It was not until the U.S. government began to crack down and either enact, or enforce, the laws, that safety became an overriding factor in steamboat travel. By eliminating the manpower required to row or paddle, often against powerful currents, steamboats fueled an exponential growth in trade and development. However, the explosion of her boilers just above Memphis on 27 April 1865 put a terrible end to that endeavor. Given as the "John Lithoberry Shipyard" on Ohio Historical Marker 1831 (1999) on the Ohio River at Sawyer Point. They wanted the railroad companies to pay for damages to the Effie Afton and its cargo. Aurora (1902) steam screw. The event remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history (the sinking of the Titanic killed 1,512 people). I had learned so much more, and collected so many more first-person accounts from the people on board, from the rescuers, and from the people involved, that I knew I had to write a new tell-all book that would dispel, as well as verify, all of the stories, rumors, and myths surrounding the disaster. and Mrs. M.V. Explosion and Burning of the Steamboat Teche on the Mississippi River, May 5, 1825., Explosion of the Helen McGregor, At Memphis, Tennessee, February 24, 1830., Terrific Explosion of the Steamboat Ben Franklin, at Mobile, Alabama, March 13, 1836.. Among its owners on that day was Herman Pott, St. Louis boatbuilder. Send to: Patrick Rash. Almost 1,200 people perished. And, the cost of a stateroom was not based on the wealth of the traveler. Instead of taking two or three days, the temporary repair took only one. An aerial view of the striken Golden Eagle at Grand Tower Island in the Mississippi River on May 19, 1947. The stops were reversed on the downstream journey as passengers, mail, and tons of freight including four-hundred-pound bales of cotton were loaded and unloaded. In a seeming paradox of frontier boosterism, Lloyds book sold this terrible recent history of the Mississippi as a romantic feature of the area. Who Was John Wilkes Booth Before He Became Lincoln's Assassin. ", Discovery Gives New Ending To A Death At The Civil War's Close. Soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee were among the first to die, he says, "because they'd been packed in next to the boilers. FS: Tell us why the Sultana Disaster Museum is located in Marion, Arkansas. He was a passenger aboard the Golden Eagle, the company's last steamboat, when it sank near Tower Island in the Mississippi River on May 18, 1947. I do not feel that it lets would-be historians off the hook as long as they go the extra mile and gather the basic facts, etc., through diligent leg work. Most of its 91 passengers and crew were asleep. Bodies of victims continued to be found downriver for months, some as far as Vicksburg. For two years, she ran a regular route between St. Louis and New Orleans and was frequently commissioned to carry troops during the American Civil War. [4]:33,3435,38,4041, While the paroled prisoners, primarily from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia,[4]:226290 were brought from the parole camp to Sultana, a mechanic was brought down to work on the leaky boiler. The Golden Eagle's new St. Louis-based owners left it to the river's mercy. It's estimated between 300 and 400 boats have sunk along the Missouri River. Captain Mason of Sultana, who was ultimately responsible for dangerously overloading his vessel and ordering the faulty repairs to her leaky boiler, had died in the disaster. FS: In writing this book and having devoted much of your lifetime to telling the true stories of the vessels named Sultana, when did your aim to dispel myths and legends take over your outlook? What effect did steamboats and travel on the river have on the development of Iowa? Barrett was a veteran of the MexicanAmerican War and had been captured at the Battle of Franklin. [32], In 1982, a local archaeological expedition, led by Memphis attorney Jerry O. Potter, uncovered what was believed to be the wreckage of Sultana. Although brought up on courts-martial charges, Hatch managed to get letters of recommendation from no less reputable personages than President Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. During the gold rush to Montana in the 1860s, steamboats traveled far up the Missouri to early mining towns. The preliminary crest of 19.61 . The crew threw more wood on the fire. It has been going on for centuries. [4]:129 Eventually, the hulk of Sultana drifted about six miles (10km) to the west bank of the river and sank at around 7:00 AM near Mound City and present-day Marion, Arkansas, about five hours after the explosion. Explosion of the Moselle, Near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838.. An engraving of the Sultana explosion, published in Harpers Weekly, May 20, 1865. In writing my first few books I literally had to go to the U.S., state, and military archives to do my research. Then, once some laws were passed, they were generally ignored. 2. But it was the last trace of St. Louis' own Eagle Packet Co., which Leyhe's father and uncle founded shortly before the Civil War, when the downtown levee was crowded with steamboats. As a lawyer, Potter was well-equipped to investigate the mistakes and malfeasance that led to the Sultana disaster. A crew member fished liquor bottles from the half-flooded bar. Among those killed were Louisiana state representatives H. J. Huard and Charles Bannister. [15][full citation needed], The official cause of the Sultana disaster was determined to be the mismanagement of water levels in the boilers, exacerbated by the fact that the vessel was severely overloaded and top-heavy. hide caption. He has conducted interviews with some 75 high-profile people, including historians, government officials, combat veterans, journalists, explorers, and Hollywood stars. Non-subscribers can read five free Naval History articles per month. All 25 soldiers were rescued, historians say, and the Fogelman home became a refuge for Sultana survivors. Badger State (1844) steam paddle. Uninjured crewmen and passengers dragged the injured up onto the sandbar. Fred Schultz has been in the publishing business since 1980 and was editor-in-chief ofNaval History from 1993-2005. Blackened wooden deck planks and timbers were found about 32 feet (10m) under a soybean field on the Arkansas side, about 4 miles (6km) from Memphis. And the shrapnel, the steam and the boiling water killed hundreds. Savannah Davis, 23, died from blunt . It was reported that the steamer was insured for $8,000. Many of the paroled prisoners had been weakened by their incarceration and associated illnesses but had managed to gain some strength while waiting at the parole camp to be officially released. [4]:164 Other vessels joined the rescue, including the steamers Silver Spray, Jenny Lind, and Pocahontas, the navy ironclad USS Essex and the sidewheel gunboat USSTyler. Then, as time went on, I noticed that the numbers of people supposedly on board the Sultana when she exploded, and the number of people that died on board the Sultana, kept going up and up and up. Leyhe's father and uncle established the Eagle Packet Co., and Leyhe began working on the Mississippi River when he was 18. Some survivors were plucked from the tops of semi-submerged trees along the Arkansas shore. The forward part of the upper deck collapsed onto the middle deck, killing and trapping many in the wreckage. Why should potential readers care? [24]:193197, Despite the magnitude of the disaster, no one was ever formally held accountable. Explosion of the Steamboat Constitution, May 4, 1817, Point Coupee, Louisiana. The sternwheel paddleboat that would later be named the Eclipse was built in 1901 at St. Joseph, Missouri, for Captain A. Stewart for service on the Missouri River, and was christened the City of St. Joseph . As the steamboat made her way north following the twists and turns of the river, she listed severely from side to side. He was company president for many years and sold the company in 1946. Salecker, historical consultant for the Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Arkansas, recently participated in an author q&a with former Naval History editor-in-chief Fred Schultz to discuss the book: FS: After having read your exhaustive story of the various iterations of the steamboat Sultana, I couldnt help but compare her fate to the loss of the Titanic, which, as Im sure you know, has received much more attention from historians. The collision startled Marga Sachse, a passenger from St. Louis, who said she "felt a jar, and the ship lurched.". "It was like a tremendous bomb going off in the middle of where these men were," Potter says. It went upward at a 45-degree angle, tearing through the crowded decks above and completely destroying the pilothouse, instantly killing Captain Mason. And the boat was filled with enlisted men primarily men who really hadn't made a mark in history or a mark in life." Smith shouted at 2:20 a.m., suddenly unable to turn the steering wheel. While researching those numbers, I ran across other myths and legends that were incorrect or misleading, while at the same time verifying many of the stories. Slaves from the nearby Cottage plantation were ordered to bring sheets and blankets. GES: I think the reporting of the Sultana disaster in April and May 1865 was pretty accurate. (Post-Dispatch), Ruth Ferris, assistant curator at the Missouri Historical Society (now the History Museum), displays the steering wheel in the Golden Eagle pilot house as it went on display in the museum on May 2, 1962. The Sultana sank in the Mississippi River near Marion, and over the years, the wreck was eventually covered with silt. [4]:79 First one boiler exploded, followed a split-second later by two more. Packed on board the riverboat Sultana when her boilers blew, recently freed Union POWs faced being consumed by flames or drowning in the Mississippi. Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. There were 10 passengers on board. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. A couple billed as "a genuine giant and giantess" arrive in St. Louis for a visit. The Montana was a Mississippi and Missouri River stern-wheel steamboat, one of three "mega-steamboats" built in 1879 during the steamboat era on the Missouri. The ability to navigate these rivers was of great importance in the settlement of Iowa before railroads. Probably the most interesting of the wrecks are Vessel No. The ill-fated Sultana in Helena, Ark., just before it exploded on April 27, 1865, with about 2,500 people aboard. On March 26, 1915, while the Alice Miller was laid up at Vicksburg, fire broke out in the kitchen, and the boat was destroyed. Then the traveler could go upstairs and eat at the main tables with the first-class passengers. 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.S. warships, who immediately set about rescuing the survivors. After the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Louisiana, in July 1863 and the opening of the Mississippi, the Sultana was used to bring cotton from parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas that were now under Union control up north so that it could be sent to Eastern manufacturers that had been starving for the raw material. The boat was loaded with passengers, mostly from Mississippi and Louisiana, headed to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras. Evidence like that may have led the government to downplay the Sultana tragedy, Potter says. The Eclipse was a steamboat that struck a snag on the Mississippi River near Osceola (Mississippi County) on September 12, 1925; a deckhand and a passenger lost their lives in the accident. On a landscape lacking roads but braided with bayous and rivers, travel via water was the only efficient means of transportation. The owners of the Effie Afton decided to take the railroad companies that had built the bridge to court. (Post-Dispatch). Its sister craft included the Spread Eagle and the Bald Eagle. During the Civil War steamboats carried Iowa soldiers, weapons and food supplies to army posts. [citation needed] The next year, only one man showed up. In 2012 and 2015, the river was low sufficient to additionally expose the USS Inaugural. Steamboats carried plows and seed to new farmers settling in Nebraska in the 1850s and 1860s. And many of them were saved by local residents, like John Fogelman an ancestor of the city of Marion's current mayor, Frank Fogelman. The Nick Wall was a sternwheel river packet that struck a snag on the Mississippi River near Grand Lake (Chicot County) on December 18, 1870. The St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April 29, 1865, states that the "steamer Sultana left New Orleans on Friday evening the 21st, with about seventy cabin passengers, and about eighty five employees on the boat. From 1817 to 1871, about 5,600 people died on Mississippi River wrecks of all sorts, including burst boilers, collisions and fires. (The whole book is digitally available via the Library of Congress, on the Internet Archive.). The May 9, 1989 the Des Moines Register newspaper listed 40 known sunken steamboats from the southwest corner of Iowa north just over 100 miles to Sioux City. James Cass Mason, King's German Legion "Blues in the Water" tells a stylized version of the, This page was last edited on 29 April 2023, at 19:15. Nathan Smith of Normandy, Mo., the pilot of the Golden Eagle when it sank on May 18, 1947, as he prepared to testify two days later at a Coast Guard hearing on the accident in downtown St. Louis. [citation needed], By the mid-1920s, only a handful of survivors could attend the reunions. Three civilian victims of the wreck of Sultana are interred at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. Flatboats and keelboats carried cargo down the river. Daniel Jackson / May 29, 2021 A sister boat to the famous Natchez, the Princess had undergone a thorough retrofitting the previous summer and was said to be one of the fastest and most luxurious craft on the Mississippi River. An engraving of the Sultana explosion, published in Harpers Weekly, May 20, 1865. The boilers exploded off Cairo, killing at least 1443 men, a loss of life never exceeded on the rivers, and rarely at sea. Featured in the museum are a few relics from Sultana such as shaker plates from the boat's furnace, furnace bricks, a few pieces of wood, and some small metal pieces. All contents FERRYVILLE - A train derailed along the Mississippi River Thursday afternoon in southwest Wisconsin, leaving several cars overturned and jumbled along the bluff and two cars floating . [4]:7985, While the Sultana burned, and the men on the steamboat were either already dead or fighting for their lives, the southbound steamer Bostona (No. Charcoal Hammered No. Leyhe died in 1956 in St. Louis at 83. The Missouri was a dangerous river. Explosion and Burning of the Steamboat Teche on the Mississippi River, May 5, 1825. The coal-burning steamboat was on a trip to Nasvhille, Tenn., via the Ohio and Cumberland rivers, when it sank at Grand Tower Island 80 miles below St. Louis on May 18, 1947. Hundreds of steamboats were wrecked on the Missouri. Traveling by steamboat on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was common in the 1800s. 2 likes, 0 comments - BHYHA (@bhyhapodcast) on Instagram: "On this day in 1865.The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killi." BHYHA on Instagram: "On this day in 1865.The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing 1,700 passengers including many discharged Union soldiers. In the early hours of April 27th, 1865, mere days after the end of the Civil War, the Sultana burst into flames along the Mississippi River. He died in 1871, having escaped justice because of his numerous highly placed patronsincluding two presidents. Although designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, she was carrying 2,130 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and caused it to sink near Memphis, Tennessee. The Vault isSlates history blog. Preston Lodwick, then a consortium including Capt. More and more government documents are coming online every day, so it is now quick and easy to make a search for needed information. "The war had just ended a few weeks before," he says. [4]:146147,168176, Passengers who survived the initial explosion had to risk their lives in the icy spring runoff of the Mississippi or burn with the boat. One-Year subscription (4 issues) : $20.00, Two-Year subscription (8 issues) : $35.00, 64 Parishes 2023. Using steam power, riverboats were developed during that time which could navigate in shallow waters as well as upriver against strong currents. 2023 Fire broke out and began to consume the remains. And finally, at the end of the war, the Sultana would have played a significant role in transporting former Union prisoners-of-war back to the North. "Lincoln had just been assassinated. Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard[1] in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. Bad storms hit the river in the summer. A sunken casino boat has been uncovered in the Mississippi as severe drought pushes water levels in the Memphis section of the river to record lows. There was no manifest to record the names of passengers aboard the Princess at the time of the disaster. Steamboats should not have been racing each other, but it happened all the time, and the public loved it! Yet, shortly after my 1996 book came out, a cabal of people sprang up touting the sabotage theory once again. The Mississippi River has changed course several times since the disaster, leaving the wreck under dry land and far from today's river. While the Titanic caused more deaths, the great ocean liner was a British vessel and carried people from several different countries. Today, though, the city of Marion, Ark., thinks people are ready to learn about the Sultana. In 1929, only two men attended the southern reunion. Explosion of the Moselle, Near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838. A U.S. Coast Guard vessel searches the waters near the east bank of the Mississippi River near the I-10 bridge, just before noon, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, after a man fell from the American Queen . Most of Sultana's officers, including Captain Mason, were among those who perished.[8]. Steamboat companies often made huge profits by carrying tons of cargo to rapidly growing communities.
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