Not many of the 25,000 strong Navy Hospital Corpsmen know that their current rating title – which is being scrapped in the Navy’s controversial personnel system reforms only dates to 1947.
The history of this career field is a good example of how these things have changed nearly 700 times throughout the two and a half century the history of the U.S. Navy.
Reworks have come for many reasons, jobs being eliminated or merged into other skills due to technology or simply that the old title no longer reflected the work being done in the fleet.
Here’s a snapshot of sailors over the history of the Navy working in the medical field.
It’s sure that sailors fighting on American ships in the Revolutionary War held jobs assisting Navy surgeons during the ferocious and very bloody battles of wooden ships at sea.
But officially the Navy’s first reference to these sailors came when the rating of Loblolly Boy was listed on the muster roll of the wooden sail frigate Constellation on September 8, 1798 and later on the rolls of the frigate President of July 8, 1800.
The title had been in unofficial use for many years, but was officially
acknowledged the rating when they provided a description of the ratings duties in Navy regulations when the U.S. Navy Regulations of 1814 were published and again in 1818.
At the time doctors were called Surgeons or Surgeon’s Mates and were the equivalent of today’s commissioned officers.
“The surgeon shall be allowed a faithful attendant to issue, under his direction, all supplies and provisions and hospital stores, and to attend the preparation of nourishment for the sick,” the 1818 regulations stated.
“The surgeon’s mates shall be particularly careful in directing the loblolly boy to keep the cockpit clean, and every article therein belonging to the Medical Department…the surgeon shall prescribe for casual cases on the gun deck every morning at 9 o’clock, due notice having been previously given by his loblolly boy by ringing of a bell.
The Navy changed the name to Surgeon’s Steward in 1838, and during the war, created a supervisory rating called Surgeon’s Steward in charge in 1864.
But again, the winds of change blew just a year after the end of the war, when the title was again changed to Apothecary 1866.
Fifty-one years later in 1917, during World War I, officials again changed the name, and for the next 30-years the rating was known as Pharmacist’s Mate.
During World War II, as the rating’s dental sub specialty grew in size, service rating of Pharmacist’s Mate (Dental Prosthetic Technician).
The current moniker of Hospital Corpsman was announced in 1947 and was implemented in April of 1948 in a massive post-war rework of the rating structure.
That rework included creating the Dental Technician Rating. The Navy folded DT’s back onto HM in 2005.
The removal of all rating titles Sept. 29 ends HM’s 69-year run in the Navy Hospital Corps.
