John Rush

He Entered a Steam-Filled Inferno to Save His Ship

John Rush was born on February 21, 1837, in Washington, District of Columbia. He would eventually become one of the Union Navy sailors whose courage during the American Civil War earned the Medal of Honor. At the time of the action that defined his military legacy, Rush was serving as a First Class Fireman aboard the steam sloop USS Richmond, a warship operating with the West Gulf Blockading Squadron.

In the nineteenth-century Navy, a fireman’s duties were centered deep within a steam-powered warship. Firemen tended the furnaces and boilers that powered the ship’s engines, working in extremely hot and physically demanding spaces where failures could quickly become fatal. During combat, those engineering spaces could be just as dangerous as the exposed gun decks above. Rush’s Medal of Honor action would demonstrate exactly how dangerous that work could become.

During the Civil War, control of the Mississippi River was one of the Union’s most important strategic objectives. By controlling the river, Union forces could disrupt Confederate transportation, communications, trade, and military supply routes while dividing the Confederacy geographically. USS Richmond became part of the naval campaign supporting that objective.

By early 1863, Port Hudson, Louisiana, remained one of the major Confederate strongholds preventing complete Union control of the Mississippi. Powerful shore batteries protected the position, making any attempt to pass the defenses extremely dangerous.

On the night of March 14, 1863, Rear Admiral David G. Farragut ordered a squadron of Union warships to attempt to steam past the Confederate fortifications at Port Hudson. USS Richmond was among the vessels committed to the operation.

The ships entered a devastating concentration of Confederate artillery fire. Richmond struggled against the river current while enemy batteries repeatedly targeted the Union vessels. During the engagement, the ship suffered a catastrophic hit.

A heavy Confederate projectile struck Richmond and shattered part of the vessel’s safety-valve system while also damaging another safety valve. The resulting failure filled the engineering spaces with live steam. The situation became immediately critical.

A steam warship depended on carefully controlled boilers and furnaces. With damaged steam equipment and intensely hot fires still burning below, Richmond faced the possibility of an even greater disaster. The engineering crew needed to remove the furnace fires, but reaching them meant entering compartments filled with scalding steam.

Rush did not remain in relative safety.

Together with fellow firemen John S. Hickman, Matthew McClelland, and Joseph E. Vantine, he repeatedly entered the steam-filled space. The men reportedly wrapped wet cloth around their faces in an effort to protect themselves from the heat and steam. When one became overwhelmed, another continued the work.

Rush persisted in penetrating the dangerous compartment to haul the hot fires from the furnaces. It was exhausting work performed in conditions that could severely burn, suffocate, or kill the men attempting it.

The firemen continued until the immediate danger had been reduced.

Their actions helped prevent the damaged Richmond from suffering a potentially catastrophic boiler or engineering disaster. Although the ship was ultimately forced to turn back and did not successfully pass the Port Hudson defenses that night, Rush and the other firemen had helped save the vessel and the lives of those aboard her.

The courage of the four men was formally recognized only months later.

On July 10, 1863, John Rush was awarded the Medal of Honor for his conduct aboard USS Richmond at Port Hudson. His official recognition emphasized his persistence in entering the steam-filled fireroom and removing the hot furnace fires despite the extreme danger surrounding him.

Rush received the decoration during the earliest period in the history of the Medal of Honor. Congress had authorized the Navy Medal of Honor in December 1861, during the opening phase of the Civil War. The first Navy medals were produced using the original 1862 design, making Rush part of the first generation of American service members to receive what became the nation’s highest military decoration for valor.

His Medal of Honor was therefore not simply a later commemoration of Civil War service. It was awarded while the war was still raging, only a few months after the Port Hudson action.

The larger Mississippi campaign eventually achieved the strategic objective for which Richmond and her crew had risked so much. Vicksburg surrendered to Union forces on July 4, 1863, and Port Hudson surrendered several days later. With those Confederate strongholds gone, the Mississippi River came under Union control.

Rush’s verified Civil War naval service also places him within the qualifying service period later recognized by the Navy Civil War Campaign Medal. That medal was established decades after the war, under Navy special orders issued in 1908, to recognize officers and enlisted personnel of the Navy and Marine Corps who had served in the naval service during the Civil War qualifying period.

For Rush, the appropriate campaign recognition is the Navy Civil War Campaign Medal rather than the Army version. His service aboard USS Richmond on March 14, 1863, falls directly within the qualifying Civil War naval-service period. No campaign service star is associated with his medal for the Port Hudson engagement, as the Navy did not issue service stars for individual Civil War engagements on this campaign medal.

After surviving the Civil War, Rush returned to Washington, D.C. At some point during his postwar life, he changed his name and became known as Israel W. Little. Historical Medal of Honor records preserve both identities, with John Rush remaining the name under which his wartime service and Medal of Honor were officially recorded.

He married and continued his life far removed from the steam-filled engineering compartment where he had once risked death to save his ship.

John Rush lived longer than the three other USS Richmond firemen who received the Medal of Honor for the Port Hudson emergency. He died in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 1916, at the age of seventy-nine.

He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, placing his final resting place among generations of American military personnel whose service became part of the nation’s history.

Rush’s Medal of Honor story stands apart because his heroism did not involve charging an enemy position or capturing a flag. His battlefield was the machinery space of a damaged warship.

Enemy artillery had turned that compartment into a chamber of live steam and extreme heat. The safest instinct would have been to escape it. Instead, Rush repeatedly went back inside.

By helping remove the burning furnace fires while USS Richmond was under Confederate attack, John Rush placed his own life at extraordinary risk to protect his ship and everyone aboard her.

His Medal of Honor preserves the memory of a form of naval courage that could easily remain unseen—the courage of sailors fighting not only the enemy outside their ship, but also a deadly catastrophe developing deep within it.