The Sinking of the Sultana
On April 27, 1865 (only 18 days after the end of the Civil War), the Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River. This explosion killed around 1,800 people, which makes it the worst maritime disaster in the history of the U.S.
The Sultana was a steamboat that frequently traveled up and down the Mississippi, transporting cotton and passengers. On April 13th, Sultana left from St. Louis to New Orleans. After receiving news of Lincoln’s assassination, James Cass Mason, the captain of the Sultana, navigated downstream to deliver the news to the South.
Around ten miles south of Vicksburg, one of the boilers sprang a leak. Mason successfully steered into Vicksburg, where he was approached by Captain Reuben Hatch. Hatch told Mason that thousands of Union prisoners of war had been released from prison camps and had been brought to Vicksburg to await release to the North. In need of money, Mason quickly agreed to bringing around 1,400 prisoners back.
Mason knew that if he waited for the boiler to be fully repaired (which would have taken two to three days), the prisoners would be taken home on other boats. In order to start transporting all the prisoners quickly, Mason told the mechanic to simply patch the leaking boiler, which only took one day.
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| A picture of the Sultana before it left Vicksburg |
Fearing his colleagues were being bribed to take passengers on other boats, Union Army Captain George Williams (who was in charge of the transportation of prisoners) ordered that all prisoners be transported back on the Sultana. Sultana only had a legal carrying capacity of 376 passengers; however, with all the prisoners, Sultana had over 2,100 people aboard. Overcrowded, Sultana left Vicksburg and headed up the Mississippi.
At around 2:00 a.m. near Memphis, Tennessee, the newly patched up boiler exploded due to excess pressure and two others followed seconds after. The explosion caused the smokestacks to collapse, which caused the upper deck to burst into flames. Sultana quickly sank to the bottom of the Mississippi River, leaving the remaining passengers swimming in the icy cold water. Some people successfully swam to shore, but most perished due to the initial explosion, fire, exhaustion, or hypothermia.
Ultimately, no one was held accountable. More important news circulated around, such as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, which ended the Civil War. Despite the thousands of people that died that night, the explosion of the Sultana remains an event not widely known.
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The first incident that your blog reminds me of is undeniably the Titanic, even though more people died in this one than the iceberg accident. However, what is different about this tragedy is that, like you mentioned, not a lot of people knew or were concerned about it, due to all the other events that happened nearly concurrently. It is said that not only was the ship poorly repaired and way over carrying capacity, there was also bad weather the day that the Sultana set sail. This incident really goes to show the corruption and desire for money that rooted in the hearts of many people after the civil war, and I believe it, to a certain extent, foreshadowed the coming of the Gilded Age.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/sultana
Reading about this article made me think of another peculiar tradition that boats seem to have which is that the captain must go down with the ship or be the last to leave. It turns out this form of maritime tradition was first made popular after the sinking of HMS Birkenhead in 1845 in which the women and children were evacuated first due to the lack of lifeboats. What was once a maritime tradition regarding salvage rights has turned into a legal obligation for the captain of a boat. Although in some sense, they are not obligated to "go down with the ship", not staying behind or not being in a position to help passengers still aboard the ship could come with severe legal consequences.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_(1845)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_captain_goes_down_with_the_ship
https://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145437591/must-a-captain-go-down-with-the-ship