Sultana (steamboat)

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 Boatyard in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. The steamer registered 1,719 tons 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

375px|thumb|right|POW Camp Fisk, Four Mile Bridge, Vicksburg, Mississippi April 1865.

right|thumb|375px|Sultana on fire, from [[Harper's Weekly.]]

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. 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. 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. 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

thumb|Historic marker in Memphis

The exact death toll is unknown, although the most recent evidence indicates that 1,164 died. 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. In February 1867, the Bureau of Military Justice placed the death toll at 1,100. In 1880, the United States Congress, in conjunction with the War Department, reported the loss of life as 1,259. 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. 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,

In December 1885, the survivors living in the northern states of Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio began attending annual reunions, forming the National Sultana Survivors' Association. Eventually, the group settled on meeting in the Toledo, Ohio area. Perhaps inspired by their northern comrades, a southern group of survivors, men from Tennessee and Kentucky, began meeting in 1889 around Knoxville, Tennessee. 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.

By the mid-1920s, only a handful of survivors could attend the reunions. In 1929, only two men attended the southern reunion. The next year, only one man showed up. The last northern survivor, Private Jordan Barr of the 15th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment, died on May 16, 1938, at age 93. The last of the southern survivors, and last overall survivor, was Private Charles M. Eldridge of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, who died at his home at age 96 on September 8, 1941, more than 76 years after the disaster.

thumb|Memorial plaque for those who perished on the Sultana on April 27, 1865. Located in South Park, Mansfield, Ohio.

Causes

The official cause of the Sultana disaster was determined to be the mismanagement of water levels in the boilers, exacerbated by the fact that the vessel was severely overcrowded and top-heavy. As the steamboat made her way north following the twists and turns of the river, she listed severely from side to side. 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. The fires still going against the empty boiler created hot spots. When the boat tipped the other way, water rushing back into the empty boiler would hit the hot spots and flash instantly to steam, creating a sudden surge in pressure. This effect of careening could have been minimized by maintaining high water levels in the boilers. 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.

A 2015 investigation into the cause of the disaster by Pat Jennings, principal engineer of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which came into existence in 1866 because of the Sultana explosion, determined that three main factors led to the disaster:

The type of metal used in the construction of the boilers – Charcoal Hammered No. 1, which tends to become brittle with prolonged heating and cooling. Charcoal Hammered No. 1 was no longer used to manufacture boilers after 1879.

The use of the sediment-laden Mississippi River water to feed the boilers. The sediment tended to settle on the bottom of the boilers or clog between the flues and leave hotspots.

The design of the boilers. Sultana had tubular boilers filled with 24 horizontal five-inch flues. Being so closely packed within the diameter boilers tended to cause the muddy sediment to form hot pockets and were extremely difficult to clean. Tubular boilers were discontinued from use on steamboats plying the Lower Mississippi after two more steamboats with tubular boilers exploded shortly after the Sultana explosion.

Traditional alternative theories

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. Louden, a former Confederate agent and saboteur who operated in and around St. Louis, had been responsible for the burning of the steamboat Ruth. 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. However, Louden's claim is controversial, and most scholars support the official explanation. The location of the explosion, from the top rear of the boilers and far away from the fireboxes, tends to indicate that Louden's claim of sabotage of an exploding coal torpedo in the firebox, below the front part of the boilers, was pure bravado. 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. However, Courtenay's great-great-grandson, Joseph Thatcher, who wrote a book on Courtenay and the coal torpedo, denies that a coal torpedo was used in the Sultana disaster.

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. Barrett was a veteran of the Mexican–American War and had been captured at the Battle of Franklin. He was injured on Sultana and was honorably discharged in May 1865. There is no apparent motive for him to have blown up the boat, especially while on board.

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. After a few Union gunboats filled up their bunkers but refused to pay, the farmer supposedly hollowed out a log, filled it with gunpowder, and then left the lethal log on his woodpile. As stated in the 1903 newspaper article, the log was mistakenly taken by Sultana. However, Sultana was a coal-burning boat and not a wood-burner.

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. The report blamed quartermaster Capt. Reuben Benton Hatch, an individual with a long history of corruption and incompetence, who kept his job through political connections: he was the younger brother of Illinois politician Ozias M. Hatch, an advisor and close friend of President Lincoln. Throughout the war, Captain Hatch had shown incompetence as a quartermaster and competence as a thief, bilking the government out of thousands of dollars. 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 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. He died in 1871 due to alcoholism, having escaped justice because of his numerous highly placed patrons—including two presidents.

Lack of accountability

Despite the magnitude of the disaster, no one was ever formally held accountable. Captain Frederic Speed, a Union officer who sent the 1,950 paroled prisoners into Vicksburg from the parole camp, was charged with grossly overcrowding Sultana and found guilty. 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. Muncie, Indiana; Marion, Arkansas; Vicksburg, Mississippi; Cincinnati, Ohio; Knoxville, Tennessee; Hillsdale, Michigan and Mansfield, Ohio.

Remnants found

In 1982, a local archaeological expedition, led by Memphis attorney Jerry O. Potter, uncovered what was believed to be the wreckage of Sultana. Blackened wooden deck planks and timbers were found about under a soybean field on the Arkansas side, about from Memphis. The Mississippi River has changed course several times since the disaster, leaving the wreck under dry land and far from today's river. The main channel now flows about east of its 1865 position. The museum is only a temporary museum featuring a number of relics from Sultana such as shaker plates from the boat's furnace, furnace bricks, a few pieces of wood, and some small metal pieces. The museum also features many artifacts from the Sultana Survivors' Association, as well as a model replica of the boat. One wall is decorated with the names of every soldier, crewmember, and passenger on the boat on April 27, 1865. A new state-of-the-art permanent museum, which will be housed in a renovated auditorium/gymnasium is expected to open in the Fall of 2026.

In popular culture

Artwork

The J. Mack Gamble Fund of the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen and the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends sponsored a mural by Louisiana artist Robert Dafford and his crew, entitled The Sultana Departs from Vicksburg, as one of the Vicksburg Riverfront Murals. It was dedicated on April 9, 2005.

Novels

Smith, Joe W. (2010) Sultana! J & M Printing. . Illustrations by Linda L. Smith.

Music

Jay Farrar of the band Son Volt wrote a song called "Sultana", paying tribute to "the worst American disaster of the maritime". Farrar calls the boat "the Titanic of the Mississippi" in the song, which was released on the American Central Dust album (2009)
King's German Legion – "Blues in the Water" tells a stylized version of the Sultana disaster on their EP release Marching Orders.
Cory Branan's song "The Wreck of the Sultana" tells the story of the disaster, though the song gets a few details wrong, calling it "deadlier than the Titanic's legendary fall."

Film

In 2018, a movie called Remember the Sultana was released detailing the maritime disaster, directed by Mark and Mike Marshall and starring Ray Appleton, Mackenzie Astin, and Sean Astin.

References

External links

Raising The Sultana
Sultana Disaster Records – Records relating to the explosion of the steamer Sultana, including lists of those aboard the boat.
History Guy presents the Sultana's loss and explains why it was unnoticed