The ‘Sultana’ was carrying some 2,000 freed Union soldiers from Confederate prisons when three of its four boilers blew, sending the ship into flame and chaos.
On April 27, 1865, the United States experiences its bad nautical disaster in history. Mere weeks after the Civil War came to an end, the steamboat, Sultana exploded and sank in the Mississippi River, killing an estimated 1,200 to 1,800 Union soldiers who were released from prison and on their way home .
The slump of the Sultana claimed more victims than the Titanic, so far the tragedy remains largely forgotten in american history. But behind the devastation lurked conspiracy, foul-play, and negligence, that possibly suggest the disaster could have been avoided .
Corruption Aboard The Sultana
Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, both Confederates and Unionists scrambled to pick up the pieces left over by the bloody conflict. This included the passing of war prisoners from both sides. Thousands of newly paroled Union soldiers who had been held in the Confederate prison camps of Cahaba near Selma, Alabama, and Andersonville, in southwest Georgia, had all been brought to a smaller camp outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi. They needed passage union .
meanwhile, Captain James Cass Mason of St. Louis was in dominate of a paddle steamer called Sultana headed for Missouri. The little wooden steamboat typically carried a gang of 85 and was intended for cotton transport before it was commissioned to transport troops rather.
During a stop in Vicksburg to address a kettle consequence, the steamboat skipper received word that the U.S. government was willing to pay a deluxe fee — $ 5 for each released soldier and $ 10 for each officer — for the transport of former Union prisoners back North .
Captain Mason, lured by the promise of a big payday, seized the opportunity and accepted a bribe from an policeman to transport as many paroled Union prisoners as he could fit onto the Sultana. In his hurry, Captain Mason chose not to repair the embark ’ s kettle arsenic extensively as it required and choose alternatively to settle with a immediate, irregular fix .
The captain worried had he waited to fix the boiler as it required, the Union soldiers would find option passage northbound .
According to Jerry Potter, a lawyer-turned-author who wrote The Sultana Tragedy : America ’ randomness Greatest Maritime Disaster, the captain loaded on more men than the boat was meant to carry .
“ The boat had a legal carry capacity of 376 passengers, ” Potter explained. “ On its up-river trip, it had over 2,500 aboard. ”
The Sinking Of The Sultana
On April 24, 1865, the Sultana departed from Vicksburg northbound. Aboard her overcrowd decks were some 1,960 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 70 paying cabin passengers, and 85 gang members. many of the parole soldiers were in poor condition having merely left Confederate hospitals or prisons .
additionally, it was a particularly bad day to be out on the water. The Mississippi River was experiencing high urine levels as melting snow from up north flooded its banks. Fallen trees and early debris mixed into the fast-moving waterways. It was difficult to navigate these clogged and swirling waters come twilight, but Captain Mason was determined to make his dispatch of soldiers .
They stopped concisely in Memphis and continued on their travel by night .
At approximately 2 ante meridiem on April 27, several miles from Memphis, Tennessee, one of the Sultana ’ second boilers exploded. Because the boat had been so pack, many of the passengers were crammed right by the boilers .
The explosion immediately killed hundreds, largely soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee who had been packed in right against the boilers. Many of them instantaneously died from shrapnel, steam, and the boiling water system released from the explosion .
then, another two boilers exploded .
“ One hour they were sleeping and the next they found themselves struggling to swim in the very coldness Mississippi River. Some passengers burned on the boat, ” wrote Potter .
He wrote further that “ the fortunate ones cling to debris in the river, or to horses and mules that had escaped the boat, hoping to make it to shore, which they could not see because it was dark and the deluge river was at that point about five miles across-the-board. ”
The Sultana descended into chaos. Passengers aboard the 260-foot-long gravy boat were torn between two choices : stay on the boat and possibly die from the fire or jump into the water to face the possibility of drowning. Either way, the odds of survival were slender. Soldiers having barely left war now found themselves again fighting for their lives .
Accounts From Victims Of The Sultana Sinking
As the Sultana began to sink nearby the humble town of Marion deep in southern Confederacy district, passing boats and local residents began a chaotic rescue operation to save the soldiers on board .
Newspaper reports indicate that a local man, John Fogelman, and his sons were among these rescuers. Fogelman ’ south descendant, current Marion Mayor Frank Fogelman said that the gravy boat ’ s direction had caused the wind to blow fire toward the raise of the ship .
The dabble wheel on one side fell murder and caused the boat to turn sideways before the other toddle wheel succumbed angstrom well .
“ I understand that the Fogelmans were able to put together some logs to make a batch and go out and take people off the gravy boat as it drifted back this room, ” Mayor Frank Fogelman shared about his ancestor ’ s desperate natural process. “ In order to save time, they would set the people off in treetops, and go back to the boat to take more off. ”
The soldiers aboard the Sultana, having just survived a bloody Civil War and awful conditions during their imprisonment as prisoners, were now dealt with another traumatic blow as the gravy boat continued to catch fire and disappear into the Mississippi River .
“ When I came to my senses I found myself… surrounded by wreckage, and in the midst of fume and fire, ” wrote one Ohio soldier in a solicitation of survivor essays titled, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors .
The same Union soldier continued, “ The agonize shriek and groans of the injured and dying were heart-rending, and the malodor of burning flesh was intolerable and beyond my power of description. ”
Another survivor, besides from Ohio, wrote “ There were some killed in the explosion, lying in the bottom of the boat, being trampled upon, while some were crying and praying, many were cursing while others were singing… That sight I shall never forget ; I often see it in my sleep, and wake up with a startle. ”
It merely took a few hours before the Sultana reached the bottom of the Mississippi .
Some of the rescuers had been Confederate soldiers who lived in the sphere by the river near where the Sultana had sunk. It is incredible to think that alone a few weeks before the incident these men would have been at each other ’ s throats. But amid the wreckage of the Sultana disaster, they were on each other ’ randomness sides .
Bodies from the Sultana wreckage had horrifyingly continued to surface downriver even months after the accident. While some were recovered, many were never found. Captain Mason was among the dead .
Conspiracy And Corruption, Aboard The Disaster
arguably many of the factors which contributed to the end of the Sultana could likely have been avoided. Most obvious is the extreme overcrowd on display panel made potential by a bribe to officials and the austere upwind conditions that the boat then faced .
then, there was the improper treat of a damaged kettle. obviously, Captain Mason and his chief engineer ordered one of their mechanics to do a immediate ( and probable faulty ) repair in orderliness to resume their voyage on the river .
“ He told the captain and the head mastermind the boiler was not safe, but the engineer said he would have a complete haunt problem done when the gravy boat made it to St. Louis, ” Potter said .
But these explanations have not stopped internet sleuths and their imaginations from running amok. For exercise, many believe that the incident was not heard of because the government had intentionally downplayed the number of casualties. There were so many mistakes that could have been prevented by government supervision, it is potential that officials wanted to keep things quiet .
A more extreme conspiracy posits that the hale incident had been a share of a maestro plan concocted by the Confederacy to sabotage Unionists on circuit board. By one account, a sleep together Confederate saboteur named Robert Louden had claimed to have actually launched a char torpedo at the embark in an attack to kill the enemy Union soldiers aboard. This claim was, however, largely disproved .
But a more reasonable explanation as to why the disaster was then easily forgotten is that it had been overshadowed by a bigger, more historically meaning tragedy — the assassination of then-president Abraham Lincoln .
While Lincoln ’ s shocking mangle occurred about two weeks anterior to the Sultana ’ randomness demise, the ripples of his assassination lingered farseeing after .
In a way, the public had besides been desensitized to extreme suffer after having endured a bloody Civil War that lasted for four years. To some, the bemused lives of another 2,000 or so men possibly seemed incomparable at the time .
ultimately, no one was charged for the deaths of those on board the Sultana, even after an investigation and military court was held .
An Enduring Legacy
An estimate 1,800 men were lost by the Sultana. By comparison, the sinking of the Titanic took a fiddling over 1,500 lives. The Sultana disaster remains an unsolved calamity and the worst in american nautical history .
There is a silver trace to this tragedy, however. More than two decades later, survivors of the Sultana from across the country have met per annum around the anniversary of the ship ’ s sinking to pay hommage .
After the final survivor died in 1936, the children and grandchildren of survivors who had grown up listening to the incredible survival stories of their forefathers picked up the custom. These annual reunions are still held nowadays .
For example, Mary Beth Mason, the granddaughter of Sultana survivor William Carter Warner, remembers his courage today. Warner had joined the Union Army ’ s 9th Indiana Cavalry as a adolescent before he was imprisoned during the Civil War and finally landed aboard the Sultana. When the tragedy struck, Warner managed to swim to the shore of the Mississippi River .
“ My grandfather could have died in Cahaba prison when he was 16, ” Mason said. “ He could have died on the Sultana, but he didn ’ t…Of course, it ’ second authoritative in my family. My forefather would have never been born. I would have never been born. ”
To this day, Mason holds on to her belated grandfather ’ s official survivor ’ mho certificate that he received in September 1888 from the Sultana Survivors Association .
For the descendants of Sultana survivors like Mary Beth Mason, keeping the memory of what happened animated is an crucial manner to honor their ancestors. roughly 100 of the survivors ’ grandchildren and great-grandchildren touch every year on their behalf.
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“ We ’ ve done a fortune to keep the floor and to spread the floor, ” said Norman Shaw, who founded the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends .
“ These fellows felt history forget about them… We ’ re following the wishes of the original survivors to keep the history alive. ”
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