Notes from my Knapsack 8-14-2025
Jeff Gill
Shifting silt and scenes sliding astray
___
If you haven't heard of the Sultana, it's not because Doug Stout, and Dan Fleming, and Chris Evans, and a number of us local historians haven't tried to let you know about it.
On April 27, 1865, after the Civil War was generally over, and as the nation's attention was focused on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and his funeral procession heading for Springfield, Illinois had only made it to Cleveland, Ohio — on that date, a side-wheel steamboat on the Mississippi River, built for a maximum 376 passengers, was carrying at least 2,100 soldiers, most of them recently released from Confederate captivity.
Jeff Gill
Shifting silt and scenes sliding astray
___
If you haven't heard of the Sultana, it's not because Doug Stout, and Dan Fleming, and Chris Evans, and a number of us local historians haven't tried to let you know about it.
On April 27, 1865, after the Civil War was generally over, and as the nation's attention was focused on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and his funeral procession heading for Springfield, Illinois had only made it to Cleveland, Ohio — on that date, a side-wheel steamboat on the Mississippi River, built for a maximum 376 passengers, was carrying at least 2,100 soldiers, most of them recently released from Confederate captivity.
Seven miles north of Memphis its steam boilers exploded, ultimately killing over 1,800 passengers, by either searing steam in the initial blast, or by way of the still frigid springtime waters of the mighty river, to this day the worst maritime disaster in the United States.
The Titanic sinking in 1912, some 47 years later, killed about 1,500. The steamboat Sultana's sinking killed 20% more people, but it was a footnote at the end of the Civil War's carnage. With something at or over 620,000 deaths North and South, about 2% of the nation's population, another 1,800 dead in the wake of Lincoln's death just didn't get too many headlines.
The released prisoners who filled the Sultana's decks were mostly Midwesterners, a majority of them from Ohio. They had been held in Cahaba prison outside of Selma, Alabama, and the even more notorious Andersonville prison camp near Atlanta, Georgia. These Union prisoners had been brought to a transfer camp outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi for release to their homes. The federal government was offering $2.75 per enlisted man and $8 per officer to steamboats who would take them north, so steamboats were interested in loading up as many released prisoners as possible.
We're sure of William Albert Norris in Granville's Maple Grove Cemetery, and of Daniel Lugenbeal in Perryton Cemetery, as Licking County survivors of the Sultana disaster. How many Licking Countians died in the waters of the Mississippi on the dark night of April 27, 1865?
Mansfield, Ohio has a Sultana marker saluting some 73 residents of that city who died on the Sultana, and Richland County claims 101 citizens who did not make it home due to the disaster. Licking County is not so clear, but even if behind the Mansfield area, it probably wasn't too far off.
Marion, Arkansas has a new Sultana Disaster Museum. East of that town, you can meander down gravel roads to the levee today, alongside of the Mississippi. Even now, the site of where the burnt wreckage of the Sultana came to rest is in a backwater, a bayou, an oxbow of the Mississippi River far to the east. The channel of the Mississippi River in 1865 is today a side stream, a western addition to the larger main channel. The site of the explosion of the over-loaded boilers was miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, and the last resting place of the wreckage is now on the Arkansas side of the river, located in 1982 near the complex historic location of Mound City, Arkansas.
Not all history can be solidly located. But it is interesting to look to curving streams and bent bottomlands, and think about the impact in history of those deaths, and that ending atop the Civil War's ending, as we continue to seek that elusive thing called closure.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's glad he went to the Sultana wreck site, even if he couldn't really see it. Tell him about obscure successes you've known at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
The Titanic sinking in 1912, some 47 years later, killed about 1,500. The steamboat Sultana's sinking killed 20% more people, but it was a footnote at the end of the Civil War's carnage. With something at or over 620,000 deaths North and South, about 2% of the nation's population, another 1,800 dead in the wake of Lincoln's death just didn't get too many headlines.
The released prisoners who filled the Sultana's decks were mostly Midwesterners, a majority of them from Ohio. They had been held in Cahaba prison outside of Selma, Alabama, and the even more notorious Andersonville prison camp near Atlanta, Georgia. These Union prisoners had been brought to a transfer camp outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi for release to their homes. The federal government was offering $2.75 per enlisted man and $8 per officer to steamboats who would take them north, so steamboats were interested in loading up as many released prisoners as possible.
We're sure of William Albert Norris in Granville's Maple Grove Cemetery, and of Daniel Lugenbeal in Perryton Cemetery, as Licking County survivors of the Sultana disaster. How many Licking Countians died in the waters of the Mississippi on the dark night of April 27, 1865?
Mansfield, Ohio has a Sultana marker saluting some 73 residents of that city who died on the Sultana, and Richland County claims 101 citizens who did not make it home due to the disaster. Licking County is not so clear, but even if behind the Mansfield area, it probably wasn't too far off.
Marion, Arkansas has a new Sultana Disaster Museum. East of that town, you can meander down gravel roads to the levee today, alongside of the Mississippi. Even now, the site of where the burnt wreckage of the Sultana came to rest is in a backwater, a bayou, an oxbow of the Mississippi River far to the east. The channel of the Mississippi River in 1865 is today a side stream, a western addition to the larger main channel. The site of the explosion of the over-loaded boilers was miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, and the last resting place of the wreckage is now on the Arkansas side of the river, located in 1982 near the complex historic location of Mound City, Arkansas.
Not all history can be solidly located. But it is interesting to look to curving streams and bent bottomlands, and think about the impact in history of those deaths, and that ending atop the Civil War's ending, as we continue to seek that elusive thing called closure.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's glad he went to the Sultana wreck site, even if he couldn't really see it. Tell him about obscure successes you've known at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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