On the 27th of April, 1865, the Sultana – a wooden steamboat – was making its way north
up the Mississippi River when, one after another, its boilers exploded, turning the ship into
a burning wreck. The official capacity of the Sultana was just 376… but due to a series
of bad decisions and unfortunate circumstances, more than 1,000 people would die in the incident,
making it the worst maritime disaster ever to take place within the United States.
The Sultana was built in 1863 in a boatyard in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a side-wheel
steamer, meaning that the paddle wheels which propelled her along were mounted on either
side of the vessel. She was designed to haul cargo along with a small number of passengers,
but was frequently put to use as a troop transport, as the American Civil War was in full swing
at the time of her construction. By 1865 the Sultana was under the command
of Captain James Cass Mason. It’s fair to say that Mason was an experienced Captain,
but that not all of his past experience had been good. For example, he had previously
had one ship seized from his possession after it was found to be carrying contraband – specifically
a shipment of 2,000 pairs of pants that he was transporting on behalf of the Confederacy.
As well as being Captain of the Sultana, Mason also owned a share in it... although he’d
been forced to reduce that share in recent years due to money troubles. He was, therefore,
on the lookout for ways to make a little extra cash.
An opportunity presented itself in April of 1865. The President of the United States,
Abraham Lincoln, had just been assassinated, and Mason was taking the Sultana down the
Mississippi River to deliver this unfortunate news to parts of the country that had been
cut off from telegraph communications during the war.
As he was delivering the bad news in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mason was approached by a quartermaster
who had a problem on his hands. Thousands of Union soldiers who had been held in nearby
prison camps had very recently been released. With the civil war entering its final days,
these men needed to be transported back home – and the United States Government was offering
a financial incentive to any steamboat captain who would help make this happen. If he was
willing to take some of these prisoners north up the Mississippi, Mason could earn himself
up to $8 per man… minus a small kickback for the quartermaster who set the whole thing
up, of course. Needless to say, Mason seized the opportunity.
He returned to Vicksburg a few days later, ready to take on board as many recently-released
passengers as he could carry. Of course, the legal capacity of the Sultana
was limited – it was supposed to hold no more than 376 people. At Vicksburg that day
it was loaded with many more than that. There are a number of reasons why this was allowed
to happen. Captain Mason, for one, wanted to make as much money as possible. The quartermaster
would be pocketing some of the cash too, and so was happy to load on more passengers than
he should. And the ex-prisoners themselves, many of whom were exhausted or injured, probably
wanted to get back home as soon as possible. A blind eye was turned to the legal capacity
of the vessel, and more than 2,000 ex-prisoners were loaded on board.
At the same time, a blind eye was also turned to the condition of the boilers. One had ruptured
a few days ago. To repair it properly would take two or three days… but those two or
three days could cost Mason a lot of money – in that time those valuable prisoners
would be snapped up and transported home by other captains of other vessels. Instead of
waiting for a proper fix, Mason had the burst seam simply hammered back into place and patched
over; a temporary repair that would hopefully last until something more permanent could
be put in place. This was a particularly risky choice to make,
since the boilers on board the Sultana were fire tube boilers. This unconventional type
of boiler was superbly efficient, but also somewhat dangerous. A constant water level
had to be maintained in all four boilers at all times. If any of the boilers were ever
allowed to run dry, it could cause heat damage that might lead to an explosion. Boilers could
run dry for all sorts of reasons, including their pipes becoming clogged with sediment,
or the pitch of the boat causing water to flow away from where it was supposed to be.
Still, despite knowing how difficult the boilers on board the Sultana could be, Captain Mason
wasn’t willing to sacrifice his payoff. He crammed the prisoners on board until the
decks were literally groaning and sagging with their weight, and then set off north
once more. As the Sultana started making its way back
up the Mississippi, it had on board more than five times as many people as it was designed
to hold… and this in addition to some cargo it was transporting. Even Captain Mason seemed
to have a few doubts about the situation at times, as he and his crew advised passengers
not to move around too much, lest they unbalance the overloaded boat.
In the end, though, the boat did not overbalance. Instead, just past Memphis at 02:00 in the
morning, one of the boilers exploded. The other boilers, damaged by the blast, soon
followed. The destruction which was wrought was enormous. A huge blast of steam smashed
through several crowded decks and destroyed the bridge. The explosion flung hundreds of
passengers into the water, and caused part of one deck to collapse down onto another,
trapping hundreds more. The chimneys toppled and the boat became a blazing, drifting wreck.
As the boat was consumed by flames, many passengers hurled themselves overboard. While this did
save them from the fire, there was little salvation to be had in the water. A combination
of pitch blackness, cold fast-flowing water, recent floods, and the fact that many on board
were weak and exhausted from their incarceration meant that a huge number of people could not
make it to shore, and drowned in the waters of the Mississippi.
Given the sudden nature of the disaster, there was no chance to send for help before the
ship was in pieces. Fortunately, another vessel was nearby, and came across the wreckage by
chance. The Bostona arrived about thirty minutes after the explosion, and pulled dozens of
people from the water. Other survivors were swept downstream as far as Memphis, where
they screamed for help as the current carried them past the waterfront. The first few survivors
plucked from the water there delivered news of the disaster, and sent every available
vessel back up the river to help. Finding survivors – or even bodies – would
be difficult work. Bodies would continue to turn up for weeks after the disaster, with
some floating downstream as far as Vicksburg, where they had originally boarded the Sultana.
Thought the exact death toll will never be known, most sources agree that at least 1,000
people lost their lives in the disaster, Captain Mason among them.
In the aftermath of the incident, survivors were well cared for. Many of them were hospitalised
in Memphis – a city which had in fact been occupied by Union soldiers during the war.
Despite this, the residents of Memphis welcomed the survivors, and even went out of their
way to help raise money for their medical care.
An investigation concluded that it was most likely a boiler running dry that had led to
the explosion. Given the condition of the boilers on board the Sultana this conclusion
should perhaps have been no surprise. The temperamental fire tube boilers were poorly
repaired, clogged with sediment from the Mississippi River, and dangerously under filled from the
start. While these conditions existed, it had only been a matter of time before an explosion
took place. As if to confirm the unsuitable nature of
fire tube boilers, two other ships with similar boilers exploded shortly after the sinking
of the Sultana, although neither incident was nearly as devastating. This series of
explosions lead to ships with fire tube boilers being banned on the Mississippi River, but
apart from this concession relatively little changed in the wake of this disaster. Nobody
was ultimately held responsible, and the news of the massive death toll was overshadowed
by the ending of the civil war, and President Lincoln’s assassination.
Today, as of 2015, the people who died on board the ship are remembered in a temporary
museum in Arkansas. They were ordinary people moved by extraordinary circumstance… and
in the end their lives were treated as extraordinarily cheap. For an anticipated bounty of just $8
a head, they were crammed onto an unsafe ship and taken north… the first step on what
should have been a journey home, but which for many turned into a journey that would
never be completed.