The ill-fated Sultana in Helena, Ark., just before it exploded on April 27, 1865, with about 2,500 people aboard. Barrett was a veteran of the MexicanAmerican War and had been captured at the Battle of Franklin. Rush County Bicentennial: The Sultana | Local News [4]:2728, Upon reaching Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mason was approached by Captain Reuben Hatch, the chief quartermaster at Vicksburg, with a proposal. There were 6 times more people on board than the carrying capacity of 376. When the Sultana left Vicksburg, it carried 2,100 troops and 200 civilians, more than six times its capacity. The broken wood caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into a raging inferno. Our FREE Virtual Teacher Institute is the can't miss online educator event of the summer. Although brought up on courts-martial charges, Hatch managed to get letters of recommendation from no less reputable personages than President Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated five days later and John Wilkes Booth run to ground and killed, on the 26th. 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 AM, started north again. Thousands of soldiers were thrown into the Mississippi River when the boiler blew on the. Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,169 people in what remains the worst maritime disaster in United States history. An engraving of the Sultana explosion, published in Harpers Weekly, May 20, 1865. [23], An episode of the PBS series History Detectives that aired on July 2, 2014, reviewed the known evidence, thoroughly disputed a theory of sabotage, and then focused on the question of why Sultana was allowed to be crowded to several times its normal capacity before departure. At 2 in the morning on April 27, 1865, the leaking boiler exploded and ignited two other boilers. Sultana spent two days traveling upstream, fighting one of the heaviest spring floods in the history of the Mississippi River. And many of them were saved by local residents, like John Fogelman an ancestor of the city of Marion's current mayor, Frank Fogelman. The Shipwreck That Led Confederate Veterans To Risk All For Union - NPR Newspaper accounts suggest John Fogelman and his sons spotted the burning Sultana as the remains of the paddle-wheeler drifted downriver. More on Sultana, Worst Death Boat in U.S. History. The sinking of the Sultana claimed more victims than the Titanic, yet the tragedy remains largely forgotten in American history. Strange and amusing destinations in the US and Canada are our specialty. Vicksburg was a cesspool of crooked, corrupt, Union officers in 1865, Potter said. In his haste, Captain Mason chose not to repair the ships boiler as extensively as it required and chose instead to settle with a quick, temporary fix. A board of inquiry later determined the cause to be insufficient water in the boilerovercrowding was not listed as a cause. Fogelmans descendant, current Marion Mayor Frank Fogelman said that the boats direction had caused the wind to blow fire toward the rear of the ship. "And the entire center of the boat erupted like a volcano.". But amid the wreckage of the Sultana disaster, they were on each others sides. The sidewheel steamboat Sultana left New Orleans with about 100 passengers and a few head of livestock, pulling into Vicksburg Mississippi on the 21st to repair a damaged boiler and pick up a promised load of passengers. Sign up for our quarterly email series highlighting the environmental benefits of battlefield preservation. But you never make it there. And the boat was filled with enlisted men primarily men who really hadn't made a mark in history or a mark in life." However, the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army overturned the guilty verdict because Speed had been at the parole camp all day and had not personally placed a single soldier on board Sultana. The boat carried 2,500 men, mainly newly paroled Union soldiers from the war. At 2 a.m. on April 27, three of the four steamship boilers exploded. [13] The dead soldiers were interred at the Fort Pickering cemetery, located on the south shore of Memphis. Soldiers having just left war now found themselves again fighting for their lives. [4]:7479. The letters reside in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. After the disaster, Reuben Benton Hatch refused three separate subpoenas to appear before Captain Speed's trial and give testimony. 2), built in 1860 but coming downriver on her maiden voyage after being refurbished,[6] arrived at about 2:30 AM, a half hour after the explosion, and rescued scores of survivors. The official inquiry found that the boilers exploded because of the combined effects of careening, low water levels, and the faulty repair made a few days earlier.[16]. I'm not a "Historian". Mason continued on to New Orleans, spreading news along the way of Lincolns assassination. Some passengers burned on the boat, wrote Potter. By the time the repairs would have been completed, the prisoners would have been sent home on other boats. Two more boilers detonated a split second later. This quiz has 2 formats: you can play it as a Timed Quiz Game or as shown below. For instance, Mary Beth Mason, the granddaughter of Sultana survivor William Carter Warner, remembers his bravery today. It was just weeks after the Civil War ended, Potter explains, and the vessel was packed with Union soldiers who'd been released from Confederate prison camps. The Sultana traveled up river for two days, fighting one of the worst spring floods in the Mississippi's history. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), Current one is: April 27. At some places, the river overflowed the banks and spread out three miles wide. But you never make it there. It remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. Captain Williams, the officer who actually put all those people onboard, was a West Point graduate and regular army officer. Steam, then flames, ripped through the crowded deck, as well as the pilot house, leaving no one to steer the vessel. Potter, the lawyer and author, grew up around Memphis, but didn't learn about the tragedy until the late 1970s, when he saw a painting of the ship in flames. [4]:146147,168176, Passengers who survived the initial explosion had to risk their lives in the icy spring runoff of the Mississippi or burn with the boat. In 1929, only two men attended the southern reunion. 600 Cooper Drive, Lexington, KY 40502859.258.7000800.432.0951, It appears your browser is using an ad blocker. By comparison, the Titanic was 882 feet long and 11 . Leo Morris: The SS Sultana: A Civil War tragedy lost to history The ill-fated Sultana in Helena, Ark., just before it exploded on April 27, 1865, with about 2,500 people aboard. Jul 23 22 # Qns 10 Difficulty Average Avg Score 7 / 10 Plays 401 Awards Top 35% Quiz Last 3 plays: dmaxst ( 9/10 ), Guest 47 ( 9/10 ), ncterp ( 10/10 ). Called the Titanic of the Mississippi, the tragedy of the SS Sultana was the greatest maritime disaster in U.S. history. Already weakened by terms in captivity, they died by the hundreds of drowning, or hypothermia. During a stop in Vicksburg to address a boiler issue, the steamboat skipper received word that the U.S. government was willing to pay a princely fee $5 for each released soldier and $10 for each officer for the transport of former Union prisoners back North. No portion of this document may be reproduced, copied or revised without written permission of the authors. Potter says he went to the library to learn more and wondered, "Why haven't I ever heard of this?" [33] The museum is only temporary until enough funds can be raised to build a permanent museum. [19][20] Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, the inventor of the coal torpedo, was a former resident of St. Louis and was involved in similar acts of sabotage against Union shipping interests. "The wind blew the fire to the rear, burned that out," Frank Fogelman says. To me, thats the tragedy. I mean, the war was almost 10 days from being over when they were captured.. Credits, Media/Business Inquiries We strive for accuracy and fairness. But behind the devastation lurked conspiracy, foul-play, and negligence, that perhaps suggest the disaster could have been avoided. "They had survived war," O'Neal says. When J. Cass Mason, the captain of the SS. Changing the day will navigate the page to that given day in history. But some of the most poignant stories involve Confederate soldiers rescuing their Union counterparts. By one account, a known Confederate saboteur named Robert Louden had claimed to have actually launched a coal torpedo at the ship in an attempt to kill the enemy Union soldiers aboard. "It was like a tremendous bomb going off in the middle of where these men were. The Explosion of the SS Sultana - NoonPi Near midnight, Sultana left Memphis, leaving behind about 200 men. The Mississippi River has changed course several times since the disaster, leaving the wreck under dry land and far from today's river. Sultana was the worst maritime disaster in American history, though her memory was swept away in the tide of events, that April. 19th-century American steamboat that sank on the Mississippi River in 1865. Eventually the Sultana turned so that the wind was pushing the flames toward the bow, where 25 soldiers remained. SS Sultana Explodes Carrying 2,400 Released Union Prisoners in 1865 The force of the explosion hurled hundreds into the icy black water. The men located around the twin openings quickly crawled under the wreckage and down the main stairs. [21], Two years earlier, in May 1886, came a claim that 2nd Lt. James Worthington Barrett, an ex-prisoner and passenger on the steamboat, had caused the explosion. [24]:193197, Despite the magnitude of the disaster, no one was ever formally held accountable. Wikimedia CommonsThe Sultana, photographed a day before it sunk to the bottom of the Mississippi River. John Covode,of the War Committee, furnishes the following information relative to the Sultana disaster: No troops of States east of Ohio were lost. What would these men have become in life? [4]:33,3435,38,4041, While the paroled prisoners, primarily from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia,[4]:226290 were brought from the parole camp to Sultana, a mechanic was brought down to work on the leaky boiler. All 25 soldiers were rescued, historians say, and the Fogelman home became a refuge for Sultana survivors. announces negligence caused death of The Crow actor Brandon Lee. On April 21, Sultana left New Orleans with about seventy cabin and deck passengers and a small amount of livestock. [4]:50,5556 Although Sultana had a legal capacity of only 376, by the time she backed away from Vicksburg on the night of April 24, she was severely overcrowded with over 1,953 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, over 70 fare-paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members, for a total of 2,130 people. Her four boilers were interconnected and mounted side-by-side so that if the boat tipped sideways, water would tend to run out of the highest boiler. Potter says 1,000 men, at $5 a head, meant $5,000a princely sum. But what the museum really has to offer is a powerful story of soldiers who died just days away from seeing their families and loved ones. Instead of taking two or three days, the temporary repair took only one. Bodies from the Sultana wreckage had horrifyingly continued to surface downriver even months after the accident. ", Jerry Potter, lawyer and author of The Sultana Tragedy. Stanley Phillip Lord (13 September 1877 - 24 January 1962) was captain of the SS Californian, the nearest ship to the Titanic on the night it sank on 15 April 1912, and, depending on which sources are believed, likely the only ship to see the Titanic, or at least its rockets (also known as flares), during the sinking.. Lord, and the Californian more generally, have been criticised for the . 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. A further mixup with paper meant that the boat's capacity ballooned from the legal 376 to over 2300 passengers. Mason didnt have time to worry about boiler repairs. Most obvious is the extreme overcrowding on board made possible by a bribe to officials and the severe weather conditions that the boat then faced. Watch the full episode. Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. The Sultana Disaster | American Battlefield Trust 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. There was this tremendous explosion that completely destroyed the center of the boat, Potter said. The violent explosion flung some deck passengers into the water and blew a gaping 2530 foot hole in the steamer. 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. After some time, the weakened 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 ship's bell as it fell. Hatch would guarantee a minimum of 1,400 passengers and theyd both walk away, with a pocketful of cash. [11] The official count by the United States Customs Service was 1,547. A year later, when the U.S. government established the Memphis National Cemetery[4]:206 on the northeast side of the city, the bodies were moved there. "The paddle wheel fell off of one side, caused the boat to turn sideways; the other paddle wheel fell off.". Lieutenant Colonel Reuben Hatch, chief quartermaster at Vicksburg and one of the sleazier characters in this story, had approached Captain Mason with a deal.