Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,164 people in what remains the worst maritime disaster in United States history.
Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury BoatyardGiven as the "John Lithoberry Shipyard" on Ohio Historical Marker 18–31 (1999) on the Ohio River at Sawyer Point. in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. The steamer registered 1,719 tonsBerry (1892), p. 7 and normally carried a crew of 85. For two years, she ran a regular route between St. Louis and New Orleans and was frequently commissioned to carry troops during the American Civil War. Although designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers and 85 crewmembers, she was carrying 2,127 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and caused her to sink near Memphis, Tennessee. The disaster was overshadowed in the press by events surrounding the end of the Civil War, including the killing of President Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth just the day before. No one was ever held accountable for the disaster.
Construction Sultana was launched on January 3, 1863, the fifth steamboat to bear the name. The vessel measured long, with a width at the beam, displaced , and had a draft. Her two side-mounted paddle wheels were driven by four fire-tube boilers. Introduced in 1848, they could generate twice as much steam per fuel load as conventional boilers. Each fire-tube boiler was long and in diameter and contained 24 flues which ran the length of the boilers.
The power of the boilers came with risk – the water levels around the fire tubes had to be carefully maintained at all times. The areas between the many flues clogged easily, especially since dirty river water carried much sediment, and were difficult to clean. Low water levels could cause hot spots leading to metal fatigue, significantly increasing the risk of an explosion. Since most steamboats of the time were constructed of light-weight wood covered with oil-based paint and varnish, fires were a significant concern.
Disaster
Background Under the command of Captain James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana left St. Louis on April 13, 1865, bound for New Orleans. On the morning of April 15, she was tied up at Cairo, Illinois, when word reached the city that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had been shot in Washington, D.C. Immediately, Captain Mason grabbed an armload of Cairo newspapers and headed south to spread the news, knowing that telegraphic communication with the southern states had been almost totally cut off because of the recently ended American Civil War.
Upon reaching Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mason was approached by Captain Reuben Benton Hatch, the chief quartermaster at Vicksburg, with a proposal. Thousands of recently released Union prisoners of war who had been held in the Confederate prison camps at Cahaba near Selma, Alabama and Andersonville below Atlanta, Georgia, had been brought to a small parole camp outside of Vicksburg to await release to the northern states. The U.S. government would pay US$2.75 per enlisted man and US$8 per officer to any steamboat captain who would take a group north. Knowing that Mason needed money, Hatch suggested that he could guarantee Mason a full load of about 1,000 prisoners if Mason would agree to give him a kickback. Mason quickly agreed to Hatch's offer, hoping to gain much money through this deal.
Leaving Vicksburg, Sultana traveled downriver to New Orleans, continuing to spread the news of Lincoln's assassination. On April 21, Sultana left New Orleans with about seventy cabin and deck passengers and a small amount of livestock. She also carried a crew of 85.The St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April 29, 1865, states that the "steamer Sultana left New Orleans on Friday evening the 21st, with about seventy cabin passengers, and about eighty five employees on the boat." About ten hours south of Vicksburg, one of Sultana four boilers sprang a leak. Under reduced pressure, the steamboat limped into Vicksburg to get the boiler repaired and to pick up her promised load of prisoners.
Faulty boiler repair While the paroled prisoners, primarily from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, were brought from the parole camp to Sultana, a mechanic was brought down to work on the leaky boiler. Although the mechanic wanted to cut out and replace a ruptured seam, the chief engineer, Nathan Wintringer, knew such a job would take a few days and cost the Sultana its precious load of prisoners. By the time the repairs would have been completed, the prisoners would have been sent home on other boats. Instead, Wintringer convinced the mechanic to make temporary repairs, hammering back the bulged boiler plate and riveting a patch of lesser thickness over the seam. Instead of taking two or three days, the temporary repair took only one. During her time in port, and while the repairs were being made, Sultana took on the paroled prisoners.
Overloaded Although Hatch had suggested that Mason might get as many as 1,000 released Union prisoners, a mix-up with the parole camp books and suspicion of bribery from other steamboat captains caused the Union officer in charge of the loading, Captain George Augustus Williams, to place every man at the parole camp on board Sultana, believing the number to be less than 1,500. Although Sultana had a legal capacity of only 376 passengers, by the time she backed away from Vicksburg on the night of April 24, she was severely overcrowded with 1,950 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 70 fare-paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members, for a total of 2,127 people. Many of the paroled prisoners had been weakened by their incarceration and associated illnesses but had managed to gain some strength while waiting at the parole camp to be officially released. The men were packed into every available space as all cabin spaces were already filled with civilian passengers; the overflow was so severe that in some places, the decks began to creak and sag and had to be supported with heavy wooden beams.
Sultana spent two days traveling upriver, fighting against one of the worst spring floods in the river's history. At some places, the river overflowed the banks and spread out wide. Trees along the river bank were almost completely covered until only the very tops of the trees were visible above the swirling, powerful water. On April 26, Sultana stopped at Helena, Arkansas, where photographer Thomas W. Bankes took a picture of the grossly overcrowded vessel. Sultana subsequently arrived at Memphis, Tennessee, around 7 p.m., and the crew began unloading 120 tons (109 tonnes) of sugar from the hold. Near midnight, Sultana left Memphis, leaving behind about 200 men. She then went a short distance upriver to take on a new load of coal from some coal barges and then, at about 1:00 a.m., started north again.
Explosion At around 2 a.m. on April 27, 1865, when Sultana was about north of Memphis, its boilers suddenly and violently exploded, killing many people instantly. First one boiler exploded, followed a split-second later by two more.
The massive steam explosion came from the top rear of the boilers. It went upward at a 45-degree angle, tearing through the crowded decks above and completely destroying the pilothouse. Without a pilot to steer the boat, Sultana became a drifting, burning hulk. The violent explosion flung some deck passengers into the water and blew a gaping - hole in the steamer. With the boilers blown to pieces, the twin smokestacks fell; the starboard smokestack fell backward into the blasted hole, and the port smokestack fell forward onto the crowded forward section of the upper deck, hitting the steamboat's bell as it fell. The forward part of the upper deck collapsed onto the middle deck, killing and trapping many in the wreckage. Fortunately, the sturdy railings around the twin openings of the main stairway prevented the upper deck from crushing down completely onto the middle deck. The men located around the twin openings quickly crawled under the wreckage and down the main stairs. Further back, the collapsing decks formed a slope that led down into the exposed furnace boxes. The broken wood caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into a raging inferno. Survivors panicked and raced for the safety of the water, but in their weakened condition, they soon ran out of strength and began to cling to each other. Whole groups went down together.
Rescue attempts While the Sultana burned, and the men on the steamboat were either already dead or fighting for their lives, the southbound steamer Bostona (No. 2), built in 1860 but coming downriver on her maiden voyage after being refurbished, arrived at about 2:30 a.m., a half hour after the explosion, and rescued scores of survivors. At the same time, dozens of people had floated down river and began to float past the Memphis waterfront, calling for help until they were noticed by the crews of docked steamboats and U.S. warships, who immediately set about rescuing the survivors. Eventually, the hulk of Sultana drifted about to the west bank of the river, burned to the waterline and sank at around 7 a.m. near Mound City and present-day Marion, Arkansas, about five hours after the explosion. Other vessels joined the rescue, including the steamers Silver Spray, Jenny Lind, and Pocahontas, the navy ironclad USS Essex and the sidewheel gunboat .
Passengers who survived the initial explosion had to risk their lives in the icy spring runoff of the Mississippi or burn with the boat. Many died of drowning or hypothermia. Some survivors were plucked from the tops of semi-submerged trees along the Arkansas shore. Bodies of victims continued to be found downriver for months, some as far as Vicksburg. Many bodies were never recovered. Most of Sultanas officers, including Captain Mason, were among those who perished.
Casualties
The exact death toll is unknown, although the most recent evidence indicates that 1,164 died."Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana" by Gene Salecker, 2022, p255 On May 19, 1865, less than a month after the disaster, Brigadier General William Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners who investigated the disaster, reported an overall loss of soldiers, passengers, and crew of 1,238.Fold3.com website, The Civil War, Sultana Disaster, April 1865, Quartermaster vessel file relating to the Sultana, page 68. In February 1867, the Bureau of Military Justice placed the death toll at 1,100.Fold3.com website, The Civil War, Sultana Disaster, April 1865, Quartermaster vessel file relating to the Sultana, pages 68-9. In 1880, the United States Congress, in conjunction with the War Department, reported the loss of life as 1,259.Fold3.com website, The Civil War, Sultana Disaster, April 1865, Enlisted Branch file (HAAQ 981 EB 1865, page 80 The official count by the United States Customs Service was 1,547. In 1880, the War Department placed the number of survivors at 931, but the most recent research places the number at 963.Fold3.com website, The Civil War, Sultana Disaster, April 1865, Enlisted Branch file (HAAQ 981 EB 1865, page 80. The dead soldiers were interred at the Fort Pickering cemetery, located on the south shore of Memphis. A year later, when the U.S. government established the Memphis National Cemetery on the northeast side of the city, the bodies were moved there. Three civilian victims of the wreck of Sultana are interred at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.
Survivors