The most recent investigation into the cause of the disaster by Pat Jennings, principal engineer of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which came into existence in 1866 because of the Sultana explosion, determined that three main factors led to the disaster: 1) The type of metal used in the construction of the boilers Charcoal Hammered No. Steamboat Princess Disaster - 64 Parishes Bridges, shipwrecks, islands, and secret spots on the Mississippi River Unlike many of the nautical discoveries in. One of the most horrific accidents occurred in 1838, when the Moselle, a fast and nearly new Ohio River steamboat, exploded off Cincinnati. "A few weeks earlier, he might have been attacking the Sultana if it had come in.". Appendix A - List of Steamboats on the Upper Mississippi River, 1823 After some time, the weakened twin smokestacks fell; the starboard smokestack fell backward into the blasted hole, and the port smokestack fell forward onto the crowded forward section of the upper deck, hitting the ship's bell as it fell. The jagged limbs could rip open the bottom of a steamboat. The Chicago Opera Troupe, a minstrel group that had traveled upriver on Sultana before getting off at Memphis, staged a benefit performance, while the crew of the gunboat Essex raised US$1,000 (equivalent to $17,702 in 2021) [14], In December 1885, the survivors living in the northern states of Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio began attending annual reunions, forming the National Sultana Survivors' Association. Since most steamboats of the time were constructed of wood covered with paint and varnish, fires were a significant concern. Nathan Smith eased the coal-burning steamer downstream through a narrow bend 80 miles below St. Louis. She then went a short distance upriver to take on a new load of coal from some coal barges and then, at about 1:00 AM, started north again. FS: In the course of your story, you declare that It is now possible to write a work of historical nonfiction without ever leaving home. How do you actually feel about that? [19][20] Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, the inventor of the coal torpedo, was a former resident of St. Louis and was involved in similar acts of sabotage against Union shipping interests. All 25 soldiers were rescued, historians say, and the Fogelman home became a refuge for Sultana survivors. hide caption. She also carried a crew of 85. Historian Ann Fabian writes that Lloyd even peddle[d] his book to the travelers who might soon wind up on the lists of the dead, who bought it and read it to pass the time on their own steamboat voyages. Each fire-tube boiler was 18 feet (5.5m) long and 46 inches (120cm) in diameter and contained 24 five-inch (13cm) flues which ran from the firebox to the chimney.[3]. Sultana (steamboat) - Wikipedia Lena Kent, a . Surviving the Worst: The Wreck of the Sultana at the End of the - MS The Sultana sank in the Mississippi River near Marion, and over the years, the wreck was eventually covered with silt. Nick Wall [Steamboat] - Encyclopedia of Arkansas "They had survived prison in one of the most hideous places the South had. Heroine (steamboat) | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture Through the corruption of Captain Reuben Hatch, a Union officer at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the captain of the Sultana, James Cass Mason, those 2,000 ex-prisoners were crowded onto a boat with a legal carrying capacity of only 376 passengers. Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard [1] in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. Barges still carry some goods on the river, but trains and trucks carry most of the freight in America. Concussion swept away the infrastructure, and the upper cabins, state rooms, and hurricane deck collapsed inward. The museum also features many artifacts from the Sultana Survivor's Association, as well as a fourteen-foot model replica of the boat. Most were Union soldiers, newly released from Confederate prison camps. "And the shrapnel, the steam and the boiling water killed hundreds.". In support of Louden's claim, what appeared to be a piece of an artillery shell was said to be recovered from the sunken wreck. Shewas a sidewheel Mississippi steamboat carrying nearly 2,000 releasedUnion prisoners-of-war back north at the end of the Civil War. On his trips up and down the river, Odis often took his wife, Rosa, along. The stops were reversed on the downstream journey as passengers, mail, and tons of freight including four-hundred-pound bales of cotton were loaded and unloaded. Steamboats carried plows and seed to new farmers settling in Nebraska in the 1850s and 1860s. While the Titanic caused more deaths, the great ocean liner was a British vessel and carried people from several different countries. Fred Schultz has been in the publishing business since 1980 and was editor-in-chief ofNaval History from 1993-2005. Designed to carry both freight and passengers, packet boats ranging from palatial Mississippi River sidewheelers to the smaller steamers common on rivers like the Cumberland or the Tennessee played a central role in the development of the inland rivers economy. Eventually the Sultana turned so that the wind was pushing the flames toward the bow, where 25 soldiers remained. By that standard, the loss of the Golden Eagle was a minor event. The city of Vicksburg was ravaged by the American Civil War, and so were the men who were about to board the steamboat Sultana. An estimated four hundred people were on board the Princess when it pulled out into the current of the river after 9 a.m. Because the boat was late, high boiler pressure had been maintained during the stop, and second engineer Peter Hersey was reported to have declared that he would make it to New Orleans on time if he had to blow her up. As a portent of the looming catastrophe, the Mississippi River was veiled in a dense fog. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. They tended to report what others thought these findings meant, but they very rarely added their own input, one way or another. In the 1820s, steamboats on the Mississippi carried lead from Julien Dubuque's lead mines near Dubuque. As to whether it is a good thing or not, yes, I believe that it is a good thing to do so much research and get so much information from the internet. The power of the boilers came with risk - the water levels in the fire tubes had to be carefully maintained at all times. Many Sultana survivors ended up on the Arkansas side of the river, which was under Confederate control during the war. [22], In 1903, another person reported that Sultana had been sabotaged by a Tennessee farmer who lived along the river and cut wood for passing steamboats. I copied everything I could find, even though I may never use the material. Publisher James T. Lloyd's 1856 book Lloyd's Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters, is illustrated by 32 woodcuts of explosions, fires, and foundering ships, chronicling a. Mrs. Lind's birthday cake was lost, but fellow evacuees serenaded her as morning sun warmed their island refuge. When railroads started carrying freight across the country, the days of the steamboats were over. Steamboat Disasters - Encyclopedia of Arkansas The steamer registered 1,719 tons[2] and normally carried a crew of 85. However, the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army overturned the guilty verdict because Speed had been at the parole camp all day and had not personally placed a single soldier on board Sultana. Burning of the Orline St. John, near Montgomery, Alabama, March 2, 1850. ", Ancestry.com, Texas Death Certificates, 19031980, Jennings, Pat "What Happened to the Sultana? However, the explosion of her boilers just above Memphis on 27 April 1865 put a terrible end to that endeavor. "It was like a tremendous bomb going off in the middle of where these men were," Potter says. Sometimes terrible accidents happened on the Mississippi too. The story of the Sultana isn't well-known even among people who live along the Mississippi. It has been going on for centuries. Many bodies were never recovered. He was a passenger aboard the Golden Eagle, the company's last steamboat, when it sank near Tower Island in the Mississippi River on May 18, 1947. Look for details such as clothing, technologies or buildings in old photographs to learn more about the past. Yet few know the story of the Sultana's demise, or the ensuing rescue effort that included Confederate soldiers saving Union soldiers they might have shot just weeks earlier. Or does it let would-be historians off the hook from paying their own dues for embarking on the composition of a piece of nonfiction? Wolf River. The most terrible steamboat disaster in history was probably the loss of the Sultana in 1865. ARCHERAt Galena, from St. Louis, Sept. 8, 1845; sunk by collision with steamer "Di Vernon", in chute between islands 521 and 522, five miles above mouth of Illinois River, Nov. 27, 1851; was cut in two, and sunk in three minutes, with a loss of forty-one lives. Human errorfailure to maintain safe boiler pressurewas determined to be the cause of the tragedy, and a pall was cast over the 1859 Mardi Gras celebrations. "And the entire center of the boat erupted like a volcano.". Passengers were blown apart or scalded by the hot water. However, they were not without hazards, as high-pressure steam boilers manufactured according to the science of the day were analogous to kegs of dynamite. 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. Throughout the war, Captain Hatch had shown incompetence as a quartermaster and competence as a thief, bilking the government out of thousands of dollars. (Post-Dispatch), Ruth Ferris, assistant curator at the Missouri Historical Society (now the History Museum), displays the steering wheel in the Golden Eagle pilot house as it went on display in the museum on May 2, 1962. Tucson: Fireship Press, 2009. A female fan exclaimed what a lovely shade of Cardinal in reference to the trim on the new uniforms. Fortunately, the sturdy railings around the twin openings of the main stairway prevented the upper deck from crushing down completely onto the middle deck. Explosion of the Oronoko, April 21, 1838, near Princeton, Mississippi. A year later, when the U.S. government established the Memphis National Cemetery[4]:206 on the northeast side of the city, the bodies were moved there. [4]:164 Other vessels joined the rescue, including the steamers Silver Spray, Jenny Lind, and Pocahontas, the navy ironclad USS Essex and the sidewheel gunboat USSTyler. The rest can be gotten through the internet, which can be a positive thingif done correctly. History of steamboats on the Mississippi: Lloyd's Directory of Disasters. Get up-close and in-depth when examining artifacts such as photographs. Throughout the 1800s, steamboat travel on Iowas rivers has impacted the states development and growth. As shown in my book, when steam navigation of American waterways first began, there were very little, if any, laws for safety. 2 likes, 0 comments - BHYHA (@bhyhapodcast) on Instagram: "On this day in 1865.The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killi." BHYHA on Instagram: "On this day in 1865.The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing 1,700 passengers including many discharged Union soldiers. Barrels of flour were emptied on the ground, and the terribly burned victims were rolled in it and placed in the shade. It was just weeks after the Civil War ended, Potter explains, and the vessel was packed with Union soldiers who'd been released from Confederate prison camps. In 1929, only two men attended the southern reunion. The current was calmer and the channel was deeper. The crew threw more wood on the fire. 1820 1830 April 21, 1838 - Oronoko Most of the passengers were asleep at the time Killed almost everyone either instantly or later from wounds it caused 109 people died 1840 Was traveling to St. Louis when it hit a snag and had several planks torn from the bottom of the boat Smith shouted at 2:20 a.m., suddenly unable to turn the steering wheel. After days in flood stage, the Mississippi River appeared to be at crest in Lansing, Iowa Friday evening as the river has spent hours below the max daily crest. Library of Congress FS: What was the role played by the last Sultana in the Civil War, and how significant was that role? The Capt. However, Sultana was a coal-burning boat and not a wood-burner. 2, a stern-wheel steamboat. The remains of a ship on the banks of the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La., on Oct. 17, 2022, after recently being revealed due to the low water level. ", 15th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, "Sultana: A Tragic Postscript to the Civil War", https://www.nationalboard.org/SiteDocuments/General%20Meeting/Jennings.pdf, "The Sultana Disaster (Coal Torpedo theory)", http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/civil-war-sabotage/, Sultana museum in Arkansas memorializes 1,169 people who died in river, "Surviving the Worst: The Wreck of the Sultana at the End of the American Civil War", "Blues in the Water, by King's German Legion", "Ardent Presents: Cory Branan "The Wreck of the Sultana", "Remember the Sultana | Film Threat - Part 2", Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1865, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sultana_(steamboat)&oldid=1152358259, Articles with incomplete citations from April 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Initially Capt. By eliminating the manpower required to row or paddle, often against powerful currents, steamboats fueled an exponential growth in trade and development. A Look Back The day the Golden Eagle steamboat sank in 1947. "The Arabia sank. Train derails into Mississippi River near Wisconsin community Blackened wooden deck planks and timbers were found about 32 feet (10m) under a soybean field on the Arkansas side, about 4 miles (6km) from Memphis. [17], In 1888, a St. Louis resident named William Streetor claimed that his former business partner, Robert Louden, made a confession of having sabotaged Sultana by the use of a coal torpedo while they were drinking in a saloon. I had learned so much more, and collected so many more first-person accounts from the people on board, from the rescuers, and from the people involved, that I knew I had to write a new tell-all book that would dispel, as well as verify, all of the stories, rumors, and myths surrounding the disaster. William "Buck" Leyhe, who had sold Eagle Packet Co. the year before, waits for rescue on Grand Tower Island after the Golden Eagle sank. In his book, he builds a strong case against the boat's captain and co-owner, J. Cass Mason. St. Louis' biggest party ran for seven months and was such a success it even made money. As a lawyer, Potter was well-equipped to investigate the mistakes and malfeasance that led to the Sultana disaster. By Lieutenant Commander Ralph P. Dillon, U. S. Naval Reserve. Among those killed were Louisiana state representatives H. J. Huard and Charles Bannister. [23], An episode of the PBS series History Detectives that aired on July 2, 2014, reviewed the known evidence, thoroughly disputed a theory of sabotage, and then focused on the question of why Sultana was allowed to be crowded to several times its normal capacity before departure. "We feel like we're a part of this Civil War story, but we're the conclusion that no one heard," says Lisa O'Neal, a Marion resident and member of the Sultana Historic Preservation Society. Captain Frederic Speed, a Union officer who sent the 1,953 paroled prisoners into Vicksburg from the parole camp, was charged with grossly overcrowding Sultana and found guilty. Only six years before, it had foundered in the river near Chester, Ill., with one crew member lost. These trips moved almost 5 million tons of lead down stream! 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 . Mississippi River at Lansing at crest Friday evening The first steamboat on the Mississippi River along Iowas border was the 109-ton Virginia, on its way to Fort Snelling (now Saint Paul, Minnesota) in May 1823. [5] About ten hours south of Vicksburg, one of Sultana's four boilers sprang a leak. Under the command of Captain James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana left St. Louis on April 13, 1865, bound for New Orleans. Burning of the Orline St. John, near Montgomery, Alabama, March 2, 1850. It was soon employed to carry troops and supplies along the Most were Union soldiers, newly released from Confederate prison camps. . Daniel Jackson / May 29, 2021 But there were many other reasons the event didn't get much attention at the time. Plowing upriver from New Orleans, the Natchez was the first steamboat to arrive on the scene. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 1992. . 2) The use of the sediment-laden Mississippi River water to feed the boilers. Long before Kanesville or Council Bluffs were settlements on the Missouri river, the steamboat the Western Engineer arrived in the area in 1819. Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. A freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in southwestern Wisconsin on Thursday, injuring four employees and sending two containers into the Mississippi River. GES: I began to dispel the myths and untruths surrounding the Sultana shortly after the Naval Institute Press published my first book in 1996. Golden Eagle's pilot house was salvaged. Low Missouri river levels expose 130-year-old shipwreck - kfyrtv.com Although one of the Sultanas boilers was being repaired when the ex-prisoners were being crowded aboard the boat, none of the Union officers seemed to mind. The Sultana was especially helpful to the Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant as he moved to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, and open the Mississippi River to Union navigation. Leyhe's father and uncle established the Eagle Packet Co., and Leyhe began working on the Mississippi River when he was 18. Steamboats of the Mississippi - Wikipedia The Golden Eagle's new St. Louis-based owners left it to the river's mercy. Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. ", Jerry Potter, lawyer and author of The Sultana Tragedy. Irregular river depth, sandbars and snags made steamboat travel on the Missouri slow and dangerous. An aerial view of the striken Golden Eagle at Grand Tower Island in the Mississippi River on May 19, 1947. Steamboat Disasters Of this group, there were only 31 deaths between April 28 and June 28. Robert Fultons steamboat is arguably the single most important invention that spawned settlement and economic expansion in nineteenth-century Louisiana. Cape Girardeau:Later renamed the River Queen, the vessel sank in 1968. The steamboat sank shortly after it struck submerged rocks at 2:20 a.m. All 91 passengers and crew members reached the island by gangplank, and were rescued later that day by a towboat. The disaster of the Princess near Baton Rouge in 1859 was a tragically typical example. In later years the steamboats pushed huge rafts of logs from the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota to sawmills farther down the river. [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. Students tour the pilot house of the Golden Eagle on display at the U.S. Army Engineers base at the foot of Arsenal Street on Jan. 4, 1948. The event remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history (the sinking of the Titanic killed 1,512 people). While researching those numbers, I ran across other myths and legends that were incorrect or misleading, while at the same time verifying many of the stories. Then the captain did his best to steer around the dead trees, but sometimes they were hidden underwater. The Corp of Engineers in a report issued July 3, 1934 listed 36 types of steamboat wrecks on the Missouri River alone. [4]:24 On April 26, Sultana stopped at Helena, Arkansas, where photographer Thomas W. Bankes took a picture of the grossly overcrowded vessel. Catchers once in a lifetime lunge saves Cardinals, The world watches (and makes donations) as St. Louis bald eagle raises eaglet from a rock, Governor threatens to keep Missouri lawmakers in session over transgender rules, Barat Academy in Chesterfield to close after years of financial troubles, Four young people die in Old Monroe head-on crash, Court records online include private information for thousands of Missouri residents, Archdiocese releases third draft of proposed changes to St. Louis parishes. This list may not reflect recent changes . "In order to save time, they would set the people off in treetops, and go back to the boat to take more off.". Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Dead trees fell into the river and got stuck on the bottom. We turn the clock back to April of 1993 and present excerpts of the original reviews from Joe Pollack. The city has created a museum and is hosting events intended to bring attention to the tragedy. This effect of careening could have been minimized by maintaining high water levels in the boilers. He is currently a freelance writer living in Annapolis. Now, through the use of the internet, people can search hundred, perhaps thousands, of newspapers, from the United States as well as from around the world. The ill-fated Sultana in Helena, Ark., just before it exploded on April 27, 1865, with about 2,500 people aboard. Although the mechanic wanted to cut out and replace a ruptured seam, Mason knew such a job would take a few days and cost him his precious load of prisoners. SS Sultana:The steamboat was bound for St. Louis in April 1865 when the boilers failed right above Memphis, 13 days after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. A Look Back The day the Golden Eagle steamboat sank in 1947 The earliest steamboat disaster in Arkansas waters may have been the Car of Commerce, which suffered a boiler explosion north of Osceola (Mississippi County) on the Mississippi River in 1828, killing twenty-one people, while the deadliest was the loss of the Sultana near Marion (Crittenden County) on April 27, 1865, in which as many as 1,800 were Example: Yes, I would like to receive emails from 64 Parishes. Potter, Jerry. The Hero and the Pavillion traveled the Des Moines River to Fort Des Moines in 1837. GES: Readers should care about the Sultana since it was the greatest maritime disaster in American history. They'd stay in a motel at night, but she loved to cook for the crew and the men from the Coast Guard. Down Yonder On The Yazoo - The Waterways Journal In writing my first few books I literally had to go to the U.S., state, and military archives to do my research. On May 19, 1865, less than a month after the disaster, Brigadier General William Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners who investigated the disaster, reported an overall loss of soldiers, passengers, and crew of 1,238. Sometimes the boilers exploded. 2012 was additionally when the river was low sufficient to expose five steamboat wrecks along the Missouri River between St. Charles and Bridgeton. [12] In 1880, the War Department placed the number of survivors at 931, but the most recent research places the number at 961. Dropping water levels could cause hot spots leading to metal fatigue, significantly increasing the risk of an explosion. Further back, the collapsing decks formed a slope that led down into the exposed furnace boxes. 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 .
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