April 27,1865: The worst maritime tragedy in American history took place on the Mississippi River just north of Memphis, Tennessee. Built by the John Litherbury yard in Cincinnati, Ohio, registered at 660 tons the Sultana was launched on Jan. 3, 1863. In a double ceremony, her sister Luminary was launched the same day. Sultana was 260' long and had a beam of 42', and was registered to carry 376 passengers and a crew of 85. She was designed for the cotton trade, but due to the war she did not venture to the south until sometime in Jan. 1864.

Records show she had been used to transport Union troops during the closing months of the war. On Apr. 24, 1865 the Sultana departed Vicksburg, Miss. where she had picked up some 1,800 plus Union soldiers returning home from the war. Many of these men had been in southern prisons. The Confederacy had used the prisons for POW camps. Many of these were almost as bad as the Nazi concentration camps of World War 2. The most infamous of these was Andersonville. Little more than a death camp, Andersonville near Americus, Georgia took the lives of over 13,000 Union soldiers. Indeed the commander of the prison, Henry Wirz was executed on Nov. 10, 1865 for war crimes. (hanged)

A good number of survivors from Andersonville were on the Sultana when she left Vicksburg. While in Vicksburg the Sultana had boiler trouble but, the boiler was repaired and she was allowed to continue on her voyage. She stopped in Helena, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee. The Sultana, now carrying over 2,000 people departed Memphis on her way to forever.

A few miles north of Memphis at about 3am the boiler exploded. The blast was tremendous to say the least. One survivor was reportedly thrown over 200' from the ship and the explosion was heard as far away as Memphis. Nobody knows how many people were killed in the blast, but that was just the beginning of the carnage. Hundreds of men were dumped into the cold black water of the Mississippi. Because of the appalling treatment they had received in the prisons many were too weak to swim and drowned. So while trying to get off the ship and get to shore the final blow struck. The Sultana began to burn.

The fire rapidly advanced through the ship and raged unchecked. Hundreds were burned to death. Some 200 died later in hospitals either from burns, scalding or espouser. In total 1,547 died in the tragedy. The death toll is really unknown but, 1,547 is the official number.

On of the greatest tragedy's of this story is almost nobody knows about this event. The worst disaster in American history. It did not get much play in the press because of the recent assassination of President Lincoln (Apr. 14-15) and the war's end being in sight. It is also fair to note that the Army was none to keen on publicizing the incident. So the Sultana, consumed by fire was relegated to some very small print in the newspaper, an investigation which found nothing to speak of and was more or less forgotten.

© 2006 Michael W. Pocock
MaritimeQuest.com

Sultana the night before the disaster.