Nightmare on The Mississippi: The Tragedy of the Steamboat Sultana

in 1865 when the steamboat sultana departed vicksburg on its journey north along the mississippi river the unsuspecting 2300 souls aboard would soon be caught in a nightmare of events the likes of which to this day remain the deadliest maritime disaster in united states history [Music] it was spring of 1865 which meant the american civil war having persisted for four years by this point was coming to an end however for union soldiers held prisoner at one of the most notoriously cruel confederate-run pow camps andersonville prison also known as camp sumpter near macon georgia with inadequate medical care housing clothing food combined with terrible overcrowded conditions prisoner mortality rates were unfathomable at andersonville numbering 12 000 plus by historical record the end of hostilities officially would mean little until the surviving prisoners freedom was actually granted somewhat conversely at cahaba the confederate-run pow camp near selma alabama conditions were slightly more survivable with populations much lower and one of the lowest mortality rates of pow camps at the time union soldiers however still weary from battle and their time being imprisoned were nonetheless anxious to see their suffering end and return home just the same the american civil war of the 1860s having been waged between two sides divided by their beliefs meant the country was just as divided physically at the time the united states was essentially split in two and these union prisoners of war being held deep in recently former enemy territory in the south they were a long way from their homes and families in states like ohio illinois and indiana as the war concluded and the time drew closer for these prison camps to relinquish their populations the logistics of transporting so many weary soldiers across such a great distance safely would pose somewhat of a challenge to the united states government originally constructed in cincinnati ohio at luther berry shipyard and launched in january of 1863 onto the ohio river the sultana was a prime example of the side wheel steamboat while the sternwheelers at times seem much more prevalent in media and several are still in use today as tourist attractions the side wheelers however with one paddle on either side of the boat giving it a wider beam than stern paddle wheelers provided more maneuverability inherent with its design each paddle could operate at differing speeds and some with clutches could turn independently of one another and even in opposite directions this maneuverability was crucial in the time period rivers posed many more difficulties in navigation owing to their still natural meandering channels unpredictability and depth along with frequent flooding and debris and with steam-powered boats and ships being prolific at the time sidewheelers were utilized heavily in both industrial and military applications in the sultanas case a width or beam of 42 feet 260 feet in length and weighing in at 1 719 tons the boat was larger than the average class of river steamboat four decks a crew of 85 a capacity of 376 passengers and the ability to carry a considerable amount of cargo the sultana saw frequent use along the mississippi between new orleans and st louis and earn a reputation as a troop transport with river boats of this size and capability getting the attention of the us military early on in the war effort [Music] with the victory of the united states and subsequent cessation of civil war hostilities came the surrender of the confederate leader general robert e lee on april 9 1865. it would only be a handful of days though before the jubilant victory over the confederacy was darkened clouded by the assassination of then president and commander of union forces abraham lincoln on april 14th all of this came at a time when both sides were negotiating the release of pows back to their respective homelands and for thousands of union soldiers in the hell hole that was andersonville prison the worst prison in the civil war as well as those in cahaba freedom was finally at hand their journey home would start by being packed into overcrowded train cars and hauled to the union held assembly point camp fisk in vicksburg mississippi along the mississippi river [Music] on april 15th the sultana docked in cairo illinois and captained by james cass mason news of president lincoln's assassination reached the boat important to note here is that while these riverboats would get commissioned for military transport the sultana was one of many that were still privately owned and captain mason was part owner electronic communications to the south had been cut off though due to the war so since telegrams could not be sent to major hubs along the mississippi captain mason a stack of newspapers in hand took it upon himself to set the sultana and its crew underway to the south spreading the news as far as new orleans the union had commissioned multiple steamboats to pick up pows from vicksburg's camp fisk and the confederacy had initially negotiated a one-to-one prisoner exchange one union soldier for every confederate soldier relinquished weary union soldiers at camp fisk numbered in the thousands suffering from camp fevers severely malnourished and traumatized emotionally from the cruelties they'd undergone after their stop in new orleans the sultana would head north again having taken on a bit of cargo and passengers with roughly 200 souls now on board between patrons and crew by this point april of 1865 though camp fisk was so overwhelmed by pows that the confederacy's intended plan of a one-to-one prisoner exchange had spiraled out of control since there were clearly more union prisoners being relinquished then there would be confederate prisoners to replace them a planned orderly arrangement for prisoner transfers had now degenerated nearly overnight into rushed chaos with moving the infirmed union soldiers out of vicksburg and headed north as hastily as possible damned the consequences quickly becoming the utmost priority as ordered from top generals involved 800 prisoners have been arranged to load onto the first steamboat commission to arrive the henry ames but this boat was delayed by the time it arrived officers at vicksburg hastily loaded 1300 plus onto the decks and the henry ames was quickly underway the next vessel arrived immediately after the much smaller olive branch and since they've gotten so many soldiers aboard the henry ames already and owing to its smaller size the olive branch would receive roughly six to seven hundred of the infirmed now it's important to note the vast majority of these men could barely stand let alone walk most had to be held up or carried by more able-bodied comrades and once on board depending on the vessel would resign themselves to cots or lying down in any open spaces on deck they could find by 800 hours on april 22nd when the sultana had arrived in vicksburg the docks had degenerated into a damn near free-for-all with the united states government offering these commissioned vessels five dollars per enlisted soldier and ten dollars per officer for transport north you can probably see the foreshadowing here corruption and greed became rife in this desperate quickly worsening situation [Music] the quartermaster of vicksburg a union officer ultimately responsible for the movement of these troops through camp fisk and onto these vessels colonel rubin hatch was a man with a known history of corruption but had friends in high places earlier that same year hatch had been charged and brought before a competency board after getting caught routinely reporting dollar amounts incorrectly for government acquired supplies and pocketing the difference found by the board to be totally unfit for the task of a government quartermaster position yet here he was the camp fist quartermaster captain mason part owner of the sultana was also a questionable character having already lost one vessel confiscated from him after he attempted to haul contraband during the war effort captain mason was in serious financial trouble by this time as the sultana docked at vicksburg there was another issue a crack had developed in one of the boat's four boilers while underway toward camp fisk the engineer on board had lowered the pressure in order to make it to vicksburg but this lower pressure meant much lower maximum speed on the river a local engineer who was assisting with the repair once they adopted vicksburg recommended nothing less than a thorough refit of the faulty boiler however a refit would take days to finish and the very profitable opportunity of soldiers needing transport on mass would by then have long passed captain mason and his chief engineer would leverage the local mechanic to agree to a temporary repair a flimsy patchwork riveted hastily in place over the cracked section by the time the olive branch had departed and the sultana had docked tensions between the camp's leadership had risen to a fever pitch a handful of officers assisting in the loading process acting in good faith at camp fisk had grown to suspect that day that bribes were changing hands in order to force more men onto each boat or even worse the complete opposite when it came time to load the sultana captain mason demanded they take on quote as many as his boat could carry as soon as possible now being a boat that had capacity officially for roughly 376 a few hundred more was not completely out of the question as this was somewhat of a regular occurrence when boats were commissioned for troop transport however with captain mason's insistence combined with colonel hatch's eagerness to pack as many on boats that day as possible the crowds of men being ushered on board were near unstoppable and for the soldiers parts they just wanted to go home and were eager to go wherever they were instructed to help make that happen the officers directly involved in loading were prepared to see 12 to hundred men aboard the sultana already a huge amount but had no idea an additional group of three to four hundred more were well on their way the officers that were acting honorably made an attempt to bring both the suspected bribes and concerns of overloading up with camp leadership such as colonel hatch a general donna and a general smith all of which choosing not to step in and thus the loading continued some reports state bribes by boat owners to camp fisk officers in order to pack their decks were so egregious that a reported two additional vessels departed vicksburg entirely empty it was a night rife with greed and corruption and weary combat veterans were traded like a commodity the sultana would get underway with upwards of 2 300 souls on board while the river grew more treacherous every day to spring snow melt in the north the boat would struggle going upriver against the stronger increasingly turbulent waters the souls on board were more than six times its capacity there was standing room only many of the free prisoners were so sick or badly injured that they had to be carried aboard still the men were glad because they were on their way home the boat would dock briefly again in helena arkansas on april 25th at about 1 am presumably to offload a bit of cargo besides these passengers there were two companies of infantry under arms making a grand total of 2 300 souls on board besides a number of mules and horses and over 100 hogsheads of sugar the latter being in the hold of the boat and serving as ballast at helena arkansas by some unaccountable means a photograph of the boat with her massive living freight was taken each soldier seemed to be bent on having his face discernible in the picture i entreated and exhorted prudence while i sat on the roof my feet pendant and my hands on a float momentarily expecting a capsizing and sinking this would be the final image of the vessel before it and so many of those on board would meet their end now contrary to my little map here for presentation purposes and compared to how it looks today the mississippi and rivers like it at the time were a twisting meandering turbulent mess even when not flooded these steamboat voyages especially traveling upriver were days sometimes weeks-long journeys battling with the elements river debris painstaking navigation and steamers were pushed to their maximum if they wanted to make decent time after helena the sultana had made another stop the next night at about 7pm april 26th docked at memphis this time off loading cargo and the healthier soldiers even assisting those who wished were also allowed enough time to disembark and head into town briefly that evening by roughly midnight the boat got back underway just after taking on a load of coal for the boilers near memphis before heading north again roughly 7 miles north of memphis at 2 am all was confusion men were jumping into the river by the hundreds i saw at least 20 drawn at once as fast as one would feel he was drowning he would clutch at the nearest person and i believe many a bold swimmer was drowned that night who could have saved himself if alone tennessean survivor andrew perry clinging to the boat watched with astonishment as a man and a mule battled for a floating piece of the wheelhouse the mule would get its front feet on the raft and the man would knock it off with a club it would come again for several times the mule almost capsized the craft i don't think i ever saw a more earnest fight the mule finally gave up or was killed hundreds of my comrades were fastened held down by the timbers of the decks and had to burn while the water seemed to be one solid mass of human beings struggling with the waves the light in the screams at this time cannot be described [Music] the explosion originating from the boiler room had ripped upward through all decks and destroyed the pilot house removing all means of control immediately setting the boat adrift at the mercy of the frigid flooded mississippi nowadays we tend to take for granted how civilized these rivers can look when crossing them or looking across them from their banks but one way to picture these rivers of old prior to being tamed is to imagine what they look like how they behave during periods of flood when they crest their levees nowadays the debris the swirling the turbulent strength of the current the riverbank seemingly non-existent the freezing temperature of spring waters originating from northern snow melt the hordes of panic people and hoof stock this was what the survivors were now up against and at 2 am in the dead of night the only light being the fire that had quickly and completely engulfed the wooden steamboat a near 300 foot long wall of flame that now continued to float like something out of a nightmare there seemed to be acres of struggling humanity on the waters some on debris of the wreck some on the dead carcasses of horses some holding to swimming live horses some on boxes bales of hay drift logs etc soon we parted company with the wreck and the crowd and drifted out into the darkness almost alone on a vessel where life preservers were few and the one or two lifeboats it did have were ravaged by fire immediate rescue fell to many brave souls able-bodied and clear of mind enough to aid those still on board with any sort of flotation they could find in the short time they had throwing mattresses boards chairs trunks all overboard toward the sea of humanity struggling desperately in the frigid waters illuminated only by the flames many disappearing into darkness below or away from the drifting vessel another steamboat the general boynton passed by but did not stop survivor ac brown recalled it seemed as though the boynton felt rescue attempts with their vessel would be futile instead choosing to race toward memphis and sound the alarm navy gunboats and steamers sent out any lifeboats they could however this accident site was still miles upstream from memphis and everything and every one was spreading out rapidly at the mercy of the current in total of the 2300 on board roughly 1 200 did not survive [Music] now theories of the boat careening or swaying from side to side due to its overloaded upper decks theories of confederate sabotage with multiple rebel sympathizers coming forward to claim responsibility debates raged soon after over these and other potential causes would-be rebel saboteurs however each had wildly different and elaborate claims for how they quote carried it out from hidden timed explosives and lumps of coal to someone simply shooting at the boilers and causing the explosion what was eventually discovered though by experts in this field corroborated by evidence and documentation from the time period and even sparked the founding of the hartford steam boiler inspection and insurance company pointed substantially toward what is now known as one of the deadliest trends of accidents to come out of the industrial revolution though the potential of steam power seemed infinite controlling the power was still crudely developed as applications for steam power became more complex the dangers also became more severe with thousands of boilers in operation throughout the country there was also widespread ignorance about the properties of steam and the causes of boiler explosions during the 1850s explosions were occurring at the rate of almost one every four days most dismissed these incidents as acts of god those who ran industrial concerns simply assumed that their boilers would explode and they would lose one or two workers others namely members of the polytechnic club which included future founders of hartford's team boiler had other ideas this new 24 flew style of boiler had proven to be incredibly powerful and efficient when compared with their traditional two-flue counterparts boiler explosion theory was not yet well understood though and decisions were made hastily and haphazardly in this powerful version's widespread installation and operation for instance those boilers that performed so well and ended up in many lower missouri and mississippi river applications had yet to be proven in poor water conditions something these rivers are notorious for as they progress downstream these 24 flu fire tube style boilers also were inherently more difficult to keep clean owing to their much tighter spaces inside frequent cleaning of boilers and steam engines is absolutely crucial as the water they pull in for use is the same water the boat is floating in since differing water conditions hadn't been factored in water filtration systems were not in place quite yet for boilers like these either add to this iron expansion and fatigue was not well understood by this time and thus the iron used in their construction was of poor quality charcoal hammered number one a thin non-homogenous poor quality of iron saw widespread use at the time this particular thin type of iron became far too brittle when heated and cooled rapidly leading to fatigue and cracking in the metal it was found by experts to be quote not a suitable iron for boiler construction the build-up from poor water conditions inside these boilers or in crustacean was also significant especially since proper maintenance and cleaning of these machines frequently took a back seat to profits and schedules the shoddy patchwork performed hastily in vicksburg would end up somewhat of a moot point once the industry-wide failures began to be understood and exposed operators would regularly push them beyond their limits rigging up systems forcing safety valves to stay open and in situations like steamboat racing yes this was also common practice especially on the mississippi to win over customers or pushing up river during springtime with six times more load on board than designed for the sultana and similar steam engines in the time period were the very definition of ticking time bombs [Music] just a few of many example incidents in similar fire tube boilers on u.s waters the steamboat saluda exploded in 1852 resulting in roughly 100 deaths the isaac newton boiler explosion in december of 1863 killed several aboard the steamboat missouri exploded in january of 1866 resulting in 100 plus deaths the wr carter explosion in february of 1866 killed 125. this issue however went far beyond 24 flu style fire two boilers being pushed too hard on the mississippi since the poor quality iron had been used in so many boilers at the time explosions in all applications were adding up year after year now in my research during this project it was easy to start seeing the pattern of attempted narrative shift like oh the boats were just careening from side to side captains were running them with low water levels it was all sabotage etc not to say these things didn't happen of course but the fact that these were poorly built in such widespread quantities was likely difficult for people to come to terms with at the time manufacturers operators and customers alike industry-wide were understandably reliant on these dangerous but powerful machines and would be slowly forced to change their ways replacing poorly made boilers on mass in an effort to start making safe effective use of the great potential in steam engines once sufficient awareness had been raised to the need for routine inspections and a more thorough understanding of these critical issues by the late 1860s rapid removal of these boilers using mississippi river water especially quickly became paramount and in the late 1870s newer more durable types of iron were also being developed and implemented [Music] but this was at the time frustratingly a largely forgotten story and even to this day remains but a whisper in the annals of history and a major part of why i've chosen to kick this series off with this particular tragedy it's easy to understand looking back nowadays just how it was overshadowed by other major historical events at the time but to think back on what survivors families communities went through as a result of this tragedy and a couple books i've read on the event were inspired by and written because of this lack of awareness for these reasons in present day it is largely unknown as to the wreck's exact location in the 1980s an archaeology expedition discovered what is likely the blackened remains of the sultana buried under a patch of private farmland on that stretch of the since redirected mississippi river in addition to this it would mean the general area is also now a de facto burial site for so many soldiers lost in the event multiple historical plaques have been constructed the marker in memphis another at the mount olive baptist church in knoxville tennessee one in muncie indiana another in vicksburg and another in ohio amongst others as for the families and descendants they firmly believe the location of the wreck is hallowed ground and should never be excavated and that the location should never be made public [Music] you

Channel: Brick Immortar

Views: 158,117

Keywords: civil war era, sultana disaster, maritime disaster, ss sultana, steamboat boiler explosion, steamboat disasters, memphis riverboat tragedy, sultana disaster documentary, civil war

Id: TySA8ViKjCo

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021