The Sultana was a 260-foot-long wooden steamboat, built in Cincinnati in 1863, which regularly transported passengers and freight between St. Louis and New Orleans on the Mississippi River.. On April 23, 1865, the vessel docked in Vicksburg to address . But perhaps the best explanation is that after years of bloody conflict, the nation was simply tired of hearing about war and death. DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) People living along the Mississippi River watched warily Sunday as water levels rose in southeast Iowa and northwest Illinois, awaiting spring crests as floodwaters began . The temporary museum it has created near City Hall includes pictures, personal items from soldiers, pieces of the Sultana, and a 14-foot replica of the boat. The owners of the Effie Afton decided to take the railroad companies that had built the bridge to court. FS: Your handling of how the owners and crews of these vessels seemed to have not factored in the reality that dirty river water was not suitable for being used to create steam, and thus propulsion. It was the last wooden-hulled passenger boat to travel the Mississippi. On April 27, 1865, the steamboat Sultana exploded and sank while traveling up the Mississippi River, killing an estimated 1,800 people. (Post-Dispatch). Louis.". [4]:33,3435,38,4041, While the paroled prisoners, primarily from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia,[4]:226290 were brought from the parole camp to Sultana, a mechanic was brought down to work on the leaky boiler. Send to: Patrick Rash. All rights reserved. But there were many other reasons the event didn't get much attention at the time. Passing boats and bystanders on both sides of the Mississippi helped pull survivors from the muddy water. FS: What was the role played by the last Sultana in the Civil War, and how significant was that role? Daniel Jackson / May 29, 2021 Subscribe now and never hit a limit. The Sultana sank in the Mississippi River near Marion, and over the years, the wreck was eventually covered with silt. A couple billed as "a genuine giant and giantess" arrive in St. Louis for a visit. Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,169 people in what remains the worst maritime disaster in United States history. Train derails near Wisconsin-Iowa border; 2 cars float down Mississippi Most of its 91 passengers and crew were asleep. ", Discovery Gives New Ending To A Death At The Civil War's Close. A potential reader should care about this story because it shows that greed and corruption in the government is not a new thing. All 25 soldiers were rescued, historians say, and the Fogelman home became a refuge for Sultana survivors. Under the command of Captain James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana left St. Louis on April 13, 1865, bound for New Orleans. "A few weeks earlier, he might have been attacking the Sultana if it had come in.". After the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Louisiana, in July 1863 and the opening of the Mississippi, the Sultana was used to bring cotton from parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas that were now under Union control up north so that it could be sent to Eastern manufacturers that had been starving for the raw material. Although they knew that the water above Cairo was cleaner, the only problem they thought they faced by the dirtier lower Mississippi water was that they had to clean their boilers more often. Library of Congress [10] In 1880, the United States Congress, in conjunction with the War Department, reported the loss of life as 1,259. "The war had just ended a few weeks before," he says. THIS DAY IN HISTORY - Union soldiers die in steamship explosion - 1865 Experience showed that the rivers were briefly superior to rails as lines of communication. Although the patched boiler was not the cause of the disaster, it was certainly indicative that the Sultana had faulty boilers. The boat was 260 feet long and had an authorized capacity of 376 passengers and crew. The Princess was about six miles below Baton Rouge at Conrads Point when a teenage boy watching the boat glide along from a distance noted, A great column of white smoke suddenly went up from her and she burst into flames. The explosion was cataclysmic as all four huge boilers burst at once. Further back, the collapsing decks formed a slope that led down into the exposed furnace boxes. The May 9, 1989 the Des Moines Register newspaper listed 40 known sunken steamboats from the southwest corner of Iowa north just over 100 miles to Sioux City. The St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April 29, 1865, states that the "steamer Sultana left New Orleans on Friday evening the 21st, with about seventy cabin passengers, and about eighty five employees on the boat. "Somebody had came by and notified us. Her two side-mounted paddle wheels were driven by four fire-tube boilers. In his book recently published by the Naval Institute Press, Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana: The Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, author Gene Eric Salecker sheds new light on the Sultanas tragic fate. Cape Girardeau:Later renamed the River Queen, the vessel sank in 1968. And, the cost of a stateroom was not based on the wealth of the traveler. Author Q&ADestruction of the Steamboat Sultana, Fred Schultz has been in the publishing business since 1980 and was editor-in-chief of. It is also about a rescue effort that brought together people who had been at war just weeks earlier. By Lieutenant Commander Ralph P. Dillon, U. S. Naval Reserve. In 2012 and 2015, the river was low sufficient to additionally expose the USS Inaugural. When it got to Grand Tower Ill. catastrophe struck. On the other hand, the Sultana was an American steamboat carrying almost 100 percent American passengers, including almost 2,000 recently released Union prisoners-of-war returning home to their families. An outfield in flux. Tubular boilers were discontinued from use on steamboats plying the Lower Mississippi after two more steamboats with tubular boilers exploded shortly after the Sultana explosion. The Sultana was on its way from Vicksburg, Miss., to St. Louis when the explosion occurred, says Jerry Potter, a Memphis lawyer and author of The Sultana Tragedy. The Missouri History Museum had it on display from 1962 to 1996, and preserves it in storage. The train derailed in Crawford County at about 12:15 p.m. Two of the train's three locomotives and an unknown number of cars . However, the Upper Rapids and Lower Rapids were serious obstacles to navigate. On a landscape lacking roads but braided with bayous and rivers, travel via water was the only efficient means of transportation. Survivors panicked and raced for the safety of the water, but in their weakened condition, they soon ran out of strength and began to cling to each other. [11] The official count by the United States Customs Service was 1,547. Irregular river depth, sandbars and snags made steamboat travel on the Missouri slow and dangerous. The areas between the many flues clogged easily, especially since dirty river water carried much sediment, and were difficult to clean.

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