US Navy Mediterranean Squadron and Navy Hospital in Port Mahon

US Navy Mediterranean Squadron and Navy Hospital in Port Mahon. "The hospital is large and commodious". , In 1815, with the end of the War of 18 12, the United States Navy returned to the Mediterranean with a powerful squadron. The Navy’s objective was to end the Barbary States attacks against American merchant ships. With peace was achieved in 1815, the U.S. Navy established a permanent presence of warships in the Mediterranean as a deterrent against future attacks., To support its warships, a base of operations, strategically located to the Barbary States was selected. The Island of Menorca with its great harbor and its port, was such a location. Commodore John Shaw, Commander of the U.S. Mediterranean Squadron arrived at Mahon and was courteously received by the island’s governor, who granted permission to land stores and provisions, as well as establish a hospital. Surgeon McReynolds established the hospital in the town of Mahon in November 1815., In a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, McReynolds wrote that the hospital was “large and commodious, it has since been furnished with berthing and other furniture necessary for the accommodation of thirty patients.” The Royal Navy’s former hospital on Isla del Rey was also used by the U.S. Navy as a storage facility to include medical supplies., Over the course of the next two decades, Mahon and Menorca would become a home to thousands of U.S. Sailors and Marines., The most detailed account of the U.S. Navy’s hospital can be found in the book The Endemic Influence of Evil Government in View of Climate, Topography and diseases, of the Island of Minorca 1843 by the U.S. Navy Surgeon Jonathan Foltz. Foltz acted as head of the hospital between 1839 and 1841.