Steamboat Princess Disaster On February 27, 1859, the Steamboat Princess exploded on the Mississippi River killing between 70 and 200 passengers and crew. Most river travel was between the years of 1846 and 1866. Captain Frederic Speed, a Union officer who sent the 1,953 paroled prisoners into Vicksburg from the parole camp, was charged with grossly overcrowding Sultana and found guilty. "Somebody had came by and notified us. Potter, the lawyer and author, grew up around Memphis, but didn't learn about the tragedy until the late 1970s, when he saw a painting of the ship in flames. The early morning of May 18, 1947, was dark but quiet, the Mississippi River 10 feet below flood stage. Steamboat explosions were dramatic, deadly, and common. Dead trees fell into the river and got stuck on the bottom. There were 10 passengers on board. Nathan Smith eased the coal-burning steamer downstream through a narrow bend 80 miles below St. Louis. WASHINGTON -- If the U.S. Senate has its way, a 90-year-old steamboat will soon be able to return to the Mississippi River. An estimated 1,800 people died in the explosion and ensuing fire more than died in the sinking of the Titanic. 1, a wooden model barge, and Vessel No. 5) was built in February 1863, but she was used extensively throughout the last two years of the Civil War to carry Union troops and supplies on the Cumberland and the Mississippi Rivers to aid in the collapse of the Confederacy. hide caption. In 1857, The Nebraska City Advertiser newspaper listed 46 steamboats traveling the Missouri, with 12 more being built. All Rights Reserved. At some places, the river overflowed the banks and spread out three miles wide. It seemed that profit was the driving factor for most steamboat owners and captains. Sometimes captains accidentally ran their boats up onto the sandbars. While the Titanic caused more deaths, the great ocean liner was a British vessel and carried people from several different countries. I gave only short shrift to the coal-torpedo sabotage theory. I had learned so much more, and collected so many more first-person accounts from the people on board, from the rescuers, and from the people involved, that I knew I had to write a new tell-all book that would dispel, as well as verify, all of the stories, rumors, and myths surrounding the disaster. As shown in my book, when steam navigation of American waterways first began, there were very little, if any, laws for safety. And the shrapnel, the steam and the boiling water killed hundreds. Unlike many of the nautical discoveries in. 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. Privacy Policy. 2 As rapidly as the number of steamboats increased, they could not keep pace with demand. The boat was loaded with passengers, mostly from Mississippi and Louisiana, headed to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras. 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. [9] In February 1867, the Bureau of Military Justice placed the death toll at 1,100. He is currently a freelance writer living in Annapolis. Fire, drowning and exposure would kill many hundreds more. On the other hand, the Sultana was an American steamboat carrying almost 100 percent American passengers, including almost 2,000 recently released Union prisoners-of-war returning home to their families. Then the captain did his best to steer around the dead trees, but sometimes they were hidden underwater. You have permission to edit this article. A passing towboat gave them a lift back to Grand Island, Ill., where they boarded buses for the trip home. GES: The dirty river water of the lower Mississippi was not really thought of as a problem by the steamboat captains or engineers. [4]:40, Although Hatch had suggested that Mason might get as many as 1,400 released Union prisoners, a mix-up with the parole camp books and suspicion of bribery from other steamboat captains caused the Union officer in charge of the loading, Captain George Augustus Williams, to place every man at the parole camp on board Sultana, believing the number to be less than 1,500. A BNSF Railway freight train traveling along the banks of the Mississippi River derailed near Ferryville, Wis., shortly after noon Thursday, the company said. Some survivors were plucked from the tops of semi-submerged trees along the Arkansas shore. Hundreds of steamboats were wrecked on the Missouri. Men in skiffs from both riverbanks rescued people clinging to debris. In the early 1900s, the Mississippi River shifted about two miles to the east, leaving the wreck under about 15 feet of Arkansas soil. After days in flood stage, the Mississippi River appeared to be at crest in Lansing, Iowa Friday evening as the river has spent hours below the max daily crest. 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. Jan. 3, 1844 Steamboat wreck kills as many as 70 on the Mississippi at St. Louis By Tim O'Neil St. Louis Post-Dispatch Jan 3, 2023 0 1 of 2 Steamboats and freight wagons crowd the St. Louis. by Kelby Ouchley Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection Steamboat Princess. Send to: Patrick Rash. At 0200 on 27 April 1865, when the boat was seven miles above Memphis, her boilers exploded. "It was like a tremendous bomb going off in the middle of where these men were. Mason quickly agreed to Hatch's offer, hoping to gain much money through this deal. By eliminating the manpower required to row or paddle, often against powerful currents, steamboats fueled an exponential growth in trade and development. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. It's estimated between 300 and 400 boats have sunk along the Missouri River. "And the entire center of the boat erupted like a volcano.". Louis.". Johnson points out that steamboat explosions, caused by faulty boilers, were the nineteenth centurys first confrontation with industrialized mayhem, and Lloyds prose seemed almost to revel in these horrors. The disaster of the Princess near Baton Rouge in 1859 was a tragically typical example. Look for details such as clothing, technologies or buildings in old photographs to learn more about the past. Also, many people chose to pay for only deck passage, which restricted the traveler to the lowest (main) deck. The ability to navigate these rivers was of great importance in the settlement of Iowa before railroads. [4]:7479. [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. Eventually the Sultana turned so that the wind was pushing the flames toward the bow, where 25 soldiers remained. A USS Abeona Andy Gibson (steamboat) USS Antelope (1861) USS Arizona (1858) B USC&GS Baton Rouge (1875) USS Black Hawk (1848) C USS Cincinnati (1861) City-class ironclad CSS Colonel Lovell 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. 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. Contains photos of War Eagle and steamer Reindeer. GES: Sultana (No. Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,169 people in what remains the worst maritime disaster in United States history. 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. The Sultana made it only a few miles north of Memphis. SS Sultana:The steamboat was bound for St. Louis in April 1865 when the boilers failed right above Memphis, 13 days after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. On April 21, Sultana left New Orleans with about seventy cabin and deck passengers and a small amount of livestock. Fogelman's ancestors didn't have any boats to reach the trapped soldiers, so they improvised. Why should potential readers care? Although brought up on courts-martial charges, Hatch managed to get letters of recommendation from no less reputable personages than President Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. The Sultana sank in the Mississippi River near Marion, and over the years, the wreck was eventually covered with silt. The Missouri was a dangerous river. 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. Passing boats and bystanders on both sides of the Mississippi helped pull survivors from the muddy water. The preliminary crest of 19.61 . It happened near Memphis, Tennessee, almost in the very heart of the United States, and yet very few people have ever heard about it. "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. Now, 129 years later, kayakers like Edinger are getting an up-close look at the vessel. The few steamboats still gliding along the rivers today are usually carrying tourists on short trips. The event remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history (the sinking of the Titanic killed 1,512 people). 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. An engraving of the Sultana explosion, published in Harpers Weekly, May 20, 1865. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. But perhaps the best explanation is that after years of bloody conflict, the nation was simply tired of hearing about war and death. During her time in port, and while the repairs were being made, Sultana took on the paroled prisoners. Freight and cargo were much more profitablealthough the movement of animals could be a backbreaking, smelly proposition! And many of them were saved by local residents, like John Fogelman an ancestor of the city of Marion's current mayor, Frank Fogelman. On November 19, 1840, The Burlington Hawkeye newspaper reported upwards of 100 flatboats had passed Burlington going downstream loaded with produce. Then, once some laws were passed, they were generally ignored. Because of a trick of fate, the story of the Sultana is virtually unknown. The flaming hull drifted onto a shoreline sandbar and grounded. All rights reserved. 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]. Iowa is the only state with four border rivers, the Mississippi, Missouri, Des Moines, and Big Sioux. On the decks the passengers cheered as the boat headed up the river. A crew member fished liquor bottles from the half-flooded bar. Leyhe died in 1956 in St. Louis at 83. A year later, when the U.S. government established the Memphis National Cemetery[4]:206 on the northeast side of the city, the bodies were moved there. The disaster was overshadowed in the press by events surrounding the end of the Civil War, including the killing of President Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth just the day before. Cost $8 for poster plus $3.50 postage (U.S.). Aunt Letty (1855) steam paddle. GES: The Sultana Disaster Museum is located in Marion because that is the closest city to the remains of the vessel. DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) People living along the Mississippi River watched warily Sunday as water levels rose in southeast Iowa and northwest Illinois, awaiting spring crests as floodwaters began . yet the tragedy got very few headlines. Under the command of Captain James Cass Mason of St. Louis, Sultana left St. Louis on April 13, 1865, bound for New Orleans. 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. 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 . (Post-Dispatch). A sunken casino boat has been uncovered in the Mississippi as severe drought pushes water levels in the Memphis section of the river to record lows. No one seemed to question the danger of a steamboat race until there was an accident or the boilers exploded. After some time, the weakened twin smokestacks fell; the starboard smokestack fell backward into the blasted hole, and the port smokestack fell forward onto the crowded forward section of the upper deck, hitting the ship's bell as it fell. GES: I agree wholeheartedly. Soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee were among the first to die, he says, "because they'd been packed in next to the boilers. The Sultana was on its way from Vicksburg, Miss., to St. Louis when the explosion occurred, says Jerry Potter, a Memphis lawyer and author of The Sultana Tragedy.
Most Popular Nba Teams In Europe, Articles M