The most terrible steamboat disaster in history was probably the loss of the U.S.S. Sultana in on April 27, 1865. Some 1,700 returning Union Veterans died... yet the tragedy got very few headlines. Late in April, the Mississippi River stood at flood stage. Four years of war had ruined many levees and dikes, and in the lower reaches of the river, the foaming water was over the banks for miles.
The war-weary Union soldiers in the South had but one thought, they wanted to go home. Vicksburg had been turned into a great repatriation center, and here were gathered thousands Union "prisoners of war" just released from the horrors of prison compounds like Andersonville. They waiting in Vicksburg, Mississippi for transportation back home.
More than any other soldiers, these were impatient to get started. Prison camps in the Civil War were hard places, in the North and South alike. Most of the survivors were little better than semi-invalids. Now their minds had no room for anything but a feverish desire to get North to their mid-western homes, where they could see their families, get out of uniform, and have the rest, care and good food they needed so badly.
Most of them would go by river, and as April came to an end, a huge contingent was slated to travel on the Sultana.The Sultana was a typical side-wheeler ship built at Cincinnati in 1863 for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. She was registered at 1,719 tons and carried a crew of 85, and for 2 years it had been on a regular run between New Orleans, Louisiana and St. Louis, Missouri. From War Department records, it is known that it frequently carried Army personnel up and down the river.
The Sultana left New Orleans on the 21st, on what looked like a regular run. She had from 75 to 100 cabin passengers, and a cargo which included 100 hogsheads of sugar and 100 head of assorted livestock. By law, it could carry 376 persons including her crew. She was commanded by Capt. J.C. Mason of St. Louis, who had a reputation as a good, careful riverman. On the evening of the 24th, the Sultana made a regular stop at Vicksburg to take on passengers and cargo. After it had tied up, an engineer made a disturbing discovery; the boilers were leaking rather badly. It was determined to lay up briefly, draw fires, and repair boilers and machinery before going up river to the scheduled stops at Tennessee (Memphis and Cairo), Kentucky (Evansville and Louisville) and Ohio (Cincinnati). The repair gang got to work, and the job was done more quickly than had been anticipated.
Meanwhile, the Sultana was taking on passengers. A large number of repatriated Union prisoners of war were to go North on this steamer, and the men were so desperately eager to start that the authorities decided not to make out the muster rolls in advance, as usual. Instead, the rolls would be made out onboard, after the vessel had left Vicksburg.
Boarding the vessel for the voyage home seemed to put new life into the ex-prisoners. Weak as most of them were, they were shouting, singing, and jesting as they came aboard, as lighthearted a crowd as ever came up a gangplank.They came in almost unmanageable numbers, far beyond the Sultana's rated capacity. Army reports do not give the exact number, but apparently it was somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000. In addition, 2 companies of armed soldiers came aboard. Altogether, there were probably some 2,300 people onboard when it left. They packed the steamer from top to bottom hull, cabins, Texas deck, even the pilothouse. The ship had 6 times as many passengers as she had been designed to carry.
Somehow, the Sultana got clear of the wharf and went puffing upstream, breasting a current made stronger than usual by the river's flood stage. Mason seemed to be a bit worried. He cautioned the men not to crowd to one side of the boat when a landing was made, because there were so many of them it might cause serious trouble. But for 48 hours after casting off the Vicksburg Wharf, the Sultana went on without trouble, making a few scheduled stops and on the evening of April 26, docking at Memphis.
While the Sultana was at Memphis, a leaky boiler gave more trouble. Again the repair gang was called in and the leak was repaired.
By 2:00 A.M. on the 27th, the Sultana was just a few miles north of Memphis. It was making progress, but progress was slow; the current was powerful, the boilers were tired, the load was much greater than usual. The Sultana swung 'round a bend and began to labor her way past a cluster of islands known as the "Hen and Chickens."
Then it happened. The leaky boilers gave up. They quit holding the heavy pressure of steam and suddenly exploded with a tremendous crash that was heard all the way back to Memphis. Back at Memphis, the watch on U.S.S. Grosbeak, a river gunboat, saw the light and heard the noise. The skipper was called, and he had them cast off the mooring lines and the Grosbeak went pounding up the river. Other steamers on the Memphis waterfront did likewise, hurrying against the strong current to give any help they could give.
It was a loosing race. The Sultana had been half blown apart by the terrific force of the explosion. Hundreds of sleeping soldiers were blown into the river. With them went great chunks of twisted machinery, a shower of red-hot coals that hissed and spurted as they hit the river, and great fragments of wood, cabin furniture, railings, deck beams, half of the steamboat had simply disintegrated.
The water was icy-cold, many of them could not swim, and there was little wreckage to cling to. Men died by the hundreds in the water near the wreck. They had been half-starved for months and were in no physical shape to swim even if they had known how.
Fire followed the explosion. The blast scattered hot coals from the furnaces all over the midships section of the steamer, and in moments the disabled vessel was on fire. The upper works were all collapsed, there was a huge, gaping hole in the middle of the hurricane deck and the flames were taking hold everywhere. So men who had not been knocked into the water went there of their own accord, willing to face anything rather than the spreading flames.
The Sultana was totally out of control by now and was drifting helplessly downstream. The deck supporting the main rank of passenger cabins, collapsed at one end, forming a horrible steep ramp down which into the hottest fire, slid screaming men and a tangle of wreckage. The huge twin smokestacks tottered uncertainly and then came crashing down, pinning men under them and holding them for the flames. The superstructure was falling in and the whole midships section was nothing better than a floating bed of coals. Survivors clung desperately to the bow and stern sections, which the fire had not yet reached and among them panic born. Men who were as yet unhurt began to throw themselves into the water, thrashing about frantically for some bit of wreckage that might help them stay afloat.
Hundreds of horribly burned and scalded men remained aboard the drafting hulk. Some had the strength and presence of mind to wrench doors or window blinds from their hinged, toss them overboard and jump in after them. Others simply huddled in the diminishing spaces that the flames had not yet reached and shouted, prayed or screamed helplessly for aid. Someone had gotten the steamer's lifeboats into the water and desperate, floating men tried to struggle aboard.So far the flames had not reached the bow, and there most of the survivors were jammed. Then the wind shifted, or perhaps the drafting boat swung around and took it from another direction,and the flames leaped forward. Most of the men preferred drowning to being burned alive, and leaped into the water.
At last, the boat struck a small island where there was a little grove of trees and some of those who still were aboard jumped ashore with ropes and made the hulk fast. Slowly, the worst of the flames died down, and finally with the mooring ropes still holding what was left of the Sultana gave up the hopeless struggle and sank, with a great noise of hissing and a huge pillar of smoke and steam rising toward the sky.
When the cold dawn light came, survivors dotted the river all the way to Memphis, clung to logs, rafts, spars, barrels, sections of railing and other bits of wood. All the rescue craft in Memphis put out to do what they could, hauling half-dead men out of the cold river. Hundreds of men were found on both shores of the Mississippi, cling to trees of driftwood, many of them badly burned and without clothing.
Altogether between 500 and 600 men were taken to the Memphis hospitals. Some 200 of these died soon afterward, either from burns or exposure and general debility. For many days after the disaster, a barge was sent out each morning to pick up dead bodies Each night it would come back to Memphis with its gruesome cargo.
So the Sultana was gone, and all that remained was to count the dead and to try to find out just why the disaster had happened. No definite count of the casualties was possible because there did not exist any really complete list of the number of men aboard at the time. Estimates of the number killed ranged from 1,500 to 1,900. Probably a median figure of 1,700 would be about right.
There were many rumors about the cause of the explosion, including a wholly baseless story that some vengeful ex-Confederate had put explosives in the coal. What is known is that the Sultana, fearfully overloaded, was struggling against an abnormally strong current with defective boilers exploded, the wrecked ship then took fire, and most of the men aboard were killed.
Oddly enough, this overwhelming catastrophe got only a moderate amount of newspaper attention at the time. The nation's mind was fixed on the closing scenes of the Civil War. Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was surrendering on the day before the disaster.The country had a new President (Lincoln had been dead 11 days when this happened) and was beginning to sorry about the problem of rebuilding the sadly shattered Union. The Army naturally, was not anxious to publicize the accident, and anyway, the country's most influential papers were published in the East, and the Sultana's victims were all from the Middle West, far away and across the mountains. There was an official inquiry, productive of a mass of documents to which nobody in particular paid very much attention and there, the affair ended. One of the worst marine disasters in history, but one which has a hard time finding its way into the history books.
Civil War Prison then Sultana Disaster

Hazzard's History of Henry Co. Indiana, 1822-1906
CHAPTER XXVIII - LOSS OF THE SULTANA.
History Of The Sultana Disaster
The Steamer Sultana was built at Cincinnati, Ohio, January, 1863, and was registered at 1,719 tons. She was a regular St. Louis and New Orleans packet, and left the latter port on her fatal trip, April 21, 1865 arriving at Vicksburg. Mississippi, with about two hundred passengers and crew on board. She remained there little more than one day, repairing one of her boilers and receiving on board 1,965 Federal soldiers and thirty five officers, just released from the Confederate prisons at Cahaba, Alabama, Macon and Andersonville, Georgia, and belonging to the States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan. Tennessee and West Virginia. Besides these there were two companies of infantry, under arms, making a grand total of 2,300 souls on board. There were also a number of horses and mules and over one hundred hogsheads of sugar, the latter being in the hold of the boat and serving as ballast.
Leaving Helena, the boat arrived at Memphis, Tennessee, about seven o'clock p. m. of the 26th of April. Here the sugar was unloaded, many of the exchanged prisoners helping the crew, thus making a little money for themselves. Sometime in the evening, probably well towards midnight, the boat steamed across the river to the coal bins or barges and, after taking on her supply of coal, started on, up the river, to Cairo, Illinois. All was quiet and peaceful, many of the soldiers, no doubt, after their long, unwilling fast in Confederate prisons, were dreaming of home and the good things in store for them there, but alas! those beautiful visions were dissipated by a terrific explosion. About two o'clock in the morning of the 27th, as the boat was passing through a group of islands known as the "Old Hen and Chickens," and while about opposite Tagleman's Landing, she burst one of her boilers and almost immediately caught fire, for the fragments of the boiler had cut the cabin and the hurricane deck in two and the splintered pieces had fallen, many of them, back upon the burning coal fires that were now left exposed. The light, dry wood of the cabins burned like tinder and it was but a short time ere the boat was wrapped in flames, burning to the water's edge and sinking. Hundreds were forced into the water and drowned in squads, those who could swim being unable to free themselves from those who could not and consequently perishing with them.
One thing favorable for the men was the fact that there was a little wind, hence the bow of the boat, having no cabin above it, would face the wind until the cabin was burned off the stern, then the boat gradually swung around, the unburned part of the boat above the water acting as a sail while that below acted as a rudder, and finally drove the men into the water. A part of the crowd was driven at a time, thus giving many of those who could swim or had secured fragments of the wreck an opportunity to escape. But there was one thing that was unfavorable, and that was the pitchy darkness of the night. It was raining a little, or had been, and occasional glimpses of timber were all that could be seen, even when the flames were the brightest, consequently the men did not know what direction to take. Another thing that added greatly to the loss of life is the fact that the river at this place is three miles wide, and at the time of the accident was very high and had overflowed its banks, and many, doubtless, perished after reaching the timber, being unable to climb a tree or crawl upon a log and thus get out of the water.
Among the passengers on board were twelve ladies, most of them belonging to the Christian or Sanitary Commission. One of these ladies, with more than ordinary courage, when the flames at last drove all the men from the boat, seeing them fighting like demons in the water in the mad endeavor to save their lives, actually destroying each other by their wild actions, talked to them, urging them to be men, and finally succeeded in getting them quieted down. The flames now began to lap around her with their fiery tongues. The men pleaded and urged her to jump into the water and thus save herself, but she refused, saying: "I might lose my presence of mind and be the means of the death of some of you." And so, rather than run the risk of becoming the cause of death of a single person, she folded her arms quietly over her bosom and burned, a voluntary martyr to the men she had so lately quieted.
It was claimed at the time of the explosion that the same had been purposely caused to destroy the lives of the Union soldiers aboard the vessel, but official investigation showed that this was not the case. The boilers of the Sultana had been constructed for the upper Mississippi River trade and had afterwards been put in a boat running on the lower Mississippi to New Orleans. The lower part of the river, being muddy, caused sediment to sink in the boilers and the boilers became leaky; this added to the fact that the boilers were too light and the vessel loaded to nearly her double capacity, were, in brief, the causes of the explosion. The vessel had been in continuous use and no opportunity given to clean the boilers.
Personal Narrative Of WILLIAM HENRY PEACOCK - SURVIVOR
William Henry Peacock was born in Tyler County, Virginia. May 28, 1845. His parents were Elijah and Mary (Wright) Peacock. They came to Indiana in 1846, settling near the village of Luray in Prairie Township, Henry County. He spent his youth on a farm and remained with his parents until he was seventeen years old, when he enlisted December 15, 1863, in Company G, 9th Indiana Cavalry, and was mustered into the service of the United States, as a private, January 21, 1864. Later he was appointed a Corporal of his company.
He was captured at Sulphur Branch Trestle, Alabama, September 25, 1864, and was confined in the Confederate prison at Cahaba, Alabama, until March, 1865. During his captivity, he suffered from privations of a most aggravated character. The food especially was of a scanty and unsanitary character, the daily ration consisting of one quart of coarse corn meal, ground cob and all. When captured, he was in robust health and weighed 197 pounds; when released, his weight was 81 pounds, and his health so shattered that he did not fully recover until long after the war.
When released from Cahaba on parole, he was sent to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he remained until the arrival of the steamboat Sultana, on which he and many hundreds of other paroled soldiers embarked April 25, 1865 homeward bound. The vessel reached Memphis. Tennessee, on the evening of April 26th. Leaving there later in the same evening, the boat was gliding smoothly through the waters of the Mississippi, when without warning, she was shaken from stem to stern by the explosion of her boiler and immediately burst into flames.
Mr. Peacock, in his vivid recollections of the event, says:

"When the explosion occurred, I was on that part of the boat where the officers' berths were located, called the 'Texas,' in front of the pilot house. There were four of my comrades with me, but of the five, I alone was saved. The others perished by fire or were drowned in the icy waters of the river.

Enoch Nation and myself, when the explosion took place, fell back on the boat together and were covered with the flying debris. Freeing ourselves from this, we started to find some escape from the impending doom. Enoch went into the flames and was never heard of afterwards.

I climbed to the wheel house, which was torn and wrecked, and there, picking up a piece or two of timber, I plunged with them into the river. I started down stream, struggling and battling with the waves, until some distance below Memphis, where I was rescued and taken to the hospital in that city. When rescued, I was entirely naked, except for a pair of drawers, one stocking and a handkerchief around my neck. The explosion was a terrible fatality and the impression made upon my mind by its sufferings and horrors can never be erased.

April 30, 1865, I left Memphis by boat for Cairo, Illinois, and thence I went by rail to Indianapolis. There I was furloughed home, but afterwards returned to Indianapolis, where I received my full pay and allowances and my final discharge from the army, June 25, 1865."

CONFEDERATE PRISON, CAHABA, ALABAMA.
It is a coincidence that the Henry County soldiers on the Sultana, both the lost and saved, were all confined in the same Confederate prison at Cahaba, Alabama; they were all released at the same time; with other released prisoners they went across the country to Vicksburg, Mississippi, together; and then, still in company, they boarded the steamer Sultana, which afterwards exploded its boilers and sent so many souls into eternity.
Cahaba was the first capital of Alabama, situate on the Alabama River, in Dallas County, six miles from the present city of Selma, in that State. No vestige of Alabama's first seat of government now remains. During the Civil War, an old brick cotton shed at Cahaba was turned into a prison for Federal soldiers, and was commonly called "Castle Morgan," after the daring raider of that name.
It is stated that the density of the population of this prison was greater than that of Andersonville and the mortality fully as great. The restricted accommodations, however, prevented such a large gathering of prisoners here, as at Andersonville. The greatest number confined in Cahaba, at any one time, was less than three thousand, whereas, at Andersonville, at the time of the greatest mortality, there were thirty two thousand.

Additional Resources
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War, A Narrative, Red River to Appomattox. New York: Random House, Inc, 1974.
Harris, W. Stuart. Dead Towns of Alabama. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1977.
Hurst, Jack. Nathan Bedford Forrest, A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Owens, David M. The Devil's Topographer: Ambrose Bierce and the American War Story. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
Wyeth, John Allen. That Devil Forrest, The Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959.

U.S.S. Sultana

The most terrible steamboat disaster in history was
probably the loss of the U.S.S. Sultana in on April 27,
1865. Some 1,700 returning Union Veterans died... yet
the tragedy got very few headlines. Late in April, the
Mississippi River stood at flood stage. Four years of war
had ruined many levees and dikes, and in the lower
reaches of the river, the foaming water was over the
banks for miles.
The war-weary Union soldiers in the South had but one
thought, they wanted to go home. Vicksburg had been
turned into a great repatriation center, and here were
gathered thousands Union "prisoners of war" just
released from the horrors of prison compounds like
Andersonville. They waiting in Vicksburg, Mississippi for
transportation back home.
More than any other soldiers, these were impatient to get
started. Prison camps in the Civil War were hard places, in
the North and South alike. Most of the survivors were little
better than semi-invalids. Now their minds had no room for
anything but a feverish desire to get North to their mid-
western homes, where they could see their families, get out
of uniform, and have the rest, care and good food they
needed so badly.
Most of them would go by river, and as April came to an end,
a huge contingent was slated to travel on the Sultana. The
Sultana was a typical side-wheeler ship built at Cincinnati in
1863 for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. She was
registered at 1,719 tons and carried a crew of 85, and
for 2 years it had been on a regular run between New
Orleans, Louisiana and St. Louis, Missouri. From War
Department records, it is known that it frequently carried
Army personnel up and down the river.
The Sultana left New Orleans on the 21st, on what looked
like a regular run. She had from 75 to 100 cabin passengers,
and a cargo which included 100 hogsheads of sugar and 100
head of assorted livestock. By law, it could carry 376 persons
including her crew. She was commanded by Capt. J.C. Mason of
St. Louis, who had a reputation as a good, careful riverman. On
the evening of the 24th, the Sultana made a regular stop at
Vicksburg to take on passengers and cargo. After it had tied up,
an engineer made a disturbing discovery; the boilers were leaking
rather badly. It was determined to lay up briefly, draw fires,
and repair boilers and machinery before going up river to the
scheduled stops at Tennessee (Memphis and Cairo), Kentucky
(Evansville and Louisville) and Ohio (Cincinnati). The repair gang
got to work, and the job was done more quickly than had been
anticipated.
Meanwhile, the Sultana was taking on passengers. A large number
of repatriated Union prisoners of war were to go North on this
steamer, and the men were so desperately eager to start that
the authorities decided not to make out the muster rolls in
advance, as usual. Instead, the rolls would be made out onboard,
after the vessel had left Vicksburg.
Boarding the vessel for the voyage home seemed to put new life
into the ex-prisoners. Weak as most of them were, they were
shouting, singing, and jesting as they came aboard, as lighthearted
a crowd as ever came up a gangplank.They came in almost
unmanageable numbers, far beyond the Sultana's rated capacity.
Army reports do not give the exact number, but apparently it was
somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000. In addition, 2 companies of
armed soldiers came aboard. Altogether, there were probably
some 2,300 people onboard when it left. They packed the steamer
from top to bottom hull, cabins, Texas deck, even the pilothouse.
The ship had 6 times as many passengers as she had been designed
to carry.
Somehow, the Sultana got clear of the wharf and went puffing
upstream, breasting a current made stronger than usual by the
river's flood stage. Mason seemed to be a bit worried. He
cautioned the men not to crowd to one side of the boat when a
landing was made, because there were so many of them it might
cause serious trouble. But for 48 hours after casting off the
Vicksburg Wharf, the Sultana went on without trouble, making
a few scheduled stops and on the evening of April 26, docking
at Memphis.
While the Sultana was at Memphis, a leaky boiler gave more
trouble. Again the repair gang was called in and the leak was
repaired.
By 2:00 A.M. on the 27th, the Sultana was just a few miles
north of Memphis. It was making progress, but progress was
slow; the current was powerful, the boilers were tired, the
load was much greater than usual. The Sultana swung 'round
a bend and began to labor her way past a cluster of islands
known as the "Hen and Chickens."
Then it happened. The leaky boilers gave up. They quit holding
the heavy pressure of steam and suddenly exploded with a
tremendous crash that was heard all the way back to Memphis.
Back at Memphis, the watch on U.S.S. Grosbeak, a river gunboat,
saw the light and heard the noise. The skipper was called, and
he had them cast off the mooring lines and the Grosbeak went
pounding up the river. Other steamers on the Memphis
waterfront did likewise, hurrying against the strong current
to give any help they could give.
It was a loosing race. The Sultana had been half blown apart
by the terrific force of the explosion. Hundreds of sleeping
soldiers were blown into the river. With them went great chunks
of twisted machinery, a shower of red-hot coals that hissed and
spurted as they hit the river, and great fragments of wood,
cabin furniture, railings, deck beams, half of the steamboat
had simply disintegrated.
The water was icy-cold, many of them could not swim, and
there was little wreckage to cling to. Men died by the hundreds
in the water near the wreck. They had been half-starved for
months and were in no physical shape to swim even if they had
known how.
Fire followed the explosion. The blast scattered hot coals from
the furnaces all over the midships section of the steamer, and in
moments the disabled vessel was on fire. The upper works were
all collapsed, there was a huge, gaping hole in the middle of the
hurricane deck and the flames were taking hold everywhere. So
men who had not been knocked into the water went there of
their own accord, willing to face anything rather than the
spreading flames.
The Sultana was totally out of control by now and was drifting
helplessly downstream. The deck supporting the main rank of
passenger cabins, collapsed at one end, forming a horrible steep
ramp down which into the hottest fire, slid screaming men and a
tangle of wreckage. The huge twin smokestacks tottered
uncertainly and then came crashing down, pinning men under them
and holding them for the flames. The superstructure was falling
in and the whole midships section was nothing better than a
floating bed of coals. Survivors clung desperately to the bow
and stern sections, which the fire had not yet reached and
among them panic born. Men who were as yet unhurt began to
throw themselves into the water, thrashing about frantically for
some bit of wreckage that might help them stay afloat.
Hundreds of horribly burned and scalded men remained aboard
the drafting hulk. Some had the strength and presence of mind
to wrench doors or window blinds from their hinged, toss them
overboard and jump in after them. Others simply huddled in the
diminishing spaces that the flames had not yet reached and
shouted, prayed or screamed helplessly for aid. Someone had
gotten the steamer's lifeboats into the water and desperate,
floating men tried to struggle aboard.So far the flames had not
reached the bow, and there most of the survivors were jammed.
Then the wind shifted, or perhaps the drafting boat swung
around and took it from another direction,and the flames leaped
forward. Most of the men preferred drowning to being burned
alive, and leaped into the water.
At last, the boat struck a small island where there was a little
grove of trees and some of those who still were aboard jumped
ashore with ropes and made the hulk fast. Slowly, the worst of
the flames died down, and finally with the mooring ropes still
holding what was left of the Sultana gave up the hopeless
struggle and sank, with a great noise of hissing and a huge pillar
of smoke and steam rising toward the sky.
When the cold dawn light came, survivors dotted the river all
the way to Memphis, clung to logs, rafts, spars, barrels,
sections of railing and other bits of wood. All the rescue craft
in Memphis put out to do what they could, hauling half-dead
men out of the cold river. Hundreds of men were found on both
shores of the Mississippi, cling to trees of driftwood, many of
them badly burned and without clothing. Altogether between
500 and 600 men were taken to the Memphis hospitals. Some
200 of these died soon afterward, either from burns or
exposure and general debility. For many days after the
disaster, a barge was sent out each morning to pick up dead
bodies Each night it would come back to Memphis with its
gruesome cargo.
So the Sultana was gone, and all that remained was to count
the dead and to try to find out just why the disaster had
happened. No definite count of the casualties was possible
because there did not exist any really complete list of the
number of men aboard at the time. Estimates of the number
killed ranged from 1,500 to 1,900. Probably a median figure
of 1,700 would be about right.
There were many rumors about the cause of the explosion,
including a wholly baseless story that some vengeful ex-
Confederate had put explosives in the coal. What is known is
that the Sultana, fearfully overloaded, was struggling against
an abnormally strong current with defective boilers exploded,
the wrecked ship then took fire, and most of the men aboard
were killed.
Oddly enough, this overwhelming catastrophe got only a
moderate amount of newspaper attention at the time. The
nation's mind was fixed on the closing scenes of the Civil War.
Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston
was surrendering on the day before the disaster.The country
had a new President (Lincoln had been dead 11 days when this
happened) and was beginning to sorry about the problem of
rebuilding the sadly shattered Union. The Army naturally, was
not anxious to publicize the accident, and anyway, the
country's most influential papers were published in the East,
and the Sultana's victims were all from the Middle West, far
away and across the mountains. There was an official inquiry,
productive of a mass of documents to which nobody in
particular paid very much attention and there, the affair
ended. One of the worst marine disasters in history, but one
which has a hard time finding its way into the history books.

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