The Sinking of the SS Sultana

The largest maritime disaster in the maritime history of the United States was that of the wreck of the SS Sultana, a steamboat which ran along the Mississippi river during the Civil War. To speak to the magnitude of such an event, the Sultana carried a similar amount of people to the RMS Titanic, one of the largest and most famous maritime disasters in history, and had a comparable death toll, but the size of the Sultana was around half as long with a passenger carrying capacity that was a tenth of the size of the Titanic.¹ And yet, such a terrible and large-scale event has been barely remembered in modern history. With the historical backdrop of the turbulent and eventful Civil War period, the public seemed to be focused more on tales of battle, assassinations, and the end of the war than with a shipwreck. This lack of attention could also be in part to the lack of attention given to the event as people were used to seeing large scale death statistics in the news at the time (the death toll of the Battle of Gettysburg was 50,000,² the death toll of Antietam was 22,000 in one day alone).³ A ship explosion of more than a thousand deaths seemed meager in proportion to their typical exposure. While the shipwreck may have been largely forgotten by the American public, its story lives on as a tale of carelessness and corruption.

Before the Disaster

With the resuming of prisoner exchange in 1864-1865 between the Union and Confederate armies after a period of suspension, prisoners began to arrive near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Union Major General Napoleon J.T. Dana prepared to receive them at Camp Fisk near Vicksburg and appointed Captain George A. Williams to aid in the transfer of Union prisoners to Union custody. Unable to negotiate proper prisoner exchange with the confederates, Williams left Vicksburg to consult with higher Union officers in Illinois. This move left Captain Frederick Speed in charge of William’s previous duties.⁵ While Williams was away, Dana broke the impasse and prisoners were to be released. Conditions at Camp Fisk were terrible, with prisoners suffering from malnutrition and diseases contracted during imprisonment and transport and so they became excited to go home.⁶ Around 4,700 men were awaiting official exchange at Camp Fisk. Dana was adamant about transporting them North as soon as possible, and so Speed was directed to prepare the men as rapidly as possible and to send them on the river in bunches of 1,000. Meanwhile, Colonel R.B. Hatch and his assistant Captain W.F. Kerns were instructed to procure transportation, collecting the SS Sultana as one such vessel. After the first few departures, Speed suspected Kerns was accepting bribes due to a delay in the previous shipment, but he was acquitted. Fear of being charged with fraud would influence judgement made on the next batch of prisoners aboard the SS Sultana.⁷

TheSS Sultana was a pocket side-wheeler which ran up and down the Mississippi between St. Louis and New Orleans between 1864 and 1865. It was 260 feet long and 42 wide, with a cargo of 1,300 tons and passenger capacity of 376. 80 crew operated the boat. Two large steam engines drove the boat’s wheels, and James Cass Mason was its captain.⁸ The Sultana began a normal voyage from New Orleans on April 21. During this voyage, the boat’s engineer noted a leak in the middle larboard boiler, and told Captain Mason that repairs would need to be made at Vicksburg. After docking at Vicksburg, two sheets of the boiler were discovered to be badly bulged out. The defective sheets were not removed under Mason’s orders and instead had the engineer place a patch on it. The patches were thinner than the boiler’s thickness, and a thorough repair was not completed.⁹

When the Sultana arrived at Vicksburg, few prisoners were prepped, and so Speed resolved to not load prisoners aboard and told Dana of his decision. Williams also returned that night but Speed kept his position. Williams persuaded Speed to put all the remaining parolees onboard, and Dana was delighted with this plan. For each man carried the Sultana was to receive $2.75 and $8 for officers.¹⁰ Bribery rumors resurfaced mid day, and all the captains involved suspected each other of bribery. Boarding of the ship continued on and the ship became increasingly overcrowded. Captain Mason protested this overloading, but to no avail. Kerns advised Williams that there were too many onboard but Williams didn’t listen. He then went to Hatch to express his grievances, but Hatch took no action because he recently had a dispute with Speed about troop shipment. After all troops boarded, both Williams and Speed were convinced too many were onboard, but made no action to reverse this because they thought it was too late to make any change. 1,866 enlisted men and 35 officers were aboard the Sultana, according to Speed and William’s official count. 60 horses and mules were also aboard.¹¹ Some men were not counted in haste and speed of boarding. Although nobody inspected the Sultana and its facilities before loading passengers, Speed and Williams reported to Dana that the men were comfortable and not overcrowded, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth.¹² People were packed in like sardines, and could barely move around the boat.

The Explosion

Once the SS Sultana left Vicksburg, Mississippi with its overloaded crew on April 24th, 1865 it headed north for its intended destination of Cairo, Illinois. This journey should have taken two or three days to complete, however the ship was continually delayed, resulting in the journey being predicted to take closer to 4 days. The steamboat didn’t have any issue as it sailed for two days to Memphis, Tennessee, where it docked to unload cargo and load coal onto the ship around 6:30 in the evening.¹⁴ The Sultana departed the docks around midnight and only two hours later one of the Sultana‘s boilers exploded, followed by the two others. The fire was able to quickly spread throughout the ship as a result of the conventional steamboat technology and design of the time. Many of the passengers being transported were killed instantly, however there were still quite a few that jumped into the freezing water. At this time of year, however, the Mississippi river was flooded, and the river north of Memphis was miles wide. As a result, the nearest shore was a mile away, and for many of the injured and sick being transported, this was too much. Some lucky survivors were able to cling to the tops of trees and wait for rescue boats. The first boat to arrive was the Bostona, followed by many more from Memphis.¹⁵ Roughly 700 survivors were rescued from the water, and the local community in Memphis rallied around them in support. Many townspeople took in survivors and many vendors gave out free clothing or other useful articles.¹⁶

Possible Theories to the Cause of the Explosion

There are a couple theories for what exactly caused the Sultana’s explosion. The main theory, that is generally accepted as true, is that the combination of the excessive amount of people on the ship with the mismanagement of the boiler’s water levels caused the explosion.¹⁷ There have also been other studies done that point to both the construction of the boilers as well as the characteristics of the water in the Mississippi river. The boilers were constructed with a water tank with 24 small tubes packed inside. Hot gases were forced through the tubes to heat the water, generating steam much faster than conventional boilers. When muddy water was used (like from the Mississippi), sediment could clog the boiler and cause dangerous hot spots. These factors were not the immediate cause of the explosion, but they could have increased the vulnerability of the ship.¹⁸ There is also an alternate theory that the ship was sabotaged by Robert Louden, a former confederate agent. There was some evidence of a coal torpedo, the claimed weapon used to allegedly sabotage the ship, in the wreck of the Sultana. However, under further investigation about the cause of the explosion and its location, almost every expert agrees that sabotage played no part in the sinking of the SS Sultana.¹⁹

The Aftermath

The events that followed the Sultana disaster were marked by both limited accountability and surprisingly little punishment. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, rescue boats from Memphis and other nearby communities rushed to the Mississippi river and pulled hundreds of survivors from the water. Many of the passengers that were rescued had been severely burned or suffered from other injuries after hanging on to debris from the explosion throughout the night. Survivors were quickly transported to receive medical attention as hospitals in the Memphis area took in roughly 700 injured passengers. About 200 of those passengers ultimately died as a result of their injuries shortly after.²⁰ Throughout the following days, organized efforts to recover the bodies of the victims occurred and many of the remains were eventually discovered far downstream from the site of the initial disaster. Many of the victims that were discovered weren’t able to be identified as a result of their bodily condition due to the severity of the disaster.

Figuring out the precise number of casualties proved to be quite difficult. The first reports of the disaster estimated a death toll of roughly 1,238²¹ deaths however, later research claimed that the actual total could have exceeded 1,500 and could have even approached 1,800+²². The SS Sultana had originally been designed to carry roughly 370 passengers and yet over 2,000 Union soldiers, civilians and crew were aboard the ship when the boilers exploded. In the weeks following the Sultana disaster, the U.S. army began a formal investigation in order to determine who was responsible. Military authorities came to the conclusion that the immediate cause of the explosion was the failure of the ship’s boilers which was likely caused by poor maintenance and inadequate repairs to said boilers. The investigation also revealed that military officers had approved the extreme overloading of soldiers that more than exceeded the capacity that the ship could safely transport. Ultimately, financial incentives played a big role as the transportation contractors were paid by the soldier, heavily encouraging the Sultana’s officials to maximize the number of passengers aboard²³.

Despite the clear evidence of negligence and poor decision making, the investigation resulted in very little meaningful punishment. Several individuals which included army officers and the Sultana’s personnel were criticized in the official reports for allowing the dangerous overcrowding of the ship as well as its unsafe conditions. Many officers involved were charged with misconduct regarding corruption and the overloading of the Sultana; however, legal proceedings were limited and failed to lead to a significant punishment. Overall, responsibility was distributed across multiple parties including the crew and contractors which made it more difficult for the authorities to assign the blame to any specific individuals²⁴. As a result, nobody faced any major criminal penalties for what had become the most devastating maritime disaster in American History.

Another noteworthy aspect of the Sultana’s aftermath was how quickly the disaster faded from national attention. The Sultana disaster occurred just a few weeks after the end of the Civil War and shortly after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln²⁵. With the entire nation so focused on reconstruction and mourning the death of the president, news coverage of the SS Sultana tragedy rapidly diminished. Many of the victims were buried in mass graves and many unidentified soldiers were eventually buried at the Memphis National Cemetery which still contains one of the largest numbers of unidentified Civil War casualties²⁶. Even though the disaster didn’t result in significant legal consequences during the time, it later became a case study in transportation safety and government accountability. Historians frequently point to the SS Sultana as an example of how corruption and weak oversight can produce deadly results. Today the Sultana tragedy is remembered for its jaw dropping death toll but also for the lack of justice. The aftermath of the Sultana disaster reveals how systematic flaws can result in major tragedy and how significant historical events can be overshadowed.

Analysis of the Story

When examining the story of the SS Sultana’s explosion, it is important to frame such an analysis in the context of greedy and careless behavior. This applies to a further investigation of the events with the actions of the officers and officials involved in the disaster as well as those mismanaging the technology leading to a complete lack of accountability in the aftermath. Deeper analysis into the steamboat technology tells such a story of carelessness when researching the experimental boilers used as well as the careless managers of such technology on the ship. In regards to the lack of accountability held with the officers in the aftermath and the lack of charges given, this also speaks to a further lack of care in the handling and perception of the disaster. Such a terrible event of such grand magnitude was simply swept under the rug of history and went relatively forgotten, all because people perceiving, understanding, and living during the disaster seem to lack adequate care.

Overall, the Sultana disaster provides a gateway into a larger conversation on how American society remembers tragedy in its recent aftermath. To provide insight into such a topic, further examination of the ship’s explosion and aftermath must be conducted. In the subsections of this exhibit, this sort of examination will be completed. The story of the Sultana is one of greed and carelessness, with much of the blame falling upon the captains involved with it and who subsequently caused a large amount of the disaster. As well as this, the technology involved in the steamboat also played into the event, and so requires further analysis into how it ties into this. Finally, the portrayal of the disaster in the aftermath of the explosion comes as a result of all these factors, and by examining these aspects, insight into remembrance of tragedy will be provided.

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About the Authors

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Footnotes

1. Harvey, “The Sinking of the Sultana.” ↩︎
2. American Battlefields Trust, “Gettysburg.” ↩︎
3. National Park Service, “Antietam.” ↩︎
4. Cubby, “Explosion of the Steamer, ‘Sultana.'” ↩︎
5. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 307. ↩︎
6. Mississippi History Now, “Surviving the Worst.” ↩︎
7. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 308. ↩︎
8. Trudeau, “Death on the River.” ↩︎
9. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 310. ↩︎
10. Rushing, “Maritime Disaster and the Trial of Captain Speed.” ↩︎
11. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 312. ↩︎
12. Harvey, “The Sinking of the Sultana.” ↩︎
13. Library of Congress, “The Last Exchange.” ↩︎
14. Yager, Wilson M. “The Sultana Disaster.” ↩︎
15. The Sultana Association of Descendants and Friends. “The Disaster | Sultana Association.” ↩︎
16. Yager, Wilson M. “The Sultana Disaster.” ↩︎
17. Jennings, “What Happened to the Sultana?” ↩︎
18. The Sultana Association of Descendants and Friends. “The Disaster | Sultana Association.” ↩︎
19. Baker, Elias John. “”No Place in American Hist ‘No Place in American History’: Remembering and F “: Remembering and Forgetting the getting the Sultana Disaster.” 77. ↩︎
20. Baker, Elias John, “No Place in American History” ↩︎
21. McElreath, David Hughes, et al. (PDF) Chapter 13 The Sultana Disaster ↩︎
22. McElreath, et al. (PDF) Chapter 13 The Sultana Disaster ↩︎
23. Yager, Wilson M. “The Sultana Disaster.” ↩︎
24. Baker, “No Place in American History” ↩︎
25. Appalling circumstance! The President dead! Escape of the Murderer!. Herald Extra, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1865. Periodical. ↩︎
26. McElreath, et al. (PDF) Chapter 13 The Sultana Disaster ↩︎

References for Timeline

1. Bill, “S.S. Sultana Disaster.”
2. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 307.
3. Library of Congress, “The Last Exchange.”
4. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 310.
5. Josefsson, “Marine Steam Boilers and Boiler Accessories.”
6. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 313.
7. Bankes, “Helena, Arkansas. April 26, 1865. Ill-Fated Sultana.”
8. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 314.
9. Wikipedia contributors, “History of Memphis, Tennessee.”
10. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 315.
11. WVTF. “The SS Sultana,”
12. Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 316.
13. Rushing, “Maritime Disaster and the Trial of Captain Speed.”
14. Switzer, “Tragedy on the Mississippi.”