For several hours its crew and passengers provided aid before heading upriver, its decks covered with bodies of the dead and injured. "Somebody had came by and notified us. ", Ancestry.com, Texas Death Certificates, 19031980, Jennings, Pat "What Happened to the Sultana? The story of the Sultana isn't well-known even among people who live along the Mississippi. Steamboats collided or caught on fire. "The boat had a legal carrying capacity of 376 passengers," he says, "and on its up-river trip it had over 2,500 aboard," in part because the government had agreed to pay $5 for each enlisted man and $10 for each officer who made the trip. Sometimes captains accidentally ran their boats up onto the sandbars. The huge boats could carry many passengers and large amounts of freight. Steamboating | Tennessee Encyclopedia When it got to Grand Tower Ill. catastrophe struck. The men were packed into every available space as all cabin spaces were already filled with civilian passengers; the overflow was so severe that in some places, the decks began to creak and sag and had to be supported with heavy wooden beams. Morgan, James Morris. Mississippi River Shipwreck Exposed by Drought as Water - Newsweek The report blamed quartermaster Capt. Potter, the lawyer and author, grew up around Memphis, but didn't learn about the tragedy until the late 1970s, when he saw a painting of the ship in flames. (You can unsubscribe anytime), Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection, Steamboat Princess. 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 Corp of Engineers in a report issued July 3, 1934 listed 36 types of steamboat wrecks on the Missouri River alone. William "Buck" Lehye, who sold the Golden Eagle one year before, and Mrs. Frank Lind, a lifelong fancier of steamboat travel. On May 6, 1856 a steamboat named Effie Afton crashed into the bridge, destroying the steamboat as well as part of the bridge. Students tour the pilot house of the Golden Eagle on display at the U.S. Army Engineers base at the foot of Arsenal Street on Jan. 4, 1948. Paskoff, Paul F. Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 18211860. But there were many other reasons the event didn't get much attention at the time. It was her 82nd birthday. Slate is published by The Slate A year later, when the U.S. government established the Memphis National Cemetery[4]:206 on the northeast side of the city, the bodies were moved there. An outfield in flux. GES: I began to dispel the myths and untruths surrounding the Sultana shortly after the Naval Institute Press published my first book in 1996. 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. It was a standard fare, no matter who you were. Everyone escaped to the muddy, isolated safety of Grand Tower Island. Who Was John Wilkes Booth Before He Became Lincoln's Assassin. SS Sultana:The steamboat was bound for St. Louis in April 1865 when the boilers failed right above Memphis, 13 days after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Fire broke out and began to consume the remains. Long before Kanesville or Council Bluffs were settlements on the Missouri river, the steamboat the Western Engineer arrived in the area in 1819. Explosion of the Oronoko, April 21, 1838, near Princeton, Mississippi. And, the cost of a stateroom was not based on the wealth of the traveler. Persac, Marie Adrien (Artist) GES: Goods and materials were by far the most important and more profitable cargo to carry. Yet, shortly after my 1996 book came out, a cabal of people sprang up touting the sabotage theory once again. Near midnight, Sultana left Memphis, leaving behind about 200 men. One of the most horrific accidents occurred in 1838, when the Moselle, a fast and nearly new Ohio River steamboat, exploded off Cincinnati. Also, many people chose to pay for only deck passage, which restricted the traveler to the lowest (main) deck. Probably the most interesting of the wrecks are Vessel No. In 1857, The Nebraska City Advertiser newspaper listed 46 steamboats traveling the Missouri, with 12 more being built. On his trips up and down the river, Odis often took his wife, Rosa, along. Subscribe with this special offer to keep reading, (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). A Look Back The day the Golden Eagle steamboat sank in 1947 THIS DAY IN HISTORY - Union soldiers die in steamship explosion - 1865 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. [4]:7479. (Post-Dispatch), The Golden Eagle moored on the St. Louis riverfront in May 1946. The Wreck of the Sultana for visitors to the Mississippi River Lloyd, James T. Lloyds Steamboat Directory and Disasters on the Western Waters. Under the command of Captain James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana left St. Louis on April 13, 1865, bound for New Orleans. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The number of people killed instantly or who drowned or died as a result of their injuries was variously estimated from seventy to two hundred; the actual number was likely closer to the smaller figure. [9] In February 1867, the Bureau of Military Justice placed the death toll at 1,100. Explosion of the Helen McGregor, At Memphis, Tennessee, February 24, 1830. The first steamboat on the Mississippi River along Iowas border was the 109-ton Virginia, on its way to Fort Snelling (now Saint Paul, Minnesota) in May 1823. 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. 2), built in 1860 but coming downriver on her maiden voyage after being refurbished,[6] arrived at about 2:30 AM, a half hour after the explosion, and rescued scores of survivors. Although the patched boiler was not the cause of the disaster, it was certainly indicative that the Sultana had faulty boilers. 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. FROM THE VAULT: Rollin' on the River - The Vicksburg Post The Sultana tragedies seem to be classic examples of putting profit over safety. "It was like a tremendous bomb going off in the middle of where these men were. 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. An estimated four hundred people were on board the Princess when it pulled out into the current of the river after 9 a.m. Because the boat was late, high boiler pressure had been maintained during the stop, and second engineer Peter Hersey was reported to have declared that he would make it to New Orleans on time if he had to blow her up. As a portent of the looming catastrophe, the Mississippi River was veiled in a dense fog. Train derails near Wisconsin-Iowa border; 2 cars float down Mississippi Dropping water levels could cause hot spots leading to metal fatigue, significantly increasing the risk of an explosion. Mississippi River at Lansing at crest Friday evening The museum also features many artifacts from the Sultana Survivor's Association, as well as a fourteen-foot model replica of the boat. During the Civil War steamboats carried Iowa soldiers, weapons and food supplies to army posts. The fires still going against the empty boiler created hot spots. As the steamboat made her way north following the twists and turns of the river, she listed severely from side to side. Or does it let would-be historians off the hook from paying their own dues for embarking on the composition of a piece of nonfiction? Mississippi woman dies in boat crash on the Jourdan River | Biloxi Sun Because Union forces had captured Memphis in 1862 and turned it into a supply and recuperation city, numerous local hospitals treated the roughly 760 survivors with the latest medical equipment and trained personnel. The violent explosion flung some deck passengers into the water and blew a gaping 2530 foot hole in the steamer. Even amid the horrendous chaos, rescue efforts began immediately. Throughout the 1800s, steamboat travel on Iowas rivers has impacted the states development and growth. By eliminating the manpower required to row or paddle, often against powerful currents, steamboats fueled an exponential growth in trade and development. And, in fact, when the boats used the regular flue boilers, the sediment in the water was not too much of a problem. The Sultana was launched from Cincinnati in 1863. William "Buck" Leyhe, who had sold Eagle Packet Co. the year before, waits for rescue on Grand Tower Island after the Golden Eagle sank. Passengers were blown apart or scalded by the hot water. Train derails into Mississippi River near Wisconsin community (The whole book is digitally available via the Library of Congress, on the Internet Archive.). Steamboats traveled into Iowa border waters even before Iowa was legally open for settlement. Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard[1] in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. Beneath Tennessee River, Steamboat Wreckage Presents Mystery A Look Back The day the Golden Eagle steamboat sank in 1947. Many of the stories that the newspapers got from survivors were not always correct (one man said that there were people from every state in the Union on boardnot so), but they were reporting what they were told. It has been going on for centuries. Example: Yes, I would like to receive emails from 64 Parishes. Badger State (1844) steam paddle. All the examined boat wrecks were working vessels, towboats or barges, so the artifacts and other data gave a glimpse into the lives of river men on the Mississippi around the turn of the 20 th century. 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 . 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. Wreck of the Montana - YouTube In later years the steamboats pushed huge rafts of logs from the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota to sawmills farther down the river. "The river is at flood stage," he says as we watch a barge struggle to move up river, "very similar to what it was on April 27, 1865." GES: I agree wholeheartedly. [citation needed] The next year, only one man showed up. Library of Congress The most recent investigation into the cause of the disaster by Pat Jennings, principal engineer of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which came into existence in 1866 because of the Sultana explosion, determined that three main factors led to the disaster: 1) The type of metal used in the construction of the boilers Charcoal Hammered No.
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