User:Jay D. Easy/sandbox/James Markham Ambler

James Markham Marshall Ambler (December 30, 1848 – October 30, 1881) was an American naval surgeon of the United States Navy who served as medical officer on the ill-fated Jeannette expedition to the North Pole by way of the Bering Strait from 1879 to 1881, commanded by George W. De Long.

Early life
James Markham Marshall Ambler was born in Markham, Fauquier County, Virginia, on December 30, 1848, the son of Richard Cary Ambler (1810–1877), a physician, and Susan Marshall (1812–1896), daughter of James Markham Marshall, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, judge of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, and younger brother of John Marshall, fourth Chief Justice of the United States.

During the American Civil War, at the age of 16, Ambler served as a volunteer in the 12th Virginia Cavalry Regiment.

Career
He studied a premedicine curriculum at Washington College, from 1865 to 1867, and then entered the University of Maryland to study medicine. After acquiring a medical degree in 1870, he practiced in Baltimore until his appointment as an assistant surgeon in the United States Navy in April 1874.

He initially served on the practice ship USS Mayflower (1866). During the next three years, he was assigned to the gunboat USS Kansas (1863), on the North Atlantic Station, and the frigate USS Minnesota (1855), a stationary training ship at the New York Navy Yard. From 1877 into 1879, Ambler was stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital, near Norfolk, Virginia.

Jeannette expedition
In 1879, Ambler joined the crew of the Arctic exploration steamer USS Jeannette (1878) as its medical officer, which sailed from San Francisco in July 1879, to begin what would become a nearly two-year long expedition into the icepack north of Siberia. His medical skills were critical for maintaining the health of his shipmates during their long entrapment in the ice, and during their arduous journey over the rugged ice and frigid seas after the ship sank in June 1881.

Ambler's foremost patient was Lieutenant John Wilson Danenhower, whose silence regarding a syphilis infection a couple of years prior to the expedition led to eye inflammation, rendering him ineffective and unfit for duty. Ambler operated on him 15 times under primitive conditions, yet the patient survived the painful surgeries and the ensuing hardships.

Ambler was a member of expedition commander George W. De Long's boat crew, which landed at the northern end of the desolate Lena River Delta in September 1881. During the weeks that followed, he treated his companions' frostbite and tried to maintain their strength as they slowly starved. Ambler was apparently one of the last three members of the group to succumb to hunger and exposure, sometime shortly after October 30, 1881.