The Sultana: What Happened

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So far I’ve been teasing you without really diving into WHAT happened to the Sultana. Now it’s time to give you the history lesson of the disaster. The Sultana was a steamship that usually operated along the Mississippi River. As I mentioned when I was at Delphi, Indiana, the steamships were major freight vessels, and freight would be offloaded onto the smaller canal boats to serve towns that were not major port cities. Additionally, the ship carried passengers. She was laid out to carry a total of 376 passengers and crewmen in addition to the freight she might have. The Sultana, along with a number of other steamships, were offered a nice sum of money to help evacuate the former Union prisoners of war out of the south to Union facilities or their homes. The going rate, according to the information, was $5 a man for the soldiers, and $10 a man for the officers. As Scripture says, the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). The Sultana’s captain, James Cass Mason, was also part owner of the ship. With 300 enlisted men he stood to make about $1,800 from the federal government. Mason was persuaded to take as many as he could stuff on the ship for a bigger fee (what’s eighteen hundred dollars when you can get nearly $15,000 — and remember, this is 1865 money!). He had to go to New Orleans to pick up passengers and freight then returned to Vicksburg to overload his ship. With that previous discussion’s photo of the Sultana taken the day before the disaster, you can see that only one smoke stack is blowing smoke. The historian said that was because the ship was listing to port because most of the men had rushed to the port (left) side of the ship to get in the photograph, which was causing the boiler on that side to work harder. That wasn’t the only boiler problem, though: on the way back to Vicksburg from New Orleans, one of the boilers quit working. If you’ve ever had a flat tire you’ve probably asked for it to be patched up so you can get back on the road, then you’ll give the tire “properly” fixed or replaced later. That’s the same thing that happened here. In a hurry to get those soldiers to Cairo, Illinois and collect a few thousand dollars from Uncle Sam, Mason decided to have the boiler patched instead of repaired. One more thing in this “perfect storm” of impending disaster: the Mississippi was running high from spring rains and floods. Going up river, that would have caused a massively overloaded boat with a bad boiler to fight harder against the current. So, at approximately 2 AM on the morning of April 27, 1865, that poorly patched boiler exploded. It caused a second boiler to explode as well almost immediately thereafter. Because there weren’t detailed records kept (or, if there were, they were lost in the sinking), no one knows for certain how many people were aboard, or how many died. The figures have been as high as 1,800 fatalities, but never less than 1,200 lives lost. Mason went down with his ship, last seen throwing pieces of wood to people in the water to use as a floatation device. The photo is of a model of the Sultana on display in the museum. If you look to the right in the background, you’ll see white boards lining the walls. Those board carry the names of the known dead from the disaster.