Kentucky Serendipity

A (Nearly) Forgotten Disaster 14 August 2018

I have a friend in Arkansas who is an avid reader, as am I. We often send books to one another. His reading tastes overlap but are not identical to mine, and often he sends a book which I would I would not choose for myself. His taste in literature is quite good so I generally enjoy the volumes he sends. Recently I received Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns by Donald Harington, and I found it a most interesting book. The author combines a travelogue with history, biography, cultural studies, and a bit of romance.

Mr. Harington, through his assistant, a high school teacher, takes the reader on a journey through Arkansas to visit eleven “cities” — settlements which include the word City in their name but which fail to live up to the title. Each place was founded with the hope and expectation that it would become an important center of urban life. Some did flourish for a time but all eventually declined and some have effectively disappeared. At each the reader is treated to geographical information, history of the settlement, and stories from current inhabitants. Some the of the information is interesting only to people of the area, but much of it has broader appeal.

One interesting tidbit I gleaned from the book is that many of the early immigrants to Arkansas came from Kentucky. I knew that many early Kentucky settlers moved further west due to business failures or the desire to find a less settled place to live. Daniel Boone was one — he fell on hard times financially in Kentucky so he went to Missouri which at that time was part of Spanish Louisiana. However, I was unaware of the tide of immigrants linking Kentucky to Arkansas.

A more interesting item in the book is a partially fictionalized account of the sinking of Sultana on the Mississippi river on April 27, 1865. Most Americans are unaware of the event. This is surprising because the sinking of the Sultana was the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. I do not recall ever having heard of the Sultana in a history class.

The Sultana was a steamboat operating on the Mississippi River in support of the cotton trade. When the Civil War ended on May 13, 1865, the South released Union prisoners held in Southern states. Many of the prisoners were taken to a camp near Vicksburg, Mississippi to await transport to the North. The U.S. government paid steamboat operators to transport released prisoners. The captain of the Sultana agreed to transport 1,400 prisoners. The Sultana’s legal capacity was 375 but prisoners were loaded on the boat until no more would fit. When the boat left Vicksburg it was vastly overloaded with  1,961 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 70 paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members.

The Sultana had a problem with a leaking boiler which had been hastily dealt with by means of a temporary patch. The overloaded boat left Vicksburg on the night of April 24, 1865, with a boiler which needed a major repair. The boat steamed upriver and reached Memphis about 7:00 PM on April 26. At Memphis the crew unloaded sugar and took on a new load of coal, and then continued northward. About 2:00 AM the Sultana was seven miles north of Memphis when her three boilers exploded.

The explosion killed some people and threw others into the river. The boat started burning and many passengers jumped into the river. The Mississippi River was swollen with spring rain and the water was cold. Some people drowned and others died of hypothermia. Fortunately there were several boats nearby which rescued many passengers. The injured were taken to Memphis which had many hospitals at the time due to being captured by the North and turned into a supply and recuperation city. Without the nearby boats and the medical facilities in Memphis the death toll would have been higher. As it was 1,184 people perished in the disaster. (For comparison, an estimated 1,517 people died on the Titanic.)

The disaster of the Sultana is nearly forgotten. Wikipedia has an article on the sinking. From time to time a national magazine or newspaper will print an article, for example the Smithsonian or the Washington Post. There is also a Sultana museum,  but still most Americans are unaware of this major event in U.S. history.