What is arguably the most important part to the story of the sinking of the SS Sultana is the officers involved in orchestrating the disaster. It is necessary to understand that none of this would have ever happened if it were not for their greed and carelessness when handling the situation. The consequences that befell them in the aftermath were not nearly as harsh as would be expected for an incident of such grave nature, and yet such negligence should’ve arguably been punished more harshly. The three men that will be further described in this section have been chosen for further analysis because of their crucial roles in causing the sinking, with the word “causing” being utilized because they didn’t just facilitate the disaster, but actively caused it with their mismanagement. While there were many other key players in the story, these three had the most impact and were in such positions of authority to control the outcome of events. While the rest of the themes relating to the sinking of the SS Sultana describe and help us understand the disaster in greater detail, they all tie back to carelessness.
Captain James Cass Mason
James Cass Mason was born around 1831 in Lynchburg, Virginia, but was brought to Missouri as a child and grew up beside the Missouri River. As a young adult, he worked on a few steamboats there and eventually came to be master and owner of a few boats. In 1860, he married the daughter of a well-known steamboat magnate, gaining possession of the steamboat Rowena (named after his wife). In 1863, during the civil war, Mason, while captaining the Rowena, was stopped for a routine inspection by a Union gunboat. He was found to be transporting 2,000 pairs of pants for the confederacy and so his ship was impounded and Mason was imprisoned. He was eventually released, but his ship remained confiscated. 2
The Rowena would later sink near Illinois while in government service, and Mason later came into ownership of the Belle Memphis. He entered into a race with this ship, winning the race against the SS Sultana.3 Impressed by the SS Sultana’s performance, he later acquired a quarter share in the boat when it came to market.4
The Union captured Vicksburg from the Confederates in 1864, and with the Mississippi river now running freely to the sea for the Union, many steamboats began to make runs from St. Louis to New Orleans. Mason began to hurt for cash around this time, and so, as captain of the SS Sultana, he began to hurt for cash and sell off many of his shares of the boat. With news of Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, Mason, who was in Cairo, Illinois at the time, carried an armload of newspapers bearing news of Lincoln’s death down the Mississippi River. While stopped at Vicksburg, he was approached by Colonel R.B. Hatch, who, knowing that Mason was hurting for cash, offered him a deal. If Mason agreed to give him some of the government stipend of soldiers transported ($2.75 per soldier, $8 per officer), he would have 1,000 soldiers waiting to be transported for him at Vicksburg. Naturally, due to his greed, Mason agreed to transport these troops,5 even while knowing the ship had a capacity much lower than the initially suggested troop transport load of 1,000 men.
Before entering Vicksburg, Mason consulted with his engineer about the faulty boiler, and even with the knowledge that the boiler was in no shape to perform such a task, he ordered a temporary patch to be placed upon the boiler and had the ship continue onwards.6 While many different factors played into the actual explosion of the ship, perhaps the most direct was the fact the boiler was in no condition to perform at its best or beyond regular capacity, and exploded as a result of the unnecessary stress placed upon it. If Mason had taken more care to repair the boiler or stopped the operation altogether, disaster would have been prevented. But because of his greed and negligence, Mason directly caused the explosion by ignoring such a large problem with the ship in favor of making a lot of money.
While Mason is very directly at fault for this disaster, it is worthwhile to recognize that after the initial overloading of the SS Sultana, he protested the overloading of the ship to no avail.7 For a moment, he understood the error of their (the Captain’s and Colonel’s) ways, and spoke up against the process. Even so, he did not make enough of an effort, and still decided to go through with the transport while understanding there were tremendous problems with the endeavor. He could have made more of an effort to report the issue to the higher ups, or simply refuse to captain the ship, but instead, he went and drove the ship to its doom because he needed to earn that stipend he was promised and was willing to ignore the issues at hand to achieve this goal. Of all the authorities involved in orchestrating this disaster, perhaps the most guilty is James Cass Mason, who earned his punishment in the explosion of the SS Sultana. He was last seen amidst the fires on deck desperately trying to save the passengers in the water by throwing down to them whatever could float so they could stay above the current.8
Captain Frederick Speed
Before enlisting into the Union Army, Frederick Speed started his working career as a lawyer from the state of Maine. He enlisted with the 5th Maine Infantry in April of 1961 and quickly became a Sergeant Major and then a Lieutenant. After taking part in the First Battle of Bull Run in Manasses, Virginia, he was appointed as adjutant in the 13th Maine Infantry Regiment. He and his regiment would participate in many notable battles over the course of the war, including the capture of New Orleans in 1862 and the siege of Port Hudson in 1863. In 1865, Speed was promoted to Captain and appointed as Assistant-Adjutant General and stationed in Vicksburg. In this position, he would oversee logistics like troop movements and prisoner transports.10
In the process leading up to and during the loading of the SS Sultana, Speed made many careless mistakes and exhibited many cases of plain negligence that, if he had corrected them or made the right decision at the time, could have greatly altered the course of the disaster for the better. With the multiple accusations of fraud and bribery being pointed around by the Captains, a layer of fear of conviction permeated Speed’s mind and altered his decision making capability. Speed first suspected Kerns of accepting bribes due to a delay in the previous shipment of troops, and later Williams suspected Speed of delaying the arrival of the troop shuttle train because he was accepting a bribe. Even more so, Kerns later suspected that both Williams and Speed were bribed by the captain of the SS Sultana, Captain Mason, and both Williams and Speed suspected the same thing of Kerns.11 The pointing of fingers in each direction by all the captains would lead Speed to think hastily and in the interest of preserving his own reputation and position. This caused him to load as many men as possible as fast as possible onto the Sultana in an effort to appease the higher-ups and make himself look more efficient and better to them.
Careless as it may be, Speed at least understood that the ship was overcrowded after it had been loaded, giving him the opportunity to reverse his wrongdoings and prevent potential disaster. He, as it turned out, did not do this, and reported to General Dana Napoleon that everything was in order with the SS Sultana and that its passengers were comfortably seated,12 sending them off to their doom knowing that the vessel was overcrowded and not intervening in favor of speeding up the operation13 and preserving his reputation. The faulty boiler of the SS Sultana exploded under the tremendous pressure of 150 pounds caused by the overcrowding of the ship.14 Even though the lack of repairs made to the boiler did play a part in its explosion, without the overcrowding it may have made it all the way to its destination and those poor Union soldiers who had endured so much struggle during the events of the war would have seen their families again. Speed prevented this from happening with his carelessness, and did not suffer proper consequences for his wrongdoings, going on to live a normal life in Vicksburg.15
Colonel R.B. Hatch
A surprisingly little amount of information is known about the early and personal life of Colonel Reuben Hatch of the Union Army. He played a pivotal role in this area of history in the civil war as well as other scandals before and after the disaster, yet he appears to be someone that the history books almost completely overlooked. This problem has already been underscored in previous analysis of the SS Sultana disaster, and further can be found in this article, “The Search for a Photo of the Man Behind the Sultana Disaster.”17 While picture evidence for his existence is near impossible to acquire, there have been letters and documents certifying his existence, such as this news paper clipping of a letter to the Chicago Journal from Hatch, seen on the right of this text block.
While Hatch was largely overlooked in American history and is unknown to many, his role in the destruction of the SS Sultana was anything but forgettable. Hatch was stationed at Vicksburg and was instructed by higher-ups to procure transportation for the troop transport that would soon be underway, and so he acquired the SS Sultana for such a duty.18 Upon the arrival of the ship, as stated in the previous section dedicated to Captain Mason, Hatch proposed to Mason that they could both make a lot of money from the government stipend if they overloaded the SS Sultana. Mason, in dire need of money, accepted this deal, and Hatch had the rest of the prison camp available and ready for transport when the ship docked at Vicksburg. Hatch demonstrated how far his greed would go in this case, as he knew that the ship was only meant to seat around 376 men, yet he allowed the boat to be overloaded beyond capacity so that he could profit off the endeavor.19 Hatch didn’t even need the money as desperately as Mason did, arguably making his actions more inexcusable. Though Mason’s actions already were inexcusable, one can at least understand it was a moment of desperation for him. In the case of Hatch, however, he just wanted to get rich by risking the lives of good Union men. In the end, such overcrowding caused the demise of most troops onboard, and Hatch walked away scot-free. This came as a result of his connection to the Secretary of State for Illinois and financial backer of Abraham Lincoln, Ozias Hatch, who was also Reuben Hatch’s brother.20 Hatch never faced retribution for his greed, and his careless actions went relatively overlooked in American history and the remembrance of this tragedy.
Further signification of his existence can be found through song, in this blues ballad by the band Dirt Farm about how there is no photographic information about Reuben B. Hatch, even though he is so integral to the SS Sultana disaster. This further underscores just how strange of a phenomenon it is that Hatch is so important to this story, yet little photographic proof of his existence is available.
Footnotes
- Sultana Disaster Museum, “Captain James Cass Mason.” ↩︎
- Sultana Disaster Museum, “Captain James Cass Mason.” ↩︎
- Find A Grave, “Captain James Cass Mason.” ↩︎
- Sultana Disaster Museum, “Captain James Cass Mason.” ↩︎
- Sultana Disaster Museum, “Captain James Cass Mason.” ↩︎
- Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 310. ↩︎
- Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 312. ↩︎
- Find A Grave, “Captain James Cass Mason.” ↩︎
- Swanson, “Frederic Speed.” ↩︎
- Lund, “The Burden of Captain Speed.” ↩︎
- Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 311. ↩︎
- Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 312. ↩︎
- Lund, “The Burden of Captain Speed.” ↩︎
- Harvey, “The Sinking of the Sultana.” ↩︎
- Rushing, “Maritime Disaster and the Trial of Captain Speed.” ↩︎
- “Pike County Democrat.” ↩︎
- Demirel, “The Search.” ↩︎
- Yager, “Tennessee Historical Quarterly,” 308. ↩︎
- Lowrey, “The worst Civil War tragedy few remember.” ↩︎
- Guarneri, “Vindicating Lincoln,” 51. ↩︎