The Sultana Explodes
The Sultana left Vicksburg on April 24, and Mason told an army officer that the vessel had carried that many people before and the men were in good hands. The officer said to take good care of the soldiers because they deserved it. Tragically, a large proportion of them never made it home.
On April 26, the Sultana landed at Memphis to pick up coal after briefly stopping in Helena, Arkansas. It was there that a photographer named T.W. Bankes took a photo that clearly showed how overcrowded the vessel was. Yet it continued on its journey but at 2 am on the morning of April 27, 1865, calamity struck as one the vessel’s four boilers exploded.
It transpired that the reason why the Sultana was the last ship to leave Vicksburg was that one of its boilers sprang a leak. Instead of removing the bulge in the boiler and replacing it, Captain Mason ordered a quick fix with a piece of metal placed over the bulge. A full repair would have taken up to four days, and in that time, other ships may have arrived to take the passengers and the captain’s money.
It was the patched up boiler that exploded first followed soon after by the explosion of the two other boilers. Fire quickly spread throughout the wooden steamship and panic ensued amongst the passengers who could barely move let alone flee. Two smokestacks fell on the Sultana and crushed hundreds of people inside the Hurricane deck. The survivors jumped into the Mississippi rather than stay to fight the fire as the flames sped towards the stern.
Those who were not killed immediately by the explosion were either crushed to death in the stampede to abandon ship or else they drowned in the Mississippi. The water was still cold due to winter runoff, so many of those who jumped in died from hypothermia. An estimated 700 people made it to dry land at Memphis, but 200 of them died in hospital soon afterward.
The number of dead passengers would have been far greater only for the timely arrival of the steamer Bostona II. It was traveling downriver on its maiden voyage and came across the ghastly scene about one hour after the initial explosions. The crew of the Bostonia II probably saved well over 100 people. Dozens of other survivors were picked up by U.S. warships and docked steamships. What remained of the Sultana drifted for six miles before sinking off the coast of modern-day Marion, Arkansas.
Aftermath
Given the fact that the tragedy was clearly a case of negligence, greed and human error, it is astonishing to note that no one was ever found accountable and punished for the sinking of the Sultana. Only a Union officer by the name of Captain Frederic Speed was even charged with a crime in connection to the tragedy. He was initially found guilty of overcrowding, but the charge was overturned. Hatch resigned from the army so couldn’t be held accountable by a military court, and Mason died in the tragedy.
The exact number of victims is unknown although modern historians place the figure at 1,196 while others suggest the number is greater than the 1,512 that perished on board the Titanic. The official inquiry determined that the explosion was caused by a combination of careening, low water level and a faulty repair to one of the boilers. Obviously, the problem was exacerbated by the severe overcrowding which ensured the vessel was top heavy.
Despite the devastating nature of the tragedy, the sinking of the Sultana remains a mere footnote in American history. Indeed, the disaster was all but forgotten until the remains of the vessel were found in 1982. From 1885 onwards, survivors of the tragedy began attending reunions on an annual basis in Toledo, Ohio. Another group, comprising of survivors from Tennessee and Kentucky, began meeting in 1889 and shared the National Sultana Survivor’s Association title.
The groups met as close to the date of the disaster as possible, but only one person turned up in 1930. Jordan Barr was the last northern survivor as he died in 1938 and Charles M. Eldridge has the distinction of being the last known survivor of the sinking of the Sultana. He died on September 8, 1941. It is remarkable that this disaster is seldom mentioned and it is also a particularly grisly addition to the casualties of the U.S. Civil War.