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. The Capt. The disaster of the Princess near Baton Rouge in 1859 was a tragically typical example. GES: I began to dispel the myths and untruths surrounding the Sultana shortly after the Naval Institute Press published my first book in 1996. The rest can be gotten through the internet, which can be a positive thingif done correctly. At least thirty-nine passengers and crew members died in the accident. She also carried a crew of 85. "He told the captain and the chief engineer the boiler was not safe, but the engineer said he would have a complete repair job done when the boat made it to St. [24]:193197, Despite the magnitude of the disaster, no one was ever formally held accountable. hide caption. Trees along the river bank were almost completely covered until only the very tops of the trees were visible above the swirling, powerful water. 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. Although they knew that the water above Cairo was cleaner, the only problem they thought they faced by the dirtier lower Mississippi water was that they had to clean their boilers more often. The last of the southern survivors, and last overall survivor, was Private Charles M. Eldridge of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, who died at his home at age 96 on September 8, 1941, more than 76 years after the disaster. FS: Which cargo would you say was more important and most profitablethe goods and materials or the obviously wealthy patrons who were there just for a glamorous boat ride? Steamboat Princess Disaster On February 27, 1859, the Steamboat Princess exploded on the Mississippi River killing between 70 and 200 passengers and crew. By the time the repairs would have been completed, the prisoners would have been sent home on other boats. FS: It seems to this reader that one of the main reasons for such a series of disasters for vessels named Sultana is that the owners of the steamers and the people entrusted with actually navigating the ships [boats] were ignoring the fact that overcrowding may have been the principal reason for the long list of tragedies. Explosion of the Steamboat Constitution, May 4, 1817, Point Coupee, Louisiana. In the 1840s, The Ripple was the first steamboat to the capital in Iowa City. Because of a trick of fate, the story of the Sultana is virtually unknown. The collision startled Marga Sachse, a passenger from St. Louis, who said she "felt a jar, and the ship lurched.". In 1857, The Nebraska City Advertiser newspaper listed 46 steamboats traveling the Missouri, with 12 more being built. Her two side-mounted paddle wheels were driven by four fire-tube boilers. Her four boilers were interconnected and mounted side-by-side so that if the boat tipped sideways, water would tend to run out of the highest boiler. Smith shouted at 2:20 a.m., suddenly unable to turn the steering wheel. He/she ate the same fare as the roustabouts and hands unless he/she bought a dinner ticket. Aurora (1902) steam screw. On the three-hundred-mile upriver leg, it made stops at Donaldsonville, Plaquemine, Baton Rouge, Port Hudson, Bayou Sara, Red River Landing, Fort Adams, Natchez, Waterproof, Rodney, St. Joseph, Grand Gulf, and Warrenton, before arriving at Vicksburg. Although one of the Sultanas boilers was being repaired when the ex-prisoners were being crowded aboard the boat, none of the Union officers seemed to mind. Lead was a very important export from the Dubuque area. Maintaining a posted schedule was important in the competitive business of steamboat commerce. Three civilian victims of the wreck of Sultana are interred at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis. For several hours its crew and passengers provided aid before heading upriver, its decks covered with bodies of the dead and injured. Although the mechanic wanted to cut out and replace a ruptured seam, Mason knew such a job would take a few days and cost him his precious load of prisoners. Cost $8 for poster plus $3.50 postage (U.S.). William H. "Buck" Leyhe of St. Louis at the wheel of the Golden Eagle steamboat in April 1939. In support of Louden's claim, what appeared to be a piece of an artillery shell was said to be recovered from the sunken wreck. Leyhe died in 1956 in St. Louis at 83. Sometimes captains accidentally ran their boats up onto the sandbars. Lavish meals were served four times a day in a great central hall, and surviving menus list such gourmet delicacies as broiled pompano and stuffed crabs. The Sultana story is one of greed and corruption, as well as pathos and sadness. The steamboat needed a lot of steam power to pull away from the shore. . "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." By August 1872 the count of steamboats under the Burlington Railroad Bridge was 147, while the 1,108 engines and trains crossed over that bridge during the same month. Why should potential readers care? [4]:2728, Upon reaching Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mason was approached by Captain Reuben Hatch, the chief quartermaster at Vicksburg, with a proposal. A train derailment in southwestern Wisconsin on Thursday sent two derailed containers into the Mississippi River, and at least four employees were injured, according to officials. Steamboats and flatboats brought thousands of early settlers to the new land of Iowa. (The whole book is digitally available via the Library of Congress, on the Internet Archive.). The owners of the Effie Afton decided to take the railroad companies that had built the bridge to court. Tubular boilers were discontinued from use on steamboats plying the Lower Mississippi after two more steamboats with tubular boilers exploded shortly after the Sultana explosion. The ship, which archaeologists. It didn't run for several years during World War II because wartime supply restrictions blocked needed upgrades to the boilers. Unlike many of the nautical discoveries in. [4]:197202 Captain George Williams, who had placed the men on board, was a regular Army officer, and the military refused to go after one of their own. The broken wood caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into a raging inferno. The Slate Group LLC. The lure of huge profits led steamboats to travel in unsafe river conditions and at unsafe speeds. The ill-fated Sultana in Helena, Ark., just before it exploded on April 27, 1865, with about 2,500 people aboard. But what the museum really has to offer is a powerful story of soldiers who died just days away from seeing their families and loved ones. The report blamed quartermaster Capt. From 1817 to 1871, about 5,600 people died on Mississippi River wrecks of all sorts, including burst boilers, collisions and fires. Designed to carry both freight and passengers, packet boats ranging from palatial Mississippi River sidewheelers to the smaller steamers common on rivers like the Cumberland or the Tennessee played a central role in the development of the inland rivers economy. Soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee were among the first to die, he says, "because they'd been packed in next to the boilers. Among its owners on that day was Herman Pott, St. Louis boatbuilder. "And the entire center of the boat erupted like a volcano.". 19th-century American steamboat that sank on the Mississippi River in 1865. A potential reader should care about this story because it shows that greed and corruption in the government is not a new thing. Traveling by steamboat on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was common in the 1800s. Using steam power, riverboats were developed during that time which could navigate in shallow waters as well as upriver against strong currents. Most were Union soldiers, newly released from Confederate prison camps. Paskoff, Paul F. Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 18211860. What is the connection? 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. Everyone escaped to the muddy, isolated safety of Grand Tower Island. This list may not reflect recent changes . Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. The Nick Wall, named for a noteworthy Missouri River riverboat captain, was a 338-ton sternwheel paddleboat built in 1869 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The preliminary crest of 19.61 . When railroads started carrying freight across the country, the days of the steamboats were over. ", 15th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, "Sultana: A Tragic Postscript to the Civil War", https://www.nationalboard.org/SiteDocuments/General%20Meeting/Jennings.pdf, "The Sultana Disaster (Coal Torpedo theory)", http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/civil-war-sabotage/, Sultana museum in Arkansas memorializes 1,169 people who died in river, "Surviving the Worst: The Wreck of the Sultana at the End of the American Civil War", "Blues in the Water, by King's German Legion", "Ardent Presents: Cory Branan "The Wreck of the Sultana", "Remember the Sultana | Film Threat - Part 2", Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1865, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sultana_(steamboat)&oldid=1152358259, Articles with incomplete citations from April 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Initially Capt. Reuben Benton Hatch, an individual with a long history of corruption and incompetence, who kept his job through political connections: he was the younger brother of Illinois politician Ozias M. Hatch, an advisor and close friend of President Lincoln. 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. Concussion swept away the infrastructure, and the upper cabins, state rooms, and hurricane deck collapsed inward. Most river travel was between the years of 1846 and 1866. And it was very cold. [13] The dead soldiers were interred at the Fort Pickering cemetery, located on the south shore of Memphis. Bates, both eight-footers, arrive a, On April 18, 1949, at Verhagen Hall at St. Louis University a priest just back from a year of study at Harvard completed an exorcism after hea. "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. They'd stay in a motel at night, but she loved to cook for the crew and the men from the Coast Guard. He was a passenger on its trip to Nashville, Tenn. (Post-Dispatch), Passengers pass time on Grand Tower Island until they were picked up by a passing towboat. Mason quickly agreed to Hatch's offer, hoping to gain much money through this deal. GES: I am a bit ambivalent about that. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. New York: Dover Maritime, 1994. The violent explosion flung some deck passengers into the water and blew a gaping 2530 foot hole in the steamer. [33] The museum is only temporary until enough funds can be raised to build a permanent museum. Last chance! Hundreds of steamboats were wrecked on the Missouri. (Post-Dispatch). Effie Afton Hits the Bridge. Golden Eagle's pilot house was salvaged. Dropping water levels could cause hot spots leading to metal fatigue, significantly increasing the risk of an explosion. 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. Under reduced pressure, the steamboat limped into Vicksburg to get the boiler repaired and to pick up her promised load of prisoners. [19][20] Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, the inventor of the coal torpedo, was a former resident of St. Louis and was involved in similar acts of sabotage against Union shipping interests. It was her 82nd birthday. GES: Readers should care about the Sultana since it was the greatest maritime disaster in American history. if the bubble moves in a cart is it fake, culver city high school basketball roster,
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