The Shipwreck That Led Confederate Veterans To Risk All For Union Lives

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Library of Congress

Library of Congress

On April 27, 1865, the steamboat Sultana exploded and sank while traveling up the Mississippi River, killing an estimated 1,800 people. The event remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history ( the sinking of the Titanic killed 1,512 people ). Yet few know the floor of the Sultana ‘s death, or the ensuing rescue feat that included Confederate soldiers saving Union soldiers they might have shot precisely weeks earlier. therefore on the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the sinking, the city of Marion, Ark., is trying to make surely the Sultana will be remembered. The city has created a museum and is hosting events intended to bring attention to the calamity. “ It was like a fantastic turkey going off in the in-between of where these men were. And the shrapnel, the steam and the boil water killed hundreds. ”
Marion, across the river from Memphis, Tenn., is near the spotlight where the 260-foot side-wheeler came to rest. “ We feel like we ‘re a part of this Civil War fib, but we ‘re the decision that no one learn, ” says Lisa O’Neal, a Marion resident and extremity of the Sultana Historic Preservation Society. The Sultana was on its way from Vicksburg, Miss., to St. Louis when the explosion occurred, says Jerry Potter, a Memphis lawyer and generator of The Sultana Tragedy. 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 .

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“ The boat had a legal hold capacity of 376 passengers, ” he says, “ and on its up-river slip it had over 2,500 aboard, ” in part because the government had agreed to pay $ 5 for each enlist man and $ 10 for each officer who made the trip. nowadays, Potter describes the picture from a park along the banks of the Mississippi, just north of Memphis. “ The river is at flood stagecoach, ” he says as we watch a barge struggle to move astir river, “ very exchangeable to what it was on April 27, 1865. ” That day, he says, the water was moving very quickly and contained a fortune of trees and early debris. And it was very cold .

The Sultana made it only a few miles north of Memphis. “ At 2 ante meridiem, one of the boilers exploded, resulting in two other boilers exploding, ” Potter says. “ And the entire center of the gravy boat erupted like a volcano. ” Soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee were among the first to die, he says, “ because they ‘d been packed in following to the boilers. “ It was like a fantastic fail going off in the middle of where these men were, ” Potter says. “ And the shrapnel, the steam and the churn urine killed hundreds. ” Fire, drowning and exposure would kill many hundreds more. But the report of the Sultana is about more than lost lives. It is besides about a rescue effort that brought together people who had been at war good weeks early.

many Sultana survivors ended up on the Arkansas english of the river, which was under Confederate operate during the war. And many of them were saved by local residents, like John Fogelman — an ancestor of the city of Marion ‘s stream mayor, Frank Fogelman. Newspaper accounts suggest John Fogelman and his sons spotted the burning Sultana as the remains of the paddle steamer drifted downriver. “ The fart blew the fire to the rise, burned that out, ” Frank Fogelman says. “ The paddle wheel fell off of one side, caused the gravy boat to turn sideways ; the early dabble wheel fell off. ”

finally the Sultana turned so that the wind was pushing the flames toward the crouch, where 25 soldiers remained. Fogelman ‘s ancestors did n’t have any boats to reach the at bay soldiers, so they improvised. “ I understand that the Fogelmans were able to put together some logs to make a raft and go out and take people off the boat as it drifted back this way, ” Fogelman says. “ In order to save prison term, they would set the people off in treetops, and go back to the boat to take more off. ” All 25 soldiers were rescued, historians say, and the Fogelman home became a recourse for Sultana survivors. Passing boats and bystanders on both sides of the Mississippi helped pull survivors from the dirty water system. But some of the most poignant stories involve Confederate soldiers rescuing their Union counterparts. Frank Barton is the descendant of one of those Confederate soldiers, a man named Franklin Hardin Barton. “ He served in the 23rd Arkansas Cavalry, and he was tasked with, among other things, raiding ships going up and down the river, ” Frank Barton says. “ A few weeks early, he might have been attacking the Sultana if it had come in. ” alternatively, newspaper accounts say Franklin Barton saved several Union soldiers. The floor of the Sultana is n’t long-familiar even among people who live along the Mississippi. Potter, the lawyer and writer, grew up around Memphis, but did n’t learn about the calamity until the late 1970s, when he saw a painting of the transport in flames. Potter says he went to the library to learn more and wondered, “ Why have n’t I always learn of this ? ” Since then, he says, studying the Sultana has become an compulsion. As a lawyer, Potter was well-equipped to investigate the mistakes and malfeasance that led to the Sultana calamity. In his book, he builds a strong case against the boat ‘s master and co-owner, J. Cass Mason. “ It ‘s clean that he had bribed an military officer at Vicksburg to ensure that he would get a large load of prisoners, ” Potter says. The Sultana ‘s captain and its headman mastermind besides allowed a machinist to make a quick and inadequate animate to a damaged boiler, Potter says. “ He told the master and the chief engineer the boiler was not condom, but the engineer said he would have a accomplished animate job done when the boat made it to St. Louis. ” evidence like that may have led the government to downplay the Sultana calamity, Potter says. But there were many early reasons the consequence did n’t get much care at the time. “ The war had just ended a few weeks before, ” he says. “ Lincoln had just been assassinated. And the boat was filled with engage men chiefly — men who in truth had n’t made a mark in history or a stigmatize in life sentence. ” But possibly the best explanation is that after years of bloody battle, the nation was just bore of hearing about war and death.

today, though, the city of Marion, Ark., thinks people are ready to learn about the Sultana. The impermanent museum it has created near City Hall includes pictures, personal items from soldiers, pieces of the Sultana, and a 14-foot replica of the gravy boat. But what the museum truly has to offer is a herculean fib of soldiers who died good days away from seeing their families and love ones. “ They had survived war, ” O’Neal says. “ They had survived prison in one of the most hideous places the South had. It just hurts my kernel. ”