(Post-Dispatch), Retired Capt. 0:04. Tucson: Fireship Press, 2009. April 27, 2023. An interview with author Gene Eric Salecker. [24]:193197, Despite the magnitude of the disaster, no one was ever formally held accountable. Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard [1] in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. WASHINGTON -- If the U.S. Senate has its way, a 90-year-old steamboat will soon be able to return to the Mississippi River. Since most steamboats of the time were constructed of wood covered with paint and varnish, fires were a significant concern. The giant paddle wheel started turning faster. Using steam power, riverboats were developed during that time which could navigate in shallow waters as well as upriver against strong currents. The crew threw more wood on the fire. For two years, she ran a regular route between St. Louis and New Orleans and was frequently commissioned to carry troops during the American Civil War. Survivors panicked and raced for the safety of the water, but in their weakened condition, they soon ran out of strength and began to cling to each other. In 2015, after I retired, I decided to look at all the known lists to discover who was actually on the Sultana and how many lived and died. BNSF Railway says two of three locomotives and "an unknown number of cars carrying freights of all kinds" derailed onto the banks of the Mississippi River around 12:15 p.m. Crews are now working . 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. This list may not reflect recent changes . For several hours its crew and passengers provided aid before heading upriver, its decks covered with bodies of the dead and injured. Although sediment settled in the bottom of even the flue boilers, it was never thought to be much of a hazard. [citation needed] The next year, only one man showed up. Some 1,700 returning Union Veterans died. They tended to report what others thought these findings meant, but they very rarely added their own input, one way or another. Fred Schultz has been in the publishing business since 1980 and was editor-in-chief ofNaval History from 1993-2005. 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. Leyhe died in 1956 in St. Louis at 83. [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. Mason quickly agreed to Hatch's offer, hoping to gain much money through this deal. (Post-Dispatch), The Golden Eagle heads downstream at St. Louis on May 14, 1940. [21], Two years earlier, in May 1886, came a claim that 2nd Lt. James Worthington Barrett, an ex-prisoner and passenger on the steamboat, had caused the explosion. They'd stay in a motel at night, but she loved to cook for the crew and the men from the Coast Guard. However, they were not without hazards, as high-pressure steam boilers manufactured according to the science of the day were analogous to kegs of dynamite. On his trips up and down the river, Odis often took his wife, Rosa, along. Bad storms hit the river in the summer. In writing my first few books I literally had to go to the U.S., state, and military archives to do my research. hide caption. A freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in southwestern Wisconsin on Thursday, injuring four employees and sending two containers into the Mississippi River. Explosion of the Steamboat Constitution, May 4, 1817, Point Coupee, Louisiana. There is no apparent motive for him to have blown up the boat, especially while on board. In his book River of Dark Dreams, historian Walter Johnson writes that the table of contents of Lloyds bestseller was sort of a nightmare poem of alphabetized Americana: a catalog of 97 major and hundreds of minor boat disasters. On the decks the passengers cheered as the boat headed up the river. [4]:146147,168176, Passengers who survived the initial explosion had to risk their lives in the icy spring runoff of the Mississippi or burn with the boat. As shown in my book, when steam navigation of American waterways first began, there were very little, if any, laws for safety. The current on the Missouri was fast, and the channelthe deepest part of the rivershifted from place to place. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. [5] About ten hours south of Vicksburg, one of Sultana's four boilers sprang a leak. Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard[1] in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. The Hayne was sold in 1908 to C.J. The train derailed in Crawford County at about 12:15 p.m. Two of the train's three locomotives and an unknown number of cars . As the crew made sure the cargo was packed tightly, the captain blew the whistle. "The war had just ended a few weeks before," he says. by Kelby Ouchley Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection Steamboat Princess. Explosion of the Moselle, Near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838. 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. From 1817 to 1871, about 5,600 people died on Mississippi River wrecks of all sorts, including burst boilers, collisions and fires. from 1993-2005. To the left are the smokestacks of the Union Electric Co. plant at Cahokia. 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. The owners of the Effie Afton decided to take the railroad companies that had built the bridge to court. In the 1820s, steamboats on the Mississippi carried lead from Julien Dubuque's lead mines near Dubuque. MALTA BEND, Mo. Barges still carry some goods on the river, but trains and trucks carry most of the freight in America. "The paddle wheel fell off of one side, caused the boat to turn sideways; the other paddle wheel fell off.". Thousands of recently released Union prisoners of war who had been held in the Confederate prison camps at Cahaba and Andersonville had been brought to a small parole camp outside of Vicksburg to await release to the northern states. That meant another expensive trip and more time. The Sultana tragedies seem to be classic examples of putting profit over safety. [4]:129 Eventually, the hulk of Sultana drifted about six miles (10km) to the west bank of the river and sank at around 7:00 AM near Mound City and present-day Marion, Arkansas, about five hours after the explosion. It seemed that profit was the driving factor for most steamboat owners and captains. Slaves from the nearby Cottage plantation were ordered to bring sheets and blankets. He is currently a freelance writer living in Annapolis. In later years the steamboats pushed huge rafts of logs from the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota to sawmills farther down the river. In a seeming paradox of frontier boosterism, Lloyds book sold this terrible recent history of the Mississippi as a romantic feature of the area. The broken wood caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into a raging inferno. Steamboats and flatboats brought thousands of early settlers to the new land of Iowa. 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 The massive steam explosion came from the top rear of the boilers. 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 . Under the command of Captain James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana left St. Louis on April 13, 1865, bound for New Orleans. Sometimes captains accidentally ran their boats up onto the sandbars. Fire broke out and began to consume the remains. It happened near Memphis, Tennessee, almost in the very heart of the United States, and yet very few people have ever heard about it. Throughout the war, Captain Hatch had shown incompetence as a quartermaster and competence as a thief, bilking the government out of thousands of dollars. And, the cost of a stateroom was not based on the wealth of the traveler. The coal-burning steamboat was on a trip to Nasvhille, Tenn., via the Ohio and Cumberland rivers, when it sank at Grand Tower Island 80 miles below St. Louis on May 18, 1947. 1 was no longer used to manufacture boilers after 1879. However, the explosion of her boilers just above Memphis on 27 April 1865 put a terrible end to that endeavor. Irregular river depth, sandbars and snags made steamboat travel on the Missouri slow and dangerous. Paskoff, Paul F. Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 18211860. Freight and cargo were much more profitablealthough the movement of animals could be a backbreaking, smelly proposition! 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. He/she ate the same fare as the roustabouts and hands unless he/she bought a dinner ticket. [4]:202 Captain Hatch, who had concocted a bribe with Captain Mason to crowd as many men onto Sultana as possible, had quickly quit the service to avoid a court-martial. The areas between the many flues clogged easily, especially since dirty river water carried much sediment, and were difficult to clean. Yet, shortly after my 1996 book came out, a cabal of people sprang up touting the sabotage theory once again. Click on links in the titles below to reach Lloyds descriptions of the accidents pictured. Mississippi River. Cape Girardeau:Later renamed the River Queen, the vessel sank in 1968. There was no manifest to record the names of passengers aboard the Princess at the time of the disaster. "All them boys . Like us onFacebook, follow us on Twitter@slatevault, and find us onTumblr. [4]:50,5556 Although Sultana had a legal capacity of only 376, by the time she backed away from Vicksburg on the night of April 24, she was severely overcrowded with over 1,953 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, over 70 fare-paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members, for a total of 2,130 people. Investigation Tip: [4]:7985, While the Sultana burned, and the men on the steamboat were either already dead or fighting for their lives, the southbound steamer Bostona (No. [10] In 1880, the United States Congress, in conjunction with the War Department, reported the loss of life as 1,259. Today, though, the city of Marion, Ark., thinks people are ready to learn about the Sultana. Effie Afton Hits the Bridge. Most river travel was between the years of 1846 and 1866. The city has created a museum and is hosting events intended to bring attention to the tragedy. He died in 1871, having escaped justice because of his numerous highly placed patronsincluding two presidents. Now, through the use of the internet, people can search hundred, perhaps thousands, of newspapers, from the United States as well as from around the world. 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? [17], In 1888, a St. Louis resident named William Streetor claimed that his former business partner, Robert Louden, made a confession of having sabotaged Sultana by the use of a coal torpedo while they were drinking in a saloon. While the Titanic caused more deaths, the great ocean liner was a British vessel and carried people from several different countries. Last chance! And even before the Civil War, 30 steamboats had traveled to Des Moines before the Civil War. The U.S. government would pay US$2.75 per enlisted man and US$8 per officer to any steamboat captain who would take a group north.
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