RMS Titanic? How 'bout SS Sultana?
May 2 Note: Updates coming re Sultana 147th anniversary, April 27th.
RMS Titanic? How ’bout SS Sultana?
By Nancy Yockey Bonar
Fools walk in where angels fear to tread. (Alexander Pope, 18th Century British Poet.) I’m no angel, but I might be foolish for treading in what could be risky waters. To wit: I’ve been disgusted over the shoddy commercialization of RMS Titanic’s 100th anniversary.
I’ve no problem with Titanic activities here and abroad, with events that memorialize those who died in this tragedy. I do take issue with entities – businesses, organizations, people in general – using the disaster to fill personal coffers. For examples, wasn’t it rather ghoulish of restaurants – from Philadelphia to Beijing – to offer dinners as “romantic celebrations”? Taking tackiness further, a scaled-down Titanic was set with what looked like a fire and the paying audience cheered. I just don’t get it!
Titanic did reignite one of my pet peeves (read, ticked off): it’s been estimated that 98% of Americans are clueless about the greatest disaster in our maritime history. The steam-powered paddle wheeler SS Sultana’s April 1865 catastrophe not only snuffed out more lives than did RMS Titanic’s. Sultana is ranked second among the most deadly explosions and fires in U.S. records (9/11 World Trade Center is first). Quite frankly, I never learned, or don’t recall learning, about Sultana in high school or college nor in ensuing years of heavy-duty reading. This changed when I met Louis Intres at one of MWSA’s conferences (later, more about Louis, this weekend’s Sultana reunion.)
There are few tributes for SS Sultana –simple memorial markers in five states that honor the ship’s victims – there’s not one national monument for this U.S. disaster – several historical non-fiction books, some websites, and a Sultana song by a Norwegian rock group with, ironically, the name, “Titanic.” Also in my craw, rarely is Sultana mentioned by the media.
There’d also been scant reporting about Sultana’s April 1865 cataclysm, plus the public was Civil War-weary. They’d read way too many newspaper and magazine stories about war and death. Adding to this disinterest in Sultana, 18 days prior to the steamboat tragedy, readers had been bombarded with news of General Lee’s surrender, President Lincoln’s assassination, and the capture and killing of John Wilkes Booth. Americans wanted a return to normalcy.
On the flip side, here and abroad the RMS Titanic’s calamity filled newspaper front pages and radio shows from the day after she’d sunk, and for days and months to come. Today, for instance, Titanic and its dead are remembered with museums, tourist attractions and monuments (two in Washington, DC) and another major one in New York City. The ocean liner is the focus of music, movies, TV shows and documentaries, websites, art exhibits, for examples, and more will come.
Titanic, Sultana Comparisons The steel-structured, 882-foot-long RMS Titanic (definition, enormous, powerful) luxurious ocean liner was designed to carry 3,427 people; also mail and such cargo as furniture and automobiles. Built in Ireland in 1911, Titanic was owned by a British company and the ship was manned primarily by British crew. Actually the company’s principle investor was American financier, John Pierpont Morgan. In April 1912, Titanic was on her maiden voyage, sailing from England to the U.S. via the North Atlantic. On board this grand ship were 2,224 international passengers, crew and entertainers, and lifeboats for 1,178 people. On April 14 at 11:40 pm, Titanic struck an iceberg in the Northern Atlantic and sank at 2:20 am the next day in calm, but frigid water. Causalities: 1,514, or 68%.
The wooden, iron-framed, 260-foot-long SS Sultana (definition, powerful, ruler) steam-powered paddle wheeler, was built and owned by a Cincinnati, OH, company in 1883 (by 1865, investors would own the ship). Elegant among steamboats, Sultana was designed to carry 290 passengers and about 86 crew members, or a total of 376 people – remember this number. The cargo hold was constructed to transport cargo like horses, mules, pigs, sugar and cotton. Sultana plied the Ohio and Lower Mississippi rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans.
SS Sultana’s Fate Sealed On April 24, 1865, Sultana, now owned by three private investors, docked at the Mississippi River’s Vicksburg, MS, to pick up passengers. Also, one of the steamboat’s boilers had a serious leak but, instead of installing a new one, it had been hastily patched. When the ship sailed the next day north toward the Ohio River, her fate had been seal. Aboard were mostly Americans: 2,414 passengers and crew (not 376), and just two lifeboats! Among passengers (estimated): 96 civilians, 85 crew members, 21 military guards, 200 unidentified people, and 2,012 Civil War Union soldiers who’d been Confederate prisoners.*
Sultana, grossly overloaded with its human cargo, dangerously listed and careened from Vicksburg to Memphis where, after a brief stop on the evening of April 26, she once again laboriously chugged north to her deadly destination.
April 27 at 2 am (it was 2:20 am when Titanic sank), about seven miles north of Memphis, Sultana’s boilers exploded and, in an inferno, she slipped under spring’s water-flooded, cold Mississippi. Causalities: Of the 2,412 aboard, estimated deaths are 1,800 and upwards, or about 75%. Union soldiers were the overwhelming majority of the victims
*Greed Ends Joy At the Civil War’s end, Federal soldiers repatriated from infamous Confederate prison camps – primarily Andersonville and Cahaba – gathered in Vicksburg. Emaciated and disease-ridden, they’d traveled by foot, trains and boats, some were carried on stretchers, and others stumbled or walked on crutches. Despite such adversities, the more than 2,000 soldiers were exhilarated – they’d soon be arriving at their northern homes.
But why were so many of these warriors herded onto Sultana, which was legally allowed 376 passengers? It was outright greed by the ship’s captain and several Army representatives. The latter paid the captain and, thus Sultana’s investors, for each POW mustered aboard: $10 for each Union officer, $5 for enlisted. In return, the captain kicked-back a portion of the money to the Army personnel.
This scam wouldn’t have mattered one bit to the soldiers. They were on a joyride to Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee; they’d soon have reunions with loved ones in cities and small towns and on countryside farms. For these war-torn men, the joy ended on April 27, 1865.
Intres, Sultana Reunion This Friday and Saturday the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends will gather for a reunion in Cincinnati near the Ohio River. Traditionally, these annual events are held near rivers that were relevant to SS Sultana. The featured presenter at the reunion will be MWSA’s Louis Intres, the Sultana archivist as well as researcher. He’s a professor at Arkansas State University, site of the archives.
Descendants and friends have planned a memorial service for Saturday. They’ll each hold flowers that represent Sultana’s passengers who never came home. After the flowers are tossed into the Ohio River, they’ll drift toward the Lower Mississippi. Who knows, perhaps some of the flowers will float as far as about seven miles north of Memphis for their final resting place.
(Photo credit: Partial Book Cover, Author Alan Huffman)