Regaining control, Smith wheeled toward the island and shoved the bow against the bank as the boat listed to port. The Sultana story is one of greed and corruption, as well as pathos and sadness. "Somebody had came by and notified us. The men located around the twin openings quickly crawled under the wreckage and down the main stairs. In 1857, The Nebraska City Advertiser newspaper listed 46 steamboats traveling the Missouri, with 12 more being built. The Vault isSlates history blog. Explosion of the Moselle, Near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838. hide caption. From 1817 to 1871, about 5,600 people died on Mississippi River wrecks of all sorts, including burst boilers, collisions and fires. 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. (The whole book is digitally available via the Library of Congress, on the Internet Archive.). However, Courtenay's great-great-grandson, Joseph Thatcher, who wrote a book on Courtenay and the coal torpedo, denies that a coal torpedo was used in the Sultana disaster. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. "We feel like we're a part of this Civil War story, but we're the conclusion that no one heard," says Lisa O'Neal, a Marion resident and member of the Sultana Historic Preservation Society. [4]:7479. The steamboat sank shortly after it struck submerged rocks at 2:20 a.m. All 91 passengers and crew members reached the island by gangplank, and were rescued later that day by a towboat. Recollections of a Rebel ReeferVol. 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. Its clientele were among societys elite in the Lower Mississippi Valley. They wanted the railroad companies to pay for damages to the Effie Afton and its cargo. By 1857, St. Paul had become a bustling port, with over 1,000 steamboat arrivals each year by some 62 to 99 boats. Poster 17" x 22". Paskoff, Paul F. Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 18211860. An estimated 1,800 people died in the explosion and ensuing fire more than died in the sinking of the Titanic. Then, once some laws were passed, they were generally ignored. The official inquiry found that the boilers exploded because of the combined effects of careening, low water levels, and the faulty repair made a few days earlier.[16]. While researching those numbers, I ran across other myths and legends that were incorrect or misleading, while at the same time verifying many of the stories. The location of the explosion, from the top rear of the boilers and far away from the fireboxes, tends to indicate that Louden's claim of sabotage of an exploding coal torpedo in the firebox was pure bravado. Packed on board the riverboat Sultana when her boilers blew, recently freed Union POWs faced being consumed by flames or drowning in the Mississippi. The steamboat had left the St. Louis levee two days before a seven-day round trip to and from Nashville, Tenn. (Edward J. Burkhardt/Post-Dispatch), The crippled Golden Eagle settled and listing in the Mississippi River at Grand Tower Island after sunrise on May 18, 1947. Captain Mason of Sultana, who was ultimately responsible for dangerously overloading his vessel and ordering the faulty repairs to her leaky boiler, had died in the disaster. The owners of the Effie Afton decided to take the railroad companies that had built the bridge to court. Cardinals latest, deflating loss compounds concerns, Man shot, killed near Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis, What was Andrew Knizner thinking? MADISON, Wis. (AP) A freight train derailed along the Mississippi River in southwestern Wisconsin Thursday, possibly injuring one crew member and sending two cars into the water, officials said. FS: Given the mistrust of any reporting from the press in some parts of our society today, how reliable would you say the reporting on these disasters was back in its day? Capt. We turn the clock back to April of 1993 and present excerpts of the original reviews from Joe Pollack. But perhaps the best explanation is that after years of bloody conflict, the nation was simply tired of hearing about war and death. GRAND TOWER, ILL. It was the first trip of the season for the Golden Eagle, an antique steamboat with twin stacks, gingerbread woodwork and a splashing sternwheel. FS: Your handling of how the owners and crews of these vessels seemed to have not factored in the reality that dirty river water was not suitable for being used to create steam, and thus propulsion. The remains of a ship on the banks of the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La., on Oct. 17, 2022, after recently being revealed due to the low water level. The event remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history (the sinking of the Titanic killed 1,512 people). Probably the most interesting of the wrecks are Vessel No. [13] The dead soldiers were interred at the Fort Pickering cemetery, located on the south shore of Memphis. The broken wood caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into a raging inferno. As shown in my book, when steam navigation of American waterways first began, there were very little, if any, laws for safety. Publisher James T. Lloyds 1856 book Lloyds Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters, is illustrated by 32 woodcuts of explosions, fires, and foundering ships, chronicling a decades-long history of steamboat mayhem. 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. Throughout the 1800s, steamboat travel on Iowas rivers has impacted the states development and growth. The boat was 260 feet long and had an authorized capacity of 376 passengers and crew. The current was calmer and the channel was deeper. Being so closely packed within the 48-inch (120cm) diameter boilers tended to cause the muddy sediment to form hot pockets and were extremely difficult to clean. Barrett was a veteran of the MexicanAmerican War and had been captured at the Battle of Franklin. The massive steam explosion came from the top rear of the boilers. Unlike many of the nautical discoveries in. "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. Many of the paroled prisoners had been weakened by their incarceration and associated illnesses but had managed to gain some strength while waiting at the parole camp to be officially released. Flatboats and keelboats carried cargo down the river. A Look Back The day the Golden Eagle steamboat sank in 1947. It went upward at a 45-degree angle, tearing through the crowded decks above and completely destroying the pilothouse, instantly killing Captain Mason. What is the allure to your treatment of the Sultana stories? The Corp of Engineers in a report issued July 3, 1934 listed 36 types of steamboat wrecks on the Missouri River alone. "He served in the 23rd Arkansas Cavalry, and he was tasked with, among other things, raiding ships going up and down the river," Frank Barton says. 19th-century American steamboat that sank on the Mississippi River in 1865. Although designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, she was carrying 2,130 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and caused it to sink near Memphis, Tennessee. In 1929, only two men attended the southern reunion. [4]:72 Sultana subsequently arrived at Memphis, Tennessee, around 7:00 PM, and the crew began unloading 120 tons (109 tonnes) of sugar from the hold. In later years the steamboats pushed huge rafts of logs from the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota to sawmills farther down the river. The Capt. 1820 1830 April 21, 1838 - Oronoko Most of the passengers were asleep at the time Killed almost everyone either instantly or later from wounds it caused 109 people died 1840 Was traveling to St. Louis when it hit a snag and had several planks torn from the bottom of the boat "A few weeks earlier, he might have been attacking the Sultana if it had come in.". 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. In Malta Bend, Missouri, there's one that sank loaded down with expensive and rare trading . Through the corruption of Captain Reuben Hatch, a Union officer at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the captain of the Sultana, James Cass Mason, those 2,000 ex-prisoners were crowded onto a boat with a legal carrying capacity of only 376 passengers. Among those killed were Louisiana state representatives H. J. Huard and Charles Bannister. The jagged limbs could rip open the bottom of a steamboat. ARCHERAt Galena, from St. Louis, Sept. 8, 1845; sunk by collision with steamer "Di Vernon", in chute between islands 521 and 522, five miles above mouth of Illinois River, Nov. 27, 1851; was cut in two, and sunk in three minutes, with a loss of forty-one lives. It was her 82nd birthday. By that standard, the loss of the Golden Eagle was a minor event. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Nashville: Land Yacht Press, 2000. You can see the wreck in low water just north of the Eads Bridge. "It's clear that he had bribed an officer at Vicksburg to ensure that he would get a large load of prisoners," Potter says. 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. 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. [4]:24 On April 26, Sultana stopped at Helena, Arkansas, where photographer Thomas W. Bankes took a picture of the grossly overcrowded vessel. The vessel measured 260 feet (79m) long, with a 42 feet (13m) width at the beam, displaced 1,719 short tons (1,559t), and had a 7-foot (2.1m) draft. He has conducted interviews with some 75 high-profile people, including historians, government officials, combat veterans, journalists, explorers, and Hollywood stars. The Princess was about six miles below Baton Rouge at Conrads Point when a teenage boy watching the boat glide along from a distance noted, A great column of white smoke suddenly went up from her and she burst into flames. The explosion was cataclysmic as all four huge boilers burst at once. The ability to navigate these rivers was of great importance in the settlement of Iowa before railroads. A freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in southwestern Wisconsin on Thursday, injuring four employees and sending two containers into the Mississippi River. In 2012 and 2015, the river was low sufficient to additionally expose the USS Inaugural. [4]:164 Other vessels joined the rescue, including the steamers Silver Spray, Jenny Lind, and Pocahontas, the navy ironclad USS Essex and the sidewheel gunboat USSTyler. Explosion of the Helen McGregor, At Memphis, Tennessee, February 24, 1830. As a lawyer, Potter was well-equipped to investigate the mistakes and malfeasance that led to the Sultana disaster. Golden Eagle's pilot house was salvaged. The Golden Eagle's new St. Louis-based owners left it to the river's mercy. Steamboats played a major role in the 19th-century development of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, allowing practical large-scale transport of passengers and freight both up- and down-river. Sometimes these snags stuck out of the water. The last Iowa steamboat to carry goods was the coal fired sternwheeler the Loan Star in 1967. On May 19, 1865, less than a month after the disaster, Brigadier General William Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners who investigated the disaster, reported an overall loss of soldiers, passengers, and crew of 1,238. Subscribe with this special offer to keep reading, (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). The earliest steamboat disaster in Arkansas waters may have been the Car of Commerce, which suffered a boiler explosion north of Osceola (Mississippi County) on the Mississippi River in 1828, killing twenty-one people, while the deadliest was the loss of the Sultana near Marion (Crittenden County) on April 27, 1865, in which as many as 1,800 were The steamboat business always had been a risky affair. The Hero and the Pavillion traveled the Des Moines River to Fort Des Moines in 1837. Yet few know the story of the Sultana's demise, or the ensuing rescue effort that included Confederate soldiers saving Union soldiers they might have shot just weeks earlier.
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