Sarah Low, of Dover, New Hampshire (see photo below) was one of 20,000 women in Union and Confederate medical service during the Civil War. Among the well-known women who served were Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Clara Barton, Dorothea Dix, Susie King Taylor, and Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. There were male nurses as well such as the poet Walt Whitman. The Union Navy had some of the first African American nurses. The Union's Mississippi River Squadron had its own hospital ship which included the first US Navy female nurses. Five of them were African American and they were aboard the hospital ship USS Red Rover which had been converted from a captured Confederate vessel. The Red Rover was to play an important medical role at Vicksburg.