Story of Sultana tragedy finally will be told
By Roy Ockert
June 2, 2015
The steamship Sultana, which exploded, burned and sank in the Mississippi River near Marion on April 27, 1865, may eventually gain its rightful place in American history, thanks to a determined group of historians and descendants of its victims.
Although few Americans have ever heard of the Sultana, it still ranks as the greatest loss of lives in U.S. maritime history. While the Sultana was a fraction the size of the storied Titanic, some 1,800 people died when it sank, about 300 more than on the Titanic.
Yet my college U.S. history book doesn’t even mention the Sultana, and that oversight hasn’t been corrected in subsequent texts. Civil War chronologies, plentiful online today, don’t list it. Most history professors don’t mention it.
Louis Intres, an adjunct instructor of history at Arkansas State University, is an exception. In fact, he became obsessed with the Sultana’s story about 25 years ago. He shared that story with members of the Kiwanis Club of Jonesboro last week, not long after a celebration of the 150-year anniversary.
The celebration included the April 29 world premiere in Memphis of a soon-to-be-released documentary, “Remember the Sultana.” The film was produced through Kickstarter, the crowd-funding organization, with 930 backers contributing $108,156.
The executive producer and narrator is Sean Astin, best known for his role as Hobbit sidekick Samwise Gamgee in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Some of Intres’ research is included in the film, and the producers are now working on distribution.
Why the story isn’t already a major motion picture or television feature is a mystery. It’s so compelling that if it happened today, Marion would be overrun by network satellite trucks. Yet in the shattered United States of 1865, the Sultana tragedy rated little or no mention in newspapers of the day, one reason that history has largely ignored it.
The New York Times didn’t have an extensive report until May 4 and then ran the story deep inside the edition. “It is now ascertained that there were 2,300 people on board the ill-fated Sultana, and 786 have been found alive,” the report said. Later a pilot was quoted as denying that the board was crowded.
That certainly wasn’t true.
The side-wheel Sultana, completed at Cincinnati in 1861, was 260 feet long, powered by four tubular boilers. Intended as a luxury liner, it was certified to carry 376 passengers and 85 crew members. However, the Civil War intervened, and like many other paddle-wheelers, the Sultana was commissioned to carry Union soldiers and supplies up and down the Mississippi.
On its final voyage the Sultana left Vicksburg with more than 2,500 people on board, including as many as 2,300 Union soldiers who had been prisoners of war at the Confederate prisons in Andersonville, Ga., and Cahawba, Ala. Most of those soldiers, veterans of major battles, were in bad shape because of their war injuries and the horrible conditions at those prisons. In 14 months of operation the open-air prison camp at Andersonville housed about 45,000 POWs, of whom 13,000 died while there.
For the survivors freedom meant a chance finally to go home.
However, Intres said the situation gave unscrupulous steamboat operators and military officers an opportunity to make money. The Union Army contracted with the steamboat companies to transport troops back upriver — $5 per soldier, $10 per officer. J.C. Mason, captain and part owner of the Sultana, offered a kickback to Reuben Hatch, the Army’s chief quartermaster in Vicksburg, to send him passengers.
For that reason, Intres explained, the Sultana took on every ex-POW it could hold while two other steamships were sent away virtually empty. One soldier later said, “We were driven on like so many hogs until every foot of standing room was occupied.” The decks sagged and had to be reinforced, and at one point when soldiers crowded to one side for a picture, the ship almost capsized.
Meanwhile, Mason had a leaking boiler patched and on April 24 headed up the river.
After stopping in Memphis, the journey continued. But some seven miles north, about 2 a.m., the leaking boiler exploded, sending shrapnel into two others that also exploded, killing many passengers and crew instantly. That left a gaping hole in the center of the ship, and fire began to consume the rest as it started to drift back downriver.
Survivors tried to get away in any manner possible, but spring flooding on the river made that even more difficult. Intres said many of the soldiers weren’t in condition to swim anyway.
Many residents of Marion, hearing the explosion, helped pull people out of the water. The Times article credited one steamer with saving 200 lives. The exact number who died will never be known, but the recovery of corpses continued for months afterward.
Despite the heavy loss of life, America barely noticed. Less than three weeks earlier Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, then five days later President Lincoln was assassinated. His funeral train to Springfield, Ill., grabbed headlines for two weeks, and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was captured and killed on the day before the Sultana disaster.
Thus, the event went mostly unreported.
Today the remains lie 37 feet deep in a soybean field near Mound City, covered by silt and sand carried by the river, which now passes more than a mile away. A temporary museum recently opened in Marion, and the story, at last, is being told.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.