The hospital ship of Navy’s Baltimore-base came close enough to Haiti to take aboard its first patients Tuesday night, and providing emergency healthcare to two victims of the quake. They were transported to the ship by an airport carrier near Port-au-Prince.

Doctors treated a 20-year-old man suffering from a spinal fracture and bleeding in the brain and a 6-year-old boy with a fractured pelvis.

The patients were onboard much before the ship reached its destination and several hours after the crew had finished its latest round of training exercises.

Cmdr. Tim Donahue, head of surgery on the Comfort “We've been waiting, ready to assist. It just happened a little earlier than we expected, but that's OK. We're ready.”

The twin helicopters are scheduled to begin flying at 7 a. m. today and one of these will carry assessment team headed by Capt. Rich Sharpe, a trauma surgeon from the Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Va., and a veteran of four combat deployments.

He came onboard not just as a surgeon but also to establish medical systems in potentially dangerous environments out of his experience.