Sultana: A Case For Sabotage

On April 21, the Sultana left New Orleans with about 70 cabin passengers, deck passengers, and a small amount of livestock. She also carried a crew of Under reduced pressure, the steamboat limped into Vicksburg to get the boiler repaired and to pick up her promised load of prisoners. Although the mechanic wanted to cut out and replace a ruptured seam, Mason knew that such a job would take a few days and cost him his precious load of prisoners.

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By the time the repairs would be completed, the prisoners would have been sent home on other boats. Instead, Mason and his chief engineer, Nathan Wintringer, convinced the mechanic to make temporary repairs, hammering back the bulged boiler plate and riveting a patch of lesser thickness over the seam. Instead of taking two or three days, the temporary repair took only one. During her time in port, and while the repairs were being made, Sultana took on the paroled prisoners. Although Hatch had suggested that Mason might get as many as 1, released Union prisoners, a mix-up with the parole camp books and suspicion of bribery from other steamboat captains caused the Union officer in charge of the loading, Captain George Augustus Williams, to place every man at the parole camp on board Sultana , believing the number to be less than 1, The men were packed into every available space, and the overflow was so severe that in some places, the decks began to creak and sag and had to be supported with heavy wooden beams.

Sultana spent two days traveling upriver, fighting against one of the worst spring floods in the river's history. At some places, the river overflowed the banks and spread out three miles wide. Trees along the river bank were almost completely covered, until only the very tops of the trees were visible above the swirling, powerful water.

Bankes took a picture of the grossly overcrowded vessel. Near midnight, Sultana left Memphis, went a short distance upriver to take on a new load of coal and then started north again. The cause of the explosions was too much pressure and low water in the boilers. There was reason to believe allowable working steam pressure had been exceeded in an attempt to overcome the spring river current. Also the Sultana's tubular boilers were made of Charcoal Hammered No. Charcoal Hammered No 1 was soon discarded for use in boilers.

The enormous explosion of steam came from the top rear of the boilers and went upward at a degree angle, tearing through the crowded decks above, and completely demolishing the pilothouse. Without a pilot to steer the boat, Sultana became a drifting, floating hulk. The terrific explosion flung some of the passengers on deck into the water and destroyed a large section of the boat.

The twin smokestacks toppled over, one backwards into the blasted hole, and one forward onto the crowded forward section of the upper deck. The forward part of the upper decks collapsed into the exposed furnace boxes, shoving kindling into the open fire boxes which soon caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into an inferno.

Survivors of the explosion panicked and raced for the safety of the water but in their weakened condition soon ran out of strength and began to cling to each other. Whole groups went down together.

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While this fight for survival was taking place, the southbound steamer Bostona No. At the same time, dozens of people began to float past the Memphis waterfront, calling for help until they were noticed by the crews of docked steamboats and U. Passengers who survived the initial explosion had to risk their lives in the icy spring runoff of the Mississippi or burn with the boat. Some survivors were plucked from the tops of semi-submerged trees along the Arkansas shore.

Bodies of victims continued to be found downriver for months, some as far as Vicksburg.

Many bodies were never recovered. Most of Sultana ' s officers, including Captain Mason, were among those who perished. About survivors were transported to hospitals in Memphis. Fortunately, since Memphis had been captured by Federal forces in and turned into a supply and recuperation city, there were numerous hospitals in the city with the latest medical equipment and trained personnel. Of the roughly people taken to Memphis hospitals, only 6 died on the date of the explosion while another 20 died between April 28 and June In spite of the enormity of the disaster, no one was ever held accountable.

Frederic Speed, a Union officer who sent the 1, paroled prisoners into Vicksburg from the parole camp, was charged with grossly overcrowding Sultana and found guilty. However, the guilty verdict was overturned by the judge advocate general of the army on grounds that Speed had been at the parole camp all day and had never placed one single soldier on board the Sultana. In the end, no one was ever held accountable for the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. The exact death toll is unknown, although the most recent evidence indicates 1,, lower than the 1, deaths attributed to the Titanic disaster on the North Atlantic 47 years later.

On May 19, , less than a month after the disaster, Brig. William Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners, who investigated the disaster, reported an overall loss of soldiers, passengers, and crew of 1, The official cause of the Sultana disaster was determined to be mismanagement of water levels in the boiler, exacerbated by the fact that the vessel was severely overcrowded and top heavy.

As the steamboat made her way north following the twists and turns of the river, she listed severely to one side then to the other. Her four boilers were interconnected and mounted side-by-side, so that if the boat tipped sideways, water would tend to run out of the highest boiler. With the fires still going against the empty boiler, this created hot spots.

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