Today’s Almanac-April 27, 2010--Part 2
This photo was taken in Memphis less than a day before the Sultana disaster showing the hundreds of returning Yankee troops crowding her decks.
By far the biggest maritime disaster in American History occurred on April 27, 1865 but despite being widely reported in the illustrated newspapers of the day had little impact on a nation still mourning its recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln and was somewhat inured to massive loss of life by years of bloody Civil War. The Sultana was a modern side wheel steamboat built in Cincinnati in 1863 for the Mississippi trade. She had seen regular and hard service during the war alternating between regular passenger and cotton runs between New Orleans and St. Louis and contract service to the Army as a troop carrier. Ordinarily she carried a crew of about 80 and up to two hundred cabin and deck passengers. On her final trip she left New Orleans on April 21 under the command of a respected river man, Capt. J. C. Morgan carrying only 75 to 100 passengers, a crew of 85 and dozens of head of livestock destined for the St. Louis Market. She picked up more passengers and freight on the way north. At Vicksberg, Mississippi she had to lay over for a day to make several “minor” boiler repairs, including a patch to one of the four tandem boilers. A replacement of the boiler would have required a three day layover, but hundreds of men, mostly Union soldier, including many weakened ex-prisoners of war from the dreaded Andersonville and other prisons crowded the ship demanding swift passage home. Several hundred of the troops were from Ohio and planed to catch an Ohio steamer at St. Louis. The company had a contract for many of these soldiers, but others crowded on after bribing officers or just forcing their way on. Between 1,800 and 2,000 soldiers crowded ever inch of the ship in addition to the regular passengers and crew when the Sultana waddled out of Vicksburg. Overloaded as she was, she had to breast a rapid current still being fed by the annual spring floods. She had a tendency to “careen”, tip heavily to one side or another as she rounded the numerous turns of the channel, each time causing water to rush out of the highest boiler and leaving the exposed plate open to intense heat from the coal fires. Still the captain maintained steady progress until 2 am about eight miles north of Memphis. One boiler exploded, probably closely followed by two others. The raining burning debris set fire to bales of cotton cargo and the wooden superstructure igniting a blaze that could be seen in Memphis. Shortly after the explosion the twin smoke stacks fell and crashed through the decks crushing those beneath them. Survivors, many of them horribly burned, were thrown or jumped into the river. In an era when few men knew how to swim, with little debris large enough to cling to, and with a swift current of frigid water, hundreds drowned. The first help arrived an hour after the explosion when the southbound steamer Bostonia II came upon the wreckage and pulled dozens of survivors from the water. Soon the Jenny Lind, the Arkansas, the Essex, and the Navy gunboat USS Tyler with an all volunteer crew joined in the rescue efforts. Upwards of 500 injured were brought to overwhelmed Memphis, which did everything it could to help the men, many of the horribly burned. Despite their efforts upwards of 300 died of injuries or exposure within a few days. Many victims, including Captain Morgan, were never found, either torn to pieces in the initial explosion or their bodies swept down river in the swift current. An exact casualty figure has never been established. Estimate range from a low of about 1,300 to a high of nearly 2,000. The official figure, set at 1,547 by the U.S. Customs Service is believed to be far too low. Most historians now agree on a figure “around” 1,800. There were 700-800 survivors, not counting those who died in Memphis in the aftermath. The official inquiry found that the Sultana’s boilers exploded due to combined effects of careening, low water level, and a faulty repair to a leaky boiler. In 1888 there was a reputed death bed confession by Robert Louden of St. Louis, a former Confederate intelligence agent and saboteur, that he had placed a “coal torpedo” in the engine room causing the explosion. Despite having the knowledge, the opportunity, the motive, and possibly the means, most historians dismiss the claim. In 1982 an archeological expedition found what charred timbers and other debris that it believed were the remains of the Sultana under a soybean field on the Arkansas side of the river. Since 1865 the river has changed course several times and the main channel now runs two miles of its position on that fateful day. The remains were covered by mud and then left dry as the river meandered.