The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster Is One You've Likely Never Heard About

On a late April day in 1865, a shipwreck on the Mississippi River claimed more lives than the did the sinking of Titanic, yet few know the story of the Sultana.

Constructed in Cincinnati in 1863, the Sultana ran a regular route between St. Louis and New Orleans and was intended to support the cotton trade along the lower Mississippi. As a river steamboat, she was built for speed and capacity. Just what was needed to get up and down the Mississippi River.

Featuring two side-mounted paddle wheels, the Sultana featured tubular boilers, an invention brought to the river steamboat world in 1848. The boilers were unique in that they generated twice as much steam per fuel load as the conventional flue boilers.

As we often find with innovation, as the line of economic advantage are pushed, quality and safety often suffer as a trade off. Such was the case with the new tubular system. The one drawback of the tubular system was an increased risk of explosion - which would be catastrophic for steamboats made of layer after layer of varnished lightweight wood.

In April of 1865, the consequences of faulty tubular boilers aboard a large wooden river steamboat would rear its head in a violent way.

Greed Sews the Seeds of a Fateful Voyage

Pushing off from St. Louis on April 13, 1865, Captain James Cass Mason, as he’d done many times before, sailed south on the Mississippi. Though destined for New Orleans, he would put the Sultana up in Vicksburg, Mississippi for a short respite. While in Vicksburg, Captain Mason came across the chief quartermaster at Vicksburg, Captain Reuben Hatch. 

Hatch had been quartering thousands of recently released Unions prisoners of war in a parole camp just outside Vicksburg. Having recently been released by the Confederate prison camps in Selma, Alabama and Andersonville, Georgia, the soldiers were awaiting release to the North.

The crossing paths of Mason and Hatch presented them with opportunity and Captain Hatch was not about to let it pass him by. At the time, the United States government was paying steamboat captains up to $2.75 for the return of an enlisted soldier, and a whopping $8.00 per officer. 

Hatch would approach Mason with a his proposition. In exchange for 1,400 Union prisoners, which would fetch Mason a sizable payment from the government, Hatch wanted a financial kickback.

Not only was Mason interested in the opportunity, he sought to maximize his gain through the bribe and began to calculate just how many soldiers he could take aboard the Sultana. An accord was struck and Hatch agreed to have the prisoners ready for transport upon Mason’s return from New Orleans.

Opting For Band-aid Instead of Repair

When April 21 rolled around, the Sultana left New Orleans to return to Vicksburg. Along the way, one of the boilers suffered a leak. This slowed the Sultana’s progress and required repairs while docked in Vicksburg.

Captain Hatch was at the ready with the promised prisoners. Men from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia were shuttled onto the Sultana. Meanwhile, Captain Mason secured a mechanic to address the leaky boiler. 

Fearing the timeline for repairs would cost Mason his money, he convinced the mechanic to make temporary repairs as opposed to full corrective repair. This decision would save Captain Mason two days and, more importantly for him, preserve his potential profits. 

Sultana Was Bursting at the Seams

The original proposition between Mason and Hatch had intended for 1,400 prisoners. However, the Union officer in charge of loading the prisoners - a Captain George Augustus Williams - placed every man he could aboard the Sultana. Some believe this was by mistake, others suspect he was in on the bribe.

Regardless of Williams’ intention, as the Sultana pushed off the shores at Vicksburg, she did so with 2,137 people. The Sultana had a legal capacity of 376. Not surprisingly, the famished and weakened prisoners were wedged into every nook and cranny aboard the Sultana. There were reports that in some places aboard the boat the decks sagged under the weight. 

Fighting against an unusually strong spring current as a result of record flooding, Sultana labored upstream. She sought a short stop in Helena, Arkansas on April 26th. Later on she would dock in Memphis, Tennessee to unload a cache of sugar and some 200 men. This would be her last stop at a river port.

The Infamous Explosion

In the early morning hours on April 27, 1865, around seven miles north of Memphis, a boiler aboard the Sultana exploded. Within a second of the first explosion, a second boiler went off. The violent explosion destroyed the pilot house. The two smokestacks toppled over. The upper deck crashed upon the middle deck along the front end of the boat. 

The varnished wood was perfect tinder for the fires caused by the explosion. What was left of the Sultana quickly became a raging inferno. Many of the weakened prisoners were unable to flea the carnage. 

Thirty minutes later, a southbound river steamboat, the Bostona, rescued dozens of survivors. It was about this time that those survivors who had managed to get to the water safely began crying for help as they floated past Memphis’ waterfront. 

It would take nearly seven hours for the Sultana to sink. Before going under near Marion, Arkansas, the Sultana had drifted helplessly six miles west. Those who were not rescued by passing by steamboats or pulled from the water along the shoreline began to suffer hypothermia. Bodies of victims would be found downriver for months after the incident, with some reports of bodies reaching Vicksburg. 

The Aftermath

While the exact death toll is not known, estimates put the total death toll near 1,800, including Captain Mason. The sinking of Titanic claimed 1,512 lives. The survivors would be transported to hospitals throughout Memphis. 

Investigations determined that the Sultana’s overload resulted in severe listing from side to side as she managed the telltale bends of the Mississippi. Under the immense weight, with each turn water within the tubular boils would reach disequilibrium, thereby creating flashes of steam and weakening the metal of the tubes.

Finally, one of the steam flashes became too much for the weakened metal, believed to be from the hastily repaired boiler a few days earlier in Vicksburg. The result was catastrophic explosion.

Shortly after the Sultana’s explosion, two more river steamboats with tubular boiler design would suffer similar fates. The use of the tubular boiler would soon be decommissioned from river steamboats.

The magnitude of the disaster was immense. It remains the worst maritime disaster in the U.S. Despite the drastic loss of life, no one was ever held formally accountable for the tragedy.