, of the 26th Pennsylvania, was wounded and lying in the dining room. Just before midnight I went in to see Colonel Fiske, sick with typhoid fever, lying on the bare slats of a berth with only his blanket under him and a knapsack for a pillow. We made him tolerably comfortable and left him much happier than we found him.
Sunday morning the sick were all carefully removed by Dr. Cuyler to the shore hospital at Fortress Monroe, and we ran back to Yorktown, where we found Charley, just arrived on the Daniel Webster from New York, transferred to the Small.
