John Manning, the physician aboard the large privateer schooner Mammoth, kept this volume during the ship's voyage from Portland, Maine, to the Madeira Islands and Cape Verde region during the War of 1812. Entries range from December 30, 1814, to April 13, 1815, when the ship returned to New York. The volume lists the patients' names, symptoms, and treatments, as well as occasional notes on weather conditions, locations, and activities, such as the note, "5 Men of War in chase" on February 5, 1815.
Examples of some of the ailments treated include respiratory illnesses, venereal diseases, stomach complaints and colic, headaches, pain and sprains, frostbite, boils and abscesses, dizziness, ague, and wounds. One partial medical exemption for John Schwartze of Capt. Thomas Simmons' Company of Militia, dated May 6, 1816, from Waldoboro, Maine, appears at the end of the volume. An undated list of twenty exempt men and their medical conditions is written on the back cover.
The 376-ton schooner Mammoth was built in Baltimore in 1813, one of the largest vessels commissioned from the city during the period. It operated as a privateer during the War of 1812, undertaking at least three voyages between 1814 and 1815 and capturing over twenty vessels. The Mammoth was first commanded by Samuel Franklin and undertook its first voyage in March 1814, delivering a cargo to Havana, Cuba, and cruising the Caribbean. The second cruise began in June 1814 out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the Mammoth troubled British vessels off the Banks and subsequently the coast of Ireland and the North Atlantic before returning to Portland, Maine, in November 1814. Jonathan Rowland took command of the schooner for the third voyage, departing from Portland, Maine, on January 6, 1815, for a cruise to Madeira. Rowland took no prizes during this voyage and narrowly escaped several British attempts to capture the vessel.
John Manning was born in October 1789, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to John and Hannah Manning. He graduated from Harvard in 1810 and took up a medical practice in Waldoboro, Maine. He served aboard the privateer schooner Mammoth for its third voyage before returning to Waldoboro to continue to practice medicine. He married Elizabeth F. Thomson in 1819. He moved to Rockport, Massachusetts, in 1842, where he lived with his family until his death on February 7, 1852.
