Indianapolis --

Civil War Round Table

The Steamboat Sultana Disaster

Click here for Images of the Disaster

by

Pam Newhouse
Ann Arbor, Michigan

On April 27, 1865, the steamboat Sultana, some seven miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, carrying 2,400 just-released Union prisoners of war, plus crew and civilian passengers, exploded and sank. Some 1,800 people died. It was the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history, more costly than even the April 14, 1912 sinking of the Titanic, when 1,517 people were lost. But because the Sultana went down when it did, the disaster was not well covered in the newspapers or magazines, and was soon forgotten. It is scarcely remembered today.

April 1865 was a busy month; On April 9, at Appomattox Couthouse, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Five days later President Abraham Lincoln was assasinated. On April 26 his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was caught and killed. That same day General Joseph Johnson surrendered the last large Confederate army. Shortly thereafter Union troops captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The Civil War was over. Northern newspapers rejoiced.

The Sultana was legally registered to carry 376 people. She had six times more than that on board, and 413 of them were Indiana soldiers, representing forty-four infantry regiments, twelve cavalry regiments, and three artillery battalions. The 9th Indiana Cavalry alone had 113 men aboard.

Many of the Indiana survivors wrote accounts of what happened that night. Pam Newhouse, great- great granddaughter of an Ohio soldier who died on the Sultana, will tell you what they said and examine the facts in a slide presentation about this disaster.

Why did this happen? This event changed forever the lives of hundreds of families whose fathers, brothers, and sons were on this vessel; was any one person responsible? The truth is surprising and unsettling.