Sinking of Steamboat Sultana
Post-war explosion Claimed Lives of an Estimated 1,700 people
The disaster on the Mississippi River led to the worst loss of life in United States maritime history. Even so, the tragedy largely has been overshadowed by other events
What remains the worst loss of life in a United States maritime disaster is little more than a footnote in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Maybe it’s because only weeks before the war had ended and President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated, but the fate of the steamboat Sultana has been largely obscured by other events of the era.
That’s surprising when considering that an estimated 1,700 people died in an explosion that ripped apart the Sultana and started a raging fire on the Mississippi River.
There were more than 2,400 passengers aboard the Sultana, with most of them former Union prisoners of war making their way north from Vicksburg, Miss., to Cairo, Ill. From there, they were to disperse to be reunited with family and friends.
In the early morning hours of April 27, 1865, one of the Sultana’s four boilers exploded and almost immediately set the steamboat aflame. Those who managed to escape into the Mississippi River were met by cold waters near flood stage. Many were swept down river or died from hypothermia.
More than 500 people managed to make it to shore around Memphis, Tenn., and were sent to area hospitals. More than 200 later succumbed to their injuries.
The Sultana was rated to carry only 376 passengers but was overloaded with people eager to leave the past behind after four years of bloody warfare. The South officially surrendered on April 9, 1865, and Lincoln had been assassinated six days later.
The Sultana was but the latest crisis in a nation weary from a conflict that threatened to rip apart the government. At the time, it received tremendous press coverage, although it has since been overshadowed by less deadly maritime disasters, such as the sinking of the Titanic.
This, too, although the loss of life exceeded the two-day total from the Battle of Shiloh, which is generally considered to be one of the bloodiest battles from the war.
An investigation into the disaster blamed low level of waters in the boilers as the cause of the explosion. In 1888, a theory was advanced that someone deliberately placed a coal torpedo in the bunker of the Sultana. A coal torpedo explodes when exposed to fire.
No physical evidence was ever found, and this theory was later debunked.
The states of Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee have erected monuments to those who died.
In 1982, pieces of what were believed to be from the Sultana were found beneath a soybean field in Arkansas. Since the long-ago explosion, the Mississippi River has changed direction several times.
