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Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865
At two o'clock in the morning on 27 April 1865, seven miles north of Memphis on the Mississippi, the boilers of the sidewheel steamboat Sultana suddenly exploded. Legally registered to carry 376 people, the boat was packed with 2,100 recently released Union prisoners of war. More than 1,700 people died, making it the worst marine disaster in U.S. history.
To focus on the personal stories of the victims, both civilian and soldier, Gene Eric Salecker patiently collected material from hundreds of letters, period newspaper stories, and other sources. Readers are first introduced to the individuals involved while they are languishing in Confederate prisons and follow their release to an exchange camp outside Vicksburg and their eventual crowding onto the Sultana.
The author's knowledgeable narrative is interwoven with personal reminiscences, including those of the heroic rescuers. He offers unprecedented details about the captain's handling of the steamboat and corrects some long-held myths about the placement of the soldiers on the Sultana and newspaper coverage of the disaster.
A large portion of the book covers rescue attempts, both successful and failed, and the aftermath of the disaster as it affected those involved. With its emphasis on the human-interest aspect of the Sultana's loss, this book brings to the literature a critical point of view and much new research.
To focus on the personal stories of the victims, both civilian and soldier, Gene Eric Salecker patiently collected material from hundreds of letters, period newspaper stories, and other sources. Readers are first introduced to the individuals involved while they are languishing in Confederate prisons and follow their release to an exchange camp outside Vicksburg and their eventual crowding onto the Sultana.
The author's knowledgeable narrative is interwoven with personal reminiscences, including those of the heroic rescuers. He offers unprecedented details about the captain's handling of the steamboat and corrects some long-held myths about the placement of the soldiers on the Sultana and newspaper coverage of the disaster.
A large portion of the book covers rescue attempts, both successful and failed, and the aftermath of the disaster as it affected those involved. With its emphasis on the human-interest aspect of the Sultana's loss, this book brings to the literature a critical point of view and much new research.
346 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 5, 2026
Salecker provides a straightforward record of the Sultana catastrophe of 1865. The book's appeal as narrative history isn’t strong -- it's just the facts. Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865 is a one hundred page account presented in two hundred pages.
It's a weak Three Stars -- unless your objective is research on the event or family history.
It's a weak Three Stars -- unless your objective is research on the event or family history.
June 18, 2015
My great-great grandparents, Harvey and Ann Annis and their youngest daughter, Belle, were on the Sultana when it exploded. Harvey and Belle were lost. Ann was the only woman to survive the greatest maritime disaster in American history.
November 15, 2020
Disaster on the Mississippi is about the boiler explosion on the steamboat Sultana while it was packed with Union soldiers, many of them just released from Southern prison camps. It was the worst steamboat accident of its day, leaving over 1200 people dead. Steamboats were highly mistrusted in their maiden years, and it was not unusual for passengers to be towed on a flatboat behind the steamer rather than riding on it. But by the Civil War, some of this anxiety had worn off, despite the fact that steamboat maintainence was more of an art than a science.
The Sultana exploded because a bulge developed in a boiler, and though the bulge had been patched over prior to its voyage with the Union soldiers, it was later decided the metal patch had been too thin. The second contributing factor to the death toll was Quartermaster Hatch's decision to pack the Sultana with as many released prisoners as possible so he could skim off the government contract for the soldiers' transport.
Hatch had a long history of corruption, and even though charges had been filed against him before the Sultana's explosion, his friends rescued him--namely Grant and Lincoln. Both of the latter defended Hatch with vigor and exerted pressure to quash the charges against him. When you consider that Grant's administration (and friends in general) were notoriously corrupt, and that Lincoln chose to wed Mary Todd, both men were obviously terrible judges of character. Stephen Douglas had been Lincoln's rival for Mary's hand, and though Douglas lost the presidency, he avoided being chained to the awful Mary. I'd say Douglas came out ahead.
The Sultana killed its passengers in four ways. The first set died from the initial force of the explosion, the second from being scalded by steam, the third died in the burning of the ship, (over 200 of those later rescued and put in Memphis hospitals died from burns or blunt force trauma), but the fourth--the vast majority--died by drowning. Most of the passengers chose to jump into the water to avoid being killed by the fire--and most of them could not swim.
In the first fifteen minutes after the disaster, survivors said you could see over a thousand men struggling in the water, so thick that if you jumped from the Sultana you were likely to land on another man, and they were all engaged in the most brutal, Darwinian fight to survive. The book is filled with accounts of non-swimmers grabbing hold of those who could swim, and the latter having to beat the non-swimmers off to avoid being pulled down and drowned by them. Men fought viciously for any floating debris, knocking each other off to avoid overloading their makeshift rafts. Still others clung to the sides of the Sultana by ropes or chains or the paddle wheel.
It was within those fifteen minutes that the majority died by drowning. But those that lived still had another terrible ordeal to undergo. The water was very cold, and hypothermia set in. Most of the survivors let themselves drift--or swam--downriver most or all of the way to Memphis. It seems bizarre that they would not have struck out for the shoreline on either side, but the Mississpi was in flood, and the river had widened considerably. The explosion also happened at night, and the dazed survivors could see nothing except for that illuminated by the burning wreck.
Most of the men were in poor physical condition because of their stay in prison camps, and reports describe some of them as skeletal when they arrived to be shipped on the Sultana. But the confusion among an inefficient quartermaster department forced the soldiers to wait several days on shore, which allowed them to put on extra flesh and rest up. This may have kept the casualties from being worse, but it is plain that the weakened condition of the men contributed to their deaths.
The final stage for these men was one of endurance. Outlasting hypothermia required a good layer of body fat along with physical vigor, which many of these former prisoners lacked. The rescued were often semi-comatose when they were fished out. Rescue could have come earlier, but this area along the Mississippi was captured Confederate territory, and the Union had destroyed all private craft up and down the river to prevent Confederate smuggling or raids by guerillas. Only one boat, recently purchased, was able to come to the aid of the dying men from a nearby farm. The first steamboat to arrive was the Bostona, but unlike its counterpart, the Carpathia, the Bostona chose to head for Memphis with its first load of 150 survivors when it could have stayed to pick up more. This terrible decision likely doomed many who lacked the strength to swim much longer. When word of the disaster spread, other vessels came to rescue survivors, but they were hampered by the darkness of night. If you couldn't stay alert and cry out, you were like to be missed.
Afterwards, one of the rescuers said that the corpses lay along Memphis streets in rows that stretched for four city blocks. Many other bodies only appeared later when they bloated from their own gasses and rose to the surface of the Mississippi, rotting and gnawed on by scavengers.
Salecker's book begins with long passages about the construction of steamships and an explanation of the Civil War connection, and I recommend you skip these. His narrative in these sections is frankly dull. The drama after the explosion is a much better read.
The Sultana exploded because a bulge developed in a boiler, and though the bulge had been patched over prior to its voyage with the Union soldiers, it was later decided the metal patch had been too thin. The second contributing factor to the death toll was Quartermaster Hatch's decision to pack the Sultana with as many released prisoners as possible so he could skim off the government contract for the soldiers' transport.
Hatch had a long history of corruption, and even though charges had been filed against him before the Sultana's explosion, his friends rescued him--namely Grant and Lincoln. Both of the latter defended Hatch with vigor and exerted pressure to quash the charges against him. When you consider that Grant's administration (and friends in general) were notoriously corrupt, and that Lincoln chose to wed Mary Todd, both men were obviously terrible judges of character. Stephen Douglas had been Lincoln's rival for Mary's hand, and though Douglas lost the presidency, he avoided being chained to the awful Mary. I'd say Douglas came out ahead.
The Sultana killed its passengers in four ways. The first set died from the initial force of the explosion, the second from being scalded by steam, the third died in the burning of the ship, (over 200 of those later rescued and put in Memphis hospitals died from burns or blunt force trauma), but the fourth--the vast majority--died by drowning. Most of the passengers chose to jump into the water to avoid being killed by the fire--and most of them could not swim.
In the first fifteen minutes after the disaster, survivors said you could see over a thousand men struggling in the water, so thick that if you jumped from the Sultana you were likely to land on another man, and they were all engaged in the most brutal, Darwinian fight to survive. The book is filled with accounts of non-swimmers grabbing hold of those who could swim, and the latter having to beat the non-swimmers off to avoid being pulled down and drowned by them. Men fought viciously for any floating debris, knocking each other off to avoid overloading their makeshift rafts. Still others clung to the sides of the Sultana by ropes or chains or the paddle wheel.
It was within those fifteen minutes that the majority died by drowning. But those that lived still had another terrible ordeal to undergo. The water was very cold, and hypothermia set in. Most of the survivors let themselves drift--or swam--downriver most or all of the way to Memphis. It seems bizarre that they would not have struck out for the shoreline on either side, but the Mississpi was in flood, and the river had widened considerably. The explosion also happened at night, and the dazed survivors could see nothing except for that illuminated by the burning wreck.
Most of the men were in poor physical condition because of their stay in prison camps, and reports describe some of them as skeletal when they arrived to be shipped on the Sultana. But the confusion among an inefficient quartermaster department forced the soldiers to wait several days on shore, which allowed them to put on extra flesh and rest up. This may have kept the casualties from being worse, but it is plain that the weakened condition of the men contributed to their deaths.
The final stage for these men was one of endurance. Outlasting hypothermia required a good layer of body fat along with physical vigor, which many of these former prisoners lacked. The rescued were often semi-comatose when they were fished out. Rescue could have come earlier, but this area along the Mississippi was captured Confederate territory, and the Union had destroyed all private craft up and down the river to prevent Confederate smuggling or raids by guerillas. Only one boat, recently purchased, was able to come to the aid of the dying men from a nearby farm. The first steamboat to arrive was the Bostona, but unlike its counterpart, the Carpathia, the Bostona chose to head for Memphis with its first load of 150 survivors when it could have stayed to pick up more. This terrible decision likely doomed many who lacked the strength to swim much longer. When word of the disaster spread, other vessels came to rescue survivors, but they were hampered by the darkness of night. If you couldn't stay alert and cry out, you were like to be missed.
Afterwards, one of the rescuers said that the corpses lay along Memphis streets in rows that stretched for four city blocks. Many other bodies only appeared later when they bloated from their own gasses and rose to the surface of the Mississippi, rotting and gnawed on by scavengers.
Salecker's book begins with long passages about the construction of steamships and an explanation of the Civil War connection, and I recommend you skip these. His narrative in these sections is frankly dull. The drama after the explosion is a much better read.
May 3, 2021
Forgotten Explosion of the Civil War
I live in TN.and have read much of the States History,but had never heard of this incident,but upon seeing a mention of it,in a forgotten article wanted to learn more.
Gene Salecker ,the author had been collecting info on this Steam shipwreck since 1978 and has done a tremendous job of applying what he has learned into a book,that makes you feel the pain and anguish,of each soldier,deck hand and civilian that was there.
It is a hard book to read in part ,because it is so real sounding imaging the torture of being scalded almost to death and then being in a muddy river,in the darkest of night and if you couldn't swim or even could,knowing you most surely were going to die
It tells of the greed of the boat captain,that knew his boat couldn't sustain that many souls on board,but for an extra few $.he loaded them on,packed in like sardines.
After the accident,the Government pretty much turned a blind eye,never giving the living any extra pension or even the dead a monument on the Mississippi.
You will read things,you never heard of before, unless you were one of the unlucky ones,that had a descendant that was there.
If you love history,you won't want to pass up the chance to read about the forgotten Shipwreck that occurred on April 27,1865.
I live in TN.and have read much of the States History,but had never heard of this incident,but upon seeing a mention of it,in a forgotten article wanted to learn more.
Gene Salecker ,the author had been collecting info on this Steam shipwreck since 1978 and has done a tremendous job of applying what he has learned into a book,that makes you feel the pain and anguish,of each soldier,deck hand and civilian that was there.
It is a hard book to read in part ,because it is so real sounding imaging the torture of being scalded almost to death and then being in a muddy river,in the darkest of night and if you couldn't swim or even could,knowing you most surely were going to die
It tells of the greed of the boat captain,that knew his boat couldn't sustain that many souls on board,but for an extra few $.he loaded them on,packed in like sardines.
After the accident,the Government pretty much turned a blind eye,never giving the living any extra pension or even the dead a monument on the Mississippi.
You will read things,you never heard of before, unless you were one of the unlucky ones,that had a descendant that was there.
If you love history,you won't want to pass up the chance to read about the forgotten Shipwreck that occurred on April 27,1865.
October 28, 2016
More people were killed on the Sultana than were killed on the Titanic. To say the Sultana tragedy is not as well-known as the Titanic is an understatement. It is the worst water disaster in the United States. A combination of factors has made this epic disaster not well-known: It was the end of the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination overshadowed it, and the victims were mostly not from states east of Ohio. There is only one small memorial to the Sultana, in Knoxville, TN, and it was done in 1916 in a cemetery.
The story is heartbreaking. The approximately 2,000 men on the steamboat were prisoners just released from the various obnoxious Civil War camps. Also on the boat were about 400 civilians… men, women and children. A lot of the men were in bad shape, having endured hunger, exposure and sickness in the prisons. Not only did they experience the explosion of the boat at 2:00am, caused by a bad boiler and causing terrible steam burns, but the subsequent raging fire caused many people to burn to death. And as if that wasn’t enough, the injured survivors were in the cold water for hours and hours, clinging to any piece of the wreck they could find, floating towards Memphis, TN, or clinging to the tops of trees in the flooded Mississippi river. Mr. Salacker mentions many instances of heroism during the tragedy, two of which stood out to me. In one, a soldier had managed to hold on to two little girls in the water for hours, only to lose them when he reached for a rescue rope. He was so distraught about losing them that he let himself drown. In another, a woman on the bow, a sister from a charity, calmed men in the water but refused to jump in with them because it might have caused their deaths. Instead, she chose to burn to death.
I was amazed to find out that the Sultana was built in Cincinnati, OH, my home town. I’ve read where people have attempted to find the original shipyard here.
The History Detectives on PBS had an interesting show about the Sultana:
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetecti...
The story is heartbreaking. The approximately 2,000 men on the steamboat were prisoners just released from the various obnoxious Civil War camps. Also on the boat were about 400 civilians… men, women and children. A lot of the men were in bad shape, having endured hunger, exposure and sickness in the prisons. Not only did they experience the explosion of the boat at 2:00am, caused by a bad boiler and causing terrible steam burns, but the subsequent raging fire caused many people to burn to death. And as if that wasn’t enough, the injured survivors were in the cold water for hours and hours, clinging to any piece of the wreck they could find, floating towards Memphis, TN, or clinging to the tops of trees in the flooded Mississippi river. Mr. Salacker mentions many instances of heroism during the tragedy, two of which stood out to me. In one, a soldier had managed to hold on to two little girls in the water for hours, only to lose them when he reached for a rescue rope. He was so distraught about losing them that he let himself drown. In another, a woman on the bow, a sister from a charity, calmed men in the water but refused to jump in with them because it might have caused their deaths. Instead, she chose to burn to death.
I was amazed to find out that the Sultana was built in Cincinnati, OH, my home town. I’ve read where people have attempted to find the original shipyard here.
The History Detectives on PBS had an interesting show about the Sultana:
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetecti...
December 28, 2021
The April 1865 explosion, burning and sinking of the riversteamboat Sultana remains the worst martime disaster in American history though today it is little known and largely lost to history. In fact more people died on Sultana than died on the famous RMS Titanic in 1912. Shortly after the Civil War ended a lucrative steamboat trade arose to transport US soldiers who were former Confederate prisoners of war back home. With a lot of government money available and speed of the essence, overloading became a problem, but the Sultana set an unfortunate record. Rated to carry 376 persons on its final voyage the ship was incredibly overloaded by its greedy captain and corrupt army management to carry over 2000 persons. The photo on the cover of the book, taken the day before the accident shows an almost incomprenhensible number of human beings crowded on every inch of the steamboat.
Even worse than the overcrowding was that the Sultana had been having a leak in one of its high presssure steam boilers that had been temporarily patched. Attempting to steam against a strong flood current and with the boat overloaded, late at night on April 27, 1865 the ship's boilers exploded without warning, instantly killing hundreds of the passengers. Those not immediately killed were then subject to scalding steam. The boat, completely wrecked and out of control then burned furiously. Because the explosion blew apart the midships, the vessel was essentially cut in two and as the bow and stern burned they collapsed down into the shattered burning midsection. The river was at flood, several miles wide, and few of the sick starved former prisoners of war could swim. The one small lifeboat was quickly launched and rowed away by crew. At best a few hundred of the more than 2000 aboard made it to shore and many of them soon died of scalds and exposure.
To put the Sultana into perspective, it was a ship about 300 feet long with over 2000 on board that about 350 survived. The Titanic was nearly 900 feet long, carried the same number of people and over 700 survived. Yet the Sultana became forgotten for a number of reasons-- the Civil War had just ended; President Lincoln had just been assassinated and the army was in full dramatic pursuit of his murderer; steamboat captains did not want their vessels viewed as unsafe and the Federal government did not want to draw attention to the corruption and bribery and kickbacks of tax dollars that led to hundreds of poor, sick starved former prisoners of war dieing horrible deaths.
And while the wreck of the Titanic was found in the ocean depths, due to the meandering of the river the charred remains of the Sultana remain unseen buried today under 30 feet of soil in what is now an Arkansas farmfield. To this day there is not even a national monument to the Sultana victims.
This well-written, exhaustively researched book is, and is likely to remain the best account of the tragic loss of the Sultana in 1865.
Even worse than the overcrowding was that the Sultana had been having a leak in one of its high presssure steam boilers that had been temporarily patched. Attempting to steam against a strong flood current and with the boat overloaded, late at night on April 27, 1865 the ship's boilers exploded without warning, instantly killing hundreds of the passengers. Those not immediately killed were then subject to scalding steam. The boat, completely wrecked and out of control then burned furiously. Because the explosion blew apart the midships, the vessel was essentially cut in two and as the bow and stern burned they collapsed down into the shattered burning midsection. The river was at flood, several miles wide, and few of the sick starved former prisoners of war could swim. The one small lifeboat was quickly launched and rowed away by crew. At best a few hundred of the more than 2000 aboard made it to shore and many of them soon died of scalds and exposure.
To put the Sultana into perspective, it was a ship about 300 feet long with over 2000 on board that about 350 survived. The Titanic was nearly 900 feet long, carried the same number of people and over 700 survived. Yet the Sultana became forgotten for a number of reasons-- the Civil War had just ended; President Lincoln had just been assassinated and the army was in full dramatic pursuit of his murderer; steamboat captains did not want their vessels viewed as unsafe and the Federal government did not want to draw attention to the corruption and bribery and kickbacks of tax dollars that led to hundreds of poor, sick starved former prisoners of war dieing horrible deaths.
And while the wreck of the Titanic was found in the ocean depths, due to the meandering of the river the charred remains of the Sultana remain unseen buried today under 30 feet of soil in what is now an Arkansas farmfield. To this day there is not even a national monument to the Sultana victims.
This well-written, exhaustively researched book is, and is likely to remain the best account of the tragic loss of the Sultana in 1865.
July 22, 2013
A clear, concise, detailed account of the tragedy.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews