At 0200 on 27 April 1865, when the boat was seven miles above Memphis, her boilers exploded. Since the US government was paying steamboat captains a dividend to carry the prisoners back north, Captain Hatch and the captain of the Sultana worked out a deal whereby Hatch would guarantee a large load of ex-prisoners for the Sultana in exchange for a kickback of the government funds from Captain Mason. Nashville: Land Yacht Press, 2000. WASHINGTON -- If the U.S. Senate has its way, a 90-year-old steamboat will soon be able to return to the Mississippi River. The rest can be gotten through the internet, which can be a positive thingif done correctly. 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. The flaming hull drifted onto a shoreline sandbar and grounded. Library of Congress 1, a wooden model barge, and Vessel No. [4]:62, Sultana spent two days traveling upriver, fighting against one of the worst spring floods in the river's history. This effect of careening could have been minimized by maintaining high water levels in the boilers. Johnson points out that steamboat explosions, caused by faulty boilers, were the nineteenth centurys first confrontation with industrialized mayhem, and Lloyds prose seemed almost to revel in these horrors. In 1859, the Blackhawk made 29 round trips between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo on the Cedar River. [22], In 1903, another person reported that Sultana had been sabotaged by a Tennessee farmer who lived along the river and cut wood for passing steamboats. Explosion of the Moselle, Near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838.. [12] In 1880, the War Department placed the number of survivors at 931, but the most recent research places the number at 961. The city of Marion is the closest city to the wreck site and is also the home to a number of descendants of people who aided in the rescue of the Sultana victims. The city has created a museum and is hosting events intended to bring attention to the tragedy. Late in April of 1865, the Mississippi stood at flood stage. The Worst Marine Disaster in U. S. History. When railroads started carrying freight across the country, the days of the steamboats were over. Robert Fultons steamboat is arguably the single most important invention that spawned settlement and economic expansion in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In support of Louden's claim, what appeared to be a piece of an artillery shell was said to be recovered from the sunken wreck. Savannah Davis, 23, died from blunt . He was a passenger on its trip to Nashville, Tenn. (Post-Dispatch), Passengers pass time on Grand Tower Island until they were picked up by a passing towboat. Steamboats should not have been racing each other, but it happened all the time, and the public loved it! The Sultana sank in the Mississippi River near Marion, and over the years, the wreck was eventually covered with silt. Most river travel was between the years of 1846 and 1866. It was not until the U.S. government began to crack down and either enact, or enforce, the laws, that safety became an overriding factor in steamboat travel. Many of the stories that the newspapers got from survivors were not always correct (one man said that there were people from every state in the Union on boardnot so), but they were reporting what they were told. Further back, the collapsing decks formed a slope that led down into the exposed furnace boxes. [32], In 1982, a local archaeological expedition, led by Memphis attorney Jerry O. Potter, uncovered what was believed to be the wreckage of Sultana. hide caption. "It was like a tremendous bomb going off in the middle of where these men were," Potter says. Capt. Aunt Letty (1855) steam paddle. Freight and cargo were much more profitablealthough the movement of animals could be a backbreaking, smelly proposition! A passing towboat gave them a lift back to Grand Island, Ill., where they boarded buses for the trip home. Persac, Marie Adrien (Artist). Last chance! Slaves from the nearby Cottage plantation were ordered to bring sheets and blankets. Barrels of flour were emptied on the ground, and the terribly burned victims were rolled in it and placed in the shade. Many bodies were never recovered. The current on the Missouri was fast, and the channelthe deepest part of the rivershifted from place to place. In 2015, after I retired, I decided to look at all the known lists to discover who was actually on the Sultana and how many lived and died. GES: The Sultana Disaster Museum is located in Marion because that is the closest city to the remains of the vessel. Surviving the Worst: The Wreck of the Sultana at the End of the - MS At some places, the river overflowed the banks and spread out three miles wide. The story of the Sultana isn't well-known even among people who live along the Mississippi. Uninjured crewmen and passengers dragged the injured up onto the sandbar. It was part of the museum's River Room. Lavish meals were served four times a day in a great central hall, and surviving menus list such gourmet delicacies as broiled pompano and stuffed crabs. ", 15th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, "Sultana: A Tragic Postscript to the Civil War", https://www.nationalboard.org/SiteDocuments/General%20Meeting/Jennings.pdf, "The Sultana Disaster (Coal Torpedo theory)", http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/civil-war-sabotage/, Sultana museum in Arkansas memorializes 1,169 people who died in river, "Surviving the Worst: The Wreck of the Sultana at the End of the American Civil War", "Blues in the Water, by King's German Legion", "Ardent Presents: Cory Branan "The Wreck of the Sultana", "Remember the Sultana | Film Threat - Part 2", Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1865, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sultana_(steamboat)&oldid=1152358259, Articles with incomplete citations from April 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Initially Capt. A BNSF Railway freight train traveling along the banks of the Mississippi River derailed near Ferryville, Wis., shortly after noon Thursday, the company said. The Sultana Disaster | American Battlefield Trust An aerial view of the striken Golden Eagle at Grand Tower Island in the Mississippi River on May 19, 1947. Shewas a sidewheel Mississippi steamboat carrying nearly 2,000 releasedUnion prisoners-of-war back north at the end of the Civil War. The steamboat needed a lot of steam power to pull away from the shore. 0:12. FS: In the course of your story, you declare that It is now possible to write a work of historical nonfiction without ever leaving home. How do you actually feel about that? Sometimes terrible accidents happened on the Mississippi too. I gave only short shrift to the coal-torpedo sabotage theory. The sediment tended to settle on the bottom of the boilers or clog between the flues and leave hotspots. Dropping water levels could cause hot spots leading to metal fatigue, significantly increasing the risk of an explosion. Both groups met as close to the April 27 anniversary date as possible, corresponded with each other, and shared the title National Sultana Survivors' Association. . FS: What was the role played by the last Sultana in the Civil War, and how significant was that role? Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. GES: I began to dispel the myths and untruths surrounding the Sultana shortly after the Naval Institute Press published my first book in 1996. web oct 10 2017 it was the steamboat sultana on the mississippi river and it could have been prevented in 1865 the civil war was winding down and the . The Wreck of the Sultana. In the end, no one was ever held accountable for what remains the deadliest maritime disaster in United States history. However, the explosion of her boilers just above Memphis on 27 April 1865 put a terrible end to that endeavor. hide caption. Morgan, James Morris. [17], In 1888, a St. Louis resident named William Streetor claimed that his former business partner, Robert Louden, made a confession of having sabotaged Sultana by the use of a coal torpedo while they were drinking in a saloon. 2) The use of the sediment-laden Mississippi River water to feed the boilers. Fortunately, the sturdy railings around the twin openings of the main stairway prevented the upper deck from crushing down completely onto the middle deck. Although designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, she was carrying 2,130 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and caused it to sink near Memphis, Tennessee. Throughout the war, Captain Hatch had shown incompetence as a quartermaster and competence as a thief, bilking the government out of thousands of dollars. Find out more about what this space is all abouthere. Today, though, the city of Marion, Ark., thinks people are ready to learn about the Sultana. The Shipwreck That Led Confederate Veterans To Risk All For Union - NPR It went upward at a 45-degree angle, tearing through the crowded decks above and completely destroying the pilothouse, instantly killing Captain Mason. Irregular river depth, sandbars and snags made steamboat travel on the Missouri slow and dangerous. But perhaps the best explanation is that after years of bloody conflict, the nation was simply tired of hearing about war and death. [citation needed] The next year, only one man showed up. [13] The dead soldiers were interred at the Fort Pickering cemetery, located on the south shore of Memphis. Everyone escaped to the muddy, isolated safety of Grand Tower Island. The steamer registered 1,719 tons[2] and normally carried a crew of 85. St. Louis' biggest party ran for seven months and was such a success it even made money. Or does it let would-be historians off the hook from paying their own dues for embarking on the composition of a piece of nonfiction? 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. Instead, Mason and his chief engineer, Nathan Wintringer, convinced the mechanic to make temporary repairs, hammering back the bulged boiler plate and riveting a patch of lesser thickness over the seam. Iowa is the only state with four border rivers, the Mississippi, Missouri, Des Moines, and Big Sioux. And it was very cold. GES: I am a bit ambivalent about that. The Sultana story is one of greed and corruption, as well as pathos and sadness. It was her 82nd birthday. The Wreck of the Sultana for visitors to the Mississippi River Then the traveler could go upstairs and eat at the main tables with the first-class passengers. Only six years before, it had foundered in the river near Chester, Ill., with one crew member lost. Men in skiffs from both riverbanks rescued people clinging to debris. During the Civil War steamboats carried Iowa soldiers, weapons and food supplies to army posts. She also carried a crew of 85. PDF Download Free Sinking The Sultana A Civil War Story Of Imprison Pdf In 1859 the Princess was a four-year-old state-of-the-art side-wheel paddleboat. Mississippi River at Lansing at crest Friday evening River of History - Chapter 4 - Mississippi National River & Recreation It was reported that the steamer was insured for $8,000. The May 9, 1989 the Des Moines Register newspaper listed 40 known sunken steamboats from the southwest corner of Iowa north just over 100 miles to Sioux City. 1 was no longer used to manufacture boilers after 1879. Train derails near Wisconsin-Iowa border; 2 cars float down Mississippi As to whether it is a good thing or not, yes, I believe that it is a good thing to do so much research and get so much information from the internet. An interview with author Gene Eric Salecker. 1, which tends to become brittle with prolonged heating and cooling. Explosion of the Oronoko, April 21, 1838, near Princeton, Mississippi. MALTA BEND, Mo. "He served in the 23rd Arkansas Cavalry, and he was tasked with, among other things, raiding ships going up and down the river," Frank Barton says. Salecker, historical consultant for the Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Arkansas, recently participated in an author q&a with former Naval History editor-in-chief Fred Schultz to discuss the book: FS: After having read your exhaustive story of the various iterations of the steamboat Sultana, I couldnt help but compare her fate to the loss of the Titanic, which, as Im sure you know, has received much more attention from historians. [4]:24 On April 26, Sultana stopped at Helena, Arkansas, where photographer Thomas W. Bankes took a picture of the grossly overcrowded vessel. There were 10 passengers on board. "We feel like we're a part of this Civil War story, but we're the conclusion that no one heard," says Lisa O'Neal, a Marion resident and member of the Sultana Historic Preservation Society. Even amid the horrendous chaos, rescue efforts began immediately. Burning of the Orline St. John, near Montgomery, Alabama, March 2, 1850. Leyhe died in 1956 in St. Louis at 83. The exact number of steamboat accidents in Iowa Rivers is not known. 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 Sultana's captain and its chief engineer also allowed a mechanic to make a quick and inadequate repair to a damaged boiler, Potter says. The Princess was about six miles below Baton Rouge at Conrads Point when a teenage boy watching the boat glide along from a distance noted, A great column of white smoke suddenly went up from her and she burst into flames. The explosion was cataclysmic as all four huge boilers burst at once. The broken wood caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into a raging inferno. and Mrs. M.V. By that standard, the loss of the Golden Eagle was a minor event. In his book River of Dark Dreams, historian Walter Johnson writes that the table of contents of Lloyds bestseller was sort of a nightmare poem of alphabetized Americana: a catalog of 97 major and hundreds of minor boat disasters. A sister boat to the famous Natchez, the Princess had undergone a thorough retrofitting the previous summer and was said to be one of the fastest and most luxurious craft on the Mississippi River. As the crew made sure the cargo was packed tightly, the captain blew the whistle. Fred Schultz has been in the publishing business since 1980 and was editor-in-chief ofNaval History from 1993-2005. "Somebody had came by and notified us. Smith shouted at 2:20 a.m., suddenly unable to turn the steering wheel. "The Arabia sank. The name stuck. GES: The dirty river water of the lower Mississippi was not really thought of as a problem by the steamboat captains or engineers. "It's clear that he had bribed an officer at Vicksburg to ensure that he would get a large load of prisoners," Potter says. A tall mirror glistened behind the walnut bar. Packed on board the riverboat Sultana when her boilers blew, recently freed Union POWs faced being consumed by flames or drowning in the Mississippi. Historian Ann Fabian writes that Lloyd even peddle[d] his book to the travelers who might soon wind up on the lists of the dead, who bought it and read it to pass the time on their own steamboat voyages. (You can unsubscribe anytime), Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection, Steamboat Princess. Thousands of recently released Union prisoners of war who had been held in the Confederate prison camps at Cahaba and Andersonville had been brought to a small parole camp outside of Vicksburg to await release to the northern states. The lure of huge profits led steamboats to travel in unsafe river conditions and at unsafe speeds. [4]:79 First one boiler exploded, followed a split-second later by two more.
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