Sultana

On April 27, 1865 the steamboat Sultana exploded, burned, and sank in the Mississippi River near Memphis, claiming nearly 1,200 lives—the worst maritime disaster in American history. Tragically, most of those who died were soldiers who had recently been liberated from Confederate prisoner of war camps. Many had survived the horrors of Andersonville, only to die while on their way home.

The immediate cause of the disaster was a boiler explosion, but the ultimate causes were greed, corruption, and criminal malfeasance.

The Federal government was paying steamboat operators $8 per officer and $2.75 per enlisted man to transport returning soldiers. The Sultana's captain James Mason knew his ship had a leaking boiler and was unsafe for the journey, but he was in financial trouble and needed the money. Lt. Colonel Reuben Hatch, the Federal quartermaster, offered to load the men onto the Sultana, if Mason would pay him a kickback of $3/officer and $1.50/enlisted man. Mason agreed to pay the bribe and over 2,100 passengers were crammed aboard the vessel, more than six times its capacity. The extreme overcrowding caused the ship to list as it turned, which in turn sloshed around the water in the leaky boilers, resulting in overheating and eventually the catastrophic explosion.

Mason was killed in the explosion, but Hatch was never punished for his crime. He was a known crook who had been brought up for court martial for theft and misconduct three times during the Civil War. But he was also the brother of prominent and influential Illinois politician Ozias Hatch, who was a close personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. Each time Hatch had been charged, his brother had intervened and persuaded Lincoln to have the charges dropped, leaving him in a position to pull off one last fatal heist. A few years after the Sultana explosion Hatch died of complications from his severe alcoholism.

The Sultana disaster occurred 135 years ago.

The photo was taken the day before the explosion.