Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1142

1066 toward the end of the war, and was confined in a prison ship until the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, when he was released. During the last war with Great Britain—1812-14—he constructed the gunboats that, with the U. S. S. Constellation and the State troops on Craney island near the mouth of the Elizabeth river, signally defeated Admiral Cockburn's combined land and water attack upon that post, June 22, 1813. One of his sons, Abner Nash, served with the artillery in that action. The father of our subject, Dr. Thomas Nash, was noted for his suave manners, his guileless disposition and his unaffected Christian character. He honored the loftiest ideal of his calling, by devoting himself fearlessly, though when in broken health, to the care of the afflicted during the terrible yellow fever scourge of 1855, and met death calmly and honorably in the discharge of duty. His wife, the mother of the subject of this sketch, was Lydia Adela Herbert. The Herberts settled in Lower Norfolk about 1650 and were generally men of affairs and large land holders. Her father was sent to England in his youth, where he studied the higher mathematics and scientific shipbuilding. This industry he subsequently successfully conducted for some years near Norfolk, converting the timber from his own lands into the shipping, for which the port was celebrated in the busy earlier years of this century. Dr. Herbert M. Nash, whose lineage has thus been briefly mentioned, was born in 1831. After obtaining an academic education in the schools of the city, particularly the classical school of James D. Johnson and the Norfolk military academy, he repaired to the university of Virginia, from which he received the degree of doctor of medicine, June 29, 1852. After some time spent in the study of clinical medicine and surgery in New York city, he began the practice of his profession in Norfolk in the fall of 1853. Two years later he was called upon to face the appalling epidemic of yellow fever that destroyed a third of the people who remained in the city, including those nearest and dearest to him. He did his duty, fighting the unseen deadly foe with a steadiness which was subsequently again manifested in his ministrations to the wounded on the battlefield. He is now the only survivor of the medical men who were on duty in Norfolk in 1855. In 1861, immediately after the secession of Virginia and its adherence to the Confederate States, he was commissioned an assistant surgeon in the State forces and subsequently transferred to the provisional army, Confederate States. He was stationed at Craney island until that post was evacuated in May, 1862. Here he witnessed the naval battle of March 9, 1862—in which the Confederate States ironclad steamer Virginia destroyed the U. S. S. Cumberland and Congress—and the scattering of the remaining U. S. naval ships from Hampton Roads; and also the battle of the next day between the Virginia and the Monitor, the latter withdrawing into shallow water, out of the reach of the Virginia, which ship, being of heavier draught, could not again force the Monitor into close quarters. Nor did she ever subsequently accept the challenges of the Virginia for another combat. In the evening of the day of this battle he attended to the wounded of the Confederate States gunboat Raleigh, Capt. W. H. Parker, which was engaged in the fight. Dr. Nash was with his command at the battle of Seven Pines and later in the Seven Days' battles around Richmond, ending at