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Jul 21, 2014 · In the early hours of April 27, 1865, mere days after the end of the Civil War, the Sultana burst into flames along the Mississippi River. The Sultana was a 260-foot-long wooden steamboat, built in Cincinnati in 1863, which regularly transported passengers and freight between St. Louis and New Orleans on the Mississippi River.
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Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,547 people in what remains the worst maritime disaster in United States history.
Since the explosion had not come from the furnace fireboxes, the Sultana did not burst into flames immediately. With the loss of three of the four huge boilers, the towering smokestacks lost their support and toppled.
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Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, both Confederates and Unionists scrambled to pick up the pieces left over by the bloody conflict. This included the release of war prisoners from both sides. Thousands of newly paroled Union soldiers who had been held in the Confederate prison camps of Cahaba near Selma, Alabama, and Andersonville, in sou...
On April 24, 1865, the Sultana departed from Vicksburg northbound. Aboard her overcrowded decks were some 1,960 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 70 paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members. Many of the paroled soldiers were in poor condition having just left Confederate hospitals or prisons. Additionally, it w...
As the Sultana began to sink nearby the small town of Marion deep in southern Confederacy territory, passing boats and local residents began a chaotic rescue operation to save the soldiers on board. Newspaper reports indicate that a local man, John Fogelman, and his sons were among these rescuers. Fogelman’s descendant, current Marion Mayor Frank F...
Arguably many of the factors which contributed to the destruction of the Sultanacould likely have been avoided. 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. Then, there was the improper handling of a damaged boiler. Apparently, Captain Mason and h...
An estimated 1,800 men were lost by the Sultana. By comparison, the sinking of the Titanic took a little over 1,500 lives. The Sultana disaster remains an unresolved tragedy and the worst in American maritime history. There is a silver lining to this tragedy, however. More than two decades later, survivors of the Sultanafrom across the country have...
- Natasha Ishak
Sep 28, 2017 · And their worries were well founded: After three days of sailing, Sultana’s leaky boilers exploded. As the ship burst into flames, screaming men did, too.
- 4 min
At 2 AM on the morning of April 27 the patched boiler exploded with a mighty roar. An estimated 400 passengers were killed instantly by the explosion or scalding steam. The wooden vessel burst into flames and soon became a raging inferno.
On April 24, 1865, a steamboat named Sultana left Vicksburg, Mississippi, bound for Cairo, Illinois. On board were 2,300 Union soldiers who had just been released from southern prisons during the Civil War.
