OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: The Sinking of the Steamship Sultana
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
September 27, 1999
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Historical Collections of Ohio
The Kelley Family Collections
Newspaper article, Plains Dealer
compiled by S.J. Kelley-- 1925
And Then They Went West
by Darlene E. Kelley  1998
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Continuation of the sinking of the Sultana.
Part 2--

The Sultana could not have carried another human being but somehow she
got clear of the wharf and went pulling upstream, breasting a current
made stronger than usual by the river's flood stage. Captain Mason
seemed to be a bit worried. He cautioned the men not to crowd to one
side of the boat when a landing was made, because there were so many of
them, it might cause serious trouble. But for 48 hours after casting off
the Vicksburg Wharf, the Sultana went on without trouble, making a few
scheduled stops and on the evening of April 26th, docked at Memphis.
Here some of the passengers disembaked. The hogshead of sugar were
unloaded and some of the stronger ex-prisoners helped in the work, to
earn a bit of pocket money. a number of the soldiers went ashore to see
the sights and some of these, not knowing how lucky they were, saw so
any sights that they did not get back by sailing time. While the Saltana
was at Memphis, a leaky boiler gave more trouble. Again the repair gang
was called in and the leak was repaired. It was close to midnight when
the packet let go her mooring lines and crossed the river to take on
coal. After this was loaded the Sultana went up the river, bound for
Cairo. Most of the servicemn aboard were to disembark there. The current
was strong and the Sultana was overloaded-- fearfully overloaded, with
six times as many passengers as she had been designed to carry. The big
paddle wheels thrashed the water, straining against the powerful
current. One of the ship's officers later recalled that as they left
Memphis he remarked " I'd give all the interest I have in this steamer,
if we were landed in Cairo!" The soldiers, one supposes, were dozing.
Two or three days more and they would be home again. Then they could
sleep and eat and rest, and the terrible camp experiences could begin to
fade into their memories. The war was over-- just a few more hours on
this crowded steamboat, and they would be home. Midnight passed, and the
Sultana kept on going. But by two in the morning, she was just a few
miles north of Memphis. She was making progress, but progress was slow;
the current was powerful, the boilers were tired, the load was much
greater than usual. The Sultana swung ' round a bend and began to labor
her way past a cluster of islands known as the " Hen and Chickens." Then
it happened. The leaky boilers gave up. They really gave up! They quit
holding the heavy pressure of steam and suddenly exploded with a
tremendous crash that was heard all the way back to Memphis. The
explosion sent an orange-colored flame boiling up into the black sky. A
sudden stabbing piller of fire that lit up the black, swirling river and
was visible for miles. Back at Memphis the watch on U.S.S. Grosbeak, a
river gunboat saw the light and heard the noise. The Skipper was called,
and he had them cast off the mooring lines and the Grosbeak went
pounding up the river. Other steamers on the Memphis waterfront did
likewise, hurrying against the strong current to give  any help they
could give.
It was a loosing race. The Sultana had been half blown apart by the
terrific force of the explosion. Hundreds of sleeping soldiers were
blown bodily into the river-- snuggly asleep one moment, hurtling
through the air into the cold black water the next. With them went great
chunks of twisted machinery, a shower of red-hot coals that hissed and
spurted as they hit the river and great fragments of wood,cabin
furniure, railing, deck beams, half of the steamboat had simply
disintegrated. One man was said to be thrown more than two hundred feet.
By some miracle, he was not seriously hurt and landed in the river,
floundered a few yards to a floating tree, clung to it and was picked up
by the Grosbeak, miles downsteam. Three others were blown clear of the
ship, a big piece of the afterdeck under them. Deck and men made a
square landing seventy five feet from the wrecked vessel; dazed and
still no more then half awake, the men clung to the wreckage until it
floated down to Memphis where rescue boats saved them.

Few of the returning prisoners fared that well. The water was icy-cold,
many of them could not swim, and there was little wreckage to cling to
with so many of them. Men died by the hundreds in the water near the
wreck. They had been half-starved for months and were in no physical
shape to swim even if they had known how.
One man recalled afterward; " When I got about three hundred yards away
from the boat, clinging to a heavy plank, the whole heavens seemed to be
lighted up by the conflagration. Hundreds of y comrades were fastened
down by the timbers of the decks and had to burn while the water seemed
to be one solid mass of human beings struggling with the waves."
For fire followed the explosion. The blast scattered hot coals from the
furnaces all over the midships section of the steamer, and in moments
the disabled vessel was on fire. The upper works were all collapsed,
there was a huge , gaping hole in the middle of the hurricane deck and
the flames were taking hold everywhere. To stay aboard could be worse
then to be in the river, even if a man was too weak to swim. So men who
had not been knocked into the water went there of their own accord,
willing to face anything rather then the spreading flames. One man who
clung to the wrecked upper deck wrote afterward: " On looking down and
out into the river, I would see men jumping from all parts of the boat
into the water until it seemed black with men, their heads bobbing up
and down like corks, and then disappearing beneath the turbulent waters,
never to appear again." 
 The Sultana, of course, was totally out of control by now and was
drifting helplessly downstream. The deck supporting the main rank of
passenger cabins where the officers were housed, collapsed at one end,
forming a horrible steep ramp down into the hottest fire, slid screeing
men and a tangle of wreckage. The huge twin smokestacks, hallmark of
every Mississippi packet boat, tottered uncertainly and then came
crashing down, pinning men under them and holding them for the flames.
The superstructure was falling in and the whole midships section was
nothing better than a floating bed of coals. Survivors clung desperately
to the bow and stern sections, which the fire had not reached and among
them panic born, there started to cry: " The boat's sinking!" Many
voices took up the cry as if it was a death chant and men who were yet
unhurt began to throw themselves into the water, thrashing about
frantically for some bit of wreckage that might help them stay afloat.

Somewhere aboard the Sultana was a ten foot alligator in a stout wooden
cage-- a man eater-- according to soldier gossip. One soldier bayoneted
the reptile, rolled the wooden crate over the side, jumped in after
it,and hung onto it until a passing boat rescued him. 
Hundreds of horribly burned and scalded men remained aboard the drifting
hulk. Some had the strength and presence of mind to wrench doors or
window blinds from their hinges, toss them overboard and jump in after
them. Others simply huddled in the diminishing spaces that the flames
had not yet reached and shouted , prayed or screamed helplessly for aid.
Someone had gotten the steamer's lifeboats into the water and desperate
floating men tried to struggle aboard. So far the flames had not reached
the bow, and there most of the survivors were jammed. Then the wind
shifted, or perhaps the difting boat swung around and took it from
another direction, and the flames leaped forward.
Most of the men prefered drowning to be burned alive, and leapt into the
water. One an remembered, " The men who were afraid to take to the water
could be seen clinging to the sides of the bow of the boat until they
were singed off like flies."
" Shrieks and cries fro mercy were all that could be heard; and that
awful mrning reminded me of the stones of doomsday of my childhood,"
At last the boat struck a small island, where little groves of trees and
some of those who were still aboard jumped ashore with ropes and made
the hulk fast. Twenty or thirty more than managed to fabricate a
makeshift raft from broken imbers, and cut loose just in time. Slowly,
the worst of the flames died down, and finally with the moring ropes
still holding what was left gave up the hopeless struggle and sank with
a great noise of hissing and a huge pilar of smoke and steam rising
toward the sky. 
Hundreds of men were found on both shores of the Mississipi, clinging to
trees of driftwood, many of them badly burned and without clothing.
Altogether between 500 to 600 men were taken to Memphis hospitals, Some
200 of these died soon afterward either from burns or exposure and
general debility. For many days after the disaster, a barge was sent out
each morning to pick up dead bodies. Each night it would come back to
Memphis with its gruesome cargo.
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