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The Sultana in 1865
Library of Congress

In the early hours of April 27, 1865, mere days after the end of the Civil
War, the Sultana burst into flames along the Mississippi River. The
Sultana was a 260-foot-long wooden steamboat, built in Cincinnati in 1863,
which regularly transported passengers and freight between St. Louis and
New Orleans on the Mississippi River.

On April 23, 1865, the vessel docked in Vicksburg to address issues with
the boiler during a routine journey from New Orleans. While in port, it
was contracted by the U.S. Government to carry former Union prisoners of
war from Confederate prisons, such as Andersonville and Cahaba, back into
Northern territory. In order to fulfill the lucrative contract, J. Cass
Mason, the Sultana�s captain, opted to patch the leaky boiler rather than
complete more extensive and time-consuming repairs. Fearing that his
colleagues were taking bribes to transport prisoners on other boats, Union
Army Captain George Williams, who oversaw the operation, hastily ordered
that all former prisoners at the parole camp and hospital at Vicksburg be
transported on the Sultana. Although it was designed to only hold 376
persons, more than 2,000 Union troops were crowded onto the steamboat -
more than five times its legal carrying capacity. Despite concerns of
overloading from several officers, Williams refused to divide the men,
insisting that they travel on one vessel.

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Explosion of the Steamer "Sultana," April 28 1865 Harper's Weekly
The Sultana steamed north up the Mississippi, but the severe overcrowding
and faster river current caused by the spring thaw put increased pressure
on its newly patched boilers. Shortly after leaving Memphis, Tennessee on
April 27th, the overstrained boilers exploded, blowing apart the center of
the boat and starting an uncontrollable fire. Many of those who were not
killed immediately perished as they tried to swim to shore. Of the initial
survivors, 200 later died from burns sustained during the incident.
Researchers indicate that 1,195 of the 2,200 passengers and crew died,
making the Sultana incident the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S.
history.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/sultana-disaster

How Much of Sultana Disaster was due to Union Officers' Graft?

To this day the Sultana disaster remains the worst in terms of loss of
life in our country's history. Over 2500 men and women with children on
board but none surviving. Some of this can be attributed to the state of
affairs of the day. We had just gone through a civil war (less than 2
months since the ending) in which we lost over 620,000 people in a country
(North and South) of about 30 million at its start. Life expectancy was
under 40 years in 1860. The war had ended, Lincoln had been assassinated
and Booth had been killed. I guess I can somewhat understand why the
sinking ship did not carry a great deal of weight. Yet, it seems that the
loss, at least to me, is made all the worse in the fact that many of the
victims wee from Andersonville. Further, there were two other riverboats
tied up nearby which could have taken up most of these passengers but both
left port with zero and 17 passengers. There is a great deal of evidence
of graft - that Union oficers were getting a payoff for every passenger
boarding the Sultana. This was swept under the rug post haste with the
Captain becoming the scapegoat.

https://civilwartalk.com/attachments/1594507664274-png.366062/

This was not an article. I wrote the piece and I knew that there where
misspelled words and they were not staying highlighted and I could not
find a spell check key. I coped what I wrote and put it on a WP program,
corrected the misspelled words and inserted into the box I was originally
writing in. If I remember correctly there were a number of reasons why she
sank. The riverboats were anticipated to have a short life. The best of
raw materials and equipment was not a great consideration at the time of
construction. The iron used in her boiler construction was poor quality
but it was close to the best available in that day. Steel was not being
used extensively at the time of Sultana's construction (January 3, 1861
launch). It was known that a fissure existed on a plate and a mechanic was
asked to fix the seam in a day when he estimated that it might take as
many as three days. The fear was that the men on the Saltana would debark
and the owners would earn less money. One of the Owners was also the
Captain, James Cass Mason. Instead of cutting the faulty seam out the
mechanic patched it with a slimmer plate. It mattered little - many of the
plates were compromised. Steam water on the boat was made directly from
the river water without adding chemicals to slow corrosion. The vessel was
badly overloaded in part due to miscalculation by a Union Captain. On
April 26, 1865 Sultana stopped at Memphis and unloaded 200 tons of sugar
from the lower holds. This destabilized the vessel since 2/3 of the weight
of the vessel should have been below the waterline and no compensation was
made for ballast. Regardless, so many people were crowded on the upper
decks of the vessel stabilizing her would have been very difficult. The
upper decks had to be shored up with heavy timbers to prevent again a deck
collapse. When she left Memphis she was running against a strong current
from the spring thaw. She was probably using more steam pressure than she
could handle. If something had attracted the passage to either side of the
upper decks of the vessel she would have listed quickly. When she listed
she may have exposed the tubes to further overheating as the outboard
boilers on the side opposite the list may have been exposed. If one boiler
exploded other boilers could have easily ruptured. It has also been
suggested that a Southern Agent planted an exploding piece of fake coal.
It is suspected that the Confederates had done something similar at City
Point at an ammunition depot. Yet, between the iron used on the boiler,
their ill state of repair, the overloading of the boat, and the velocity
of the current it is likely all the ingridents were present for a boiler
explosion. Some of those possibly guilty of Graft Quartermaster Hatch,
Captain Williams, Captain Mason and others but at the end of the day there
is little proof.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/how-much-of-sultana-disaster-was-due-to-
union-officers-graft.174982/