The Sultana
After the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederate government fled its capital of Richmond, Virginia and for the most part the Civil War was over, despite General Joseph Johnston’s army remaining defiantly in the field. Enterprising businessmen on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line began looking for ways to profit in the confusion, before military governments and martial law came to hamper private enterprise. Transporting former prisoners of war home was one such possibility. Parole camps were established near river ports, including Vicksburg, and prisoners were transferred from Southern camps such as Camp Sumter to the parole camps. Officially there was no government to which they could give their parole, but that was a minor difficulty when immediate profits were to be made.
From the parole camp many of the survivors of Camp Sumter, emaciated, sick and officially still members of the US Army, were readied for transportation north, via the steamboat Sultana on the Ohio River. Arrangements were made for the US government, through the Army’s quartermaster corps, to pay $5 per enlisted man transported and $10 per officer. Sultana was accordingly overloaded to the point of near swamping. Sultana had experienced problems with its boilers while en route to Vicksburg, but that did not stop its captain from loading his vessel with more than 1,900 “paroled” prisoners of war, along with crew members and at least 70 paying passengers who were no doubt displeased at the severely crowded conditions they found aboard.
For the next two days, Sultana struggled upriver against the spring floods, crippled by its failing boiler, vastly overloaded, and its crew hampered in their movements by the overcrowded conditions. When only a few miles north of Memphis during the early morning of April 27th the weakened boiler exploded, and the concussion caused the explosion of two others in short order. Sultana became a drifting, flaming, wreck overloaded with men weakened by their lengthy and debilitating captivity.
Although rescue operations on the busy river began almost immediately the combination of fire, the frigid water of the Mississippi in spring, and the weakness of many passengers made for a heavy death toll. About 760 survived. The official death count has never been confirmed, based in part on the number of additional passengers packed aboard beyond the official manifest in anticipation of collecting the princely sum of $5 per head.