Article extracted from the ACWS Newsletter.

At 2am on April 27th 1865, seven miles upstream from Memphis, the side-paddle steamer Sultana was slowly making way against a strong spring current when a large explosion occurred followed quickly by two more. A column of fire and steam shot up almost cutting the boat in two; within minutes the boat was a blazing wreck. This resulted in the deaths of at least 1,700 people, mostly paroled prisoners returning north as the war was ending. The sinking remains to this day the United States worst civilian boat disaster.

So what had happened? The Sultana was a wide berth cargo/passenger steamer skippered by a maverick captain who had just had the distinction of making the fastest trip between New Orleans and St Louis. Captain J Cass Mason had arrived in Vicksburg a few weeks before on his way to New Orleans, he met with the Chief Q.M. of the Mississippi, Col. Ruben Heath who told him that the Federal Government were paying $5 per enlisted man and $10 per officer to any steamboat owner who would take them north. Col. Heath was a scoundrel who had been cheating the Government throughout the war and had only managed to avoid court martial through his family connections in Washington. Mason left New Orleans leaving Heath to arrange to get as many men as he could for him to pick up on the return trip.

With bribes and deception Heath fooled the Officers in charge of the prisoner repatriation Capt. Frederick Speed and he in turn deceived Captains Williams and Kerns who were under pressure to empty the transit camps. As the Sultana arrived back he had at least 1,400 men ready to board with more on the trains due to arrive. The Sultana had been delayed slightly as it had developed a bulge and leak in one of its four boilers; advised by engineers to have two whole plates removed and replaced, Cass and his chief engineer made do with riveting a patch over the problem. Despite this, loading started on the morning of April 24th. The men being loaded did express doubts about overloading when they saw crew having to wedge large beams in to hold up the decks that were beginning to sag under the weight of so many and were puzzled about the numbers boarding Sultana when there were other craft available.

As the boat cast off from Vicksburg docks, she carried nearly 2,100 paroled prisoners who were policed by 22 men of the 58th Ohio Regiment. In addition to this there were 90 or so paying passengers and the boats crew of 88. In the cargo holds were two thousand hogsheads of sugar each weighing 1,200lbs but the strangest passenger must have been a large alligator in a sturdy crate. Mason had bought it in New Orleans as a mascot. All this on a boat that was registered to carry 376 people.

The first signs of any trouble arose when the boat passed other vessels or sights of interest on the shore, being a flat bottomed boat the Sultana had become top heavy and as men went from one side to the other she listed badly. This meant that the water in her boilers flowed from one side to the other emptying one and flooding another, as the boat righted, steam pressure built up in the refilling boiler. The crew and men of the 58th Ohio tried to stop this movement it became even more serious when at Memphis the sugar was unloaded. The boat was now seriously top heavy.

A few men had slipped ashore and disappeared after helping to unload the sugar, so the actual count of people on board is impossible to state, overcrowding was still a problem as the Sultana slipped her moorings at around midnight. Seven miles upstream she hit the full flood current and listed badly, the repaired starboard boiler could no longer take the pressure and blew, the two boilers amidships followed suit in a tremendous roar.