Bad storms hit the river in the summer. By that standard, the loss of the Golden Eagle was a minor event. It was her 82nd birthday. On May 6, 1856 a steamboat named Effie Afton crashed into the bridge, destroying the steamboat as well as part of the bridge. The Worst Marine Disaster in U. S. History. Between 1823 and 1848, 365 boats made 7,645 trips. The ill-fated Sultana in Helena, Ark., just before it exploded on April 27, 1865, with about 2,500 people aboard. All the examined boat wrecks were working vessels, towboats or barges, so the artifacts and other data gave a glimpse into the lives of river men on the Mississippi around the turn of the 20 th century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. The Golden Eagle was bound for Nashville, Tenn., from its St. Louis home via the Ohio and Cumberland rivers. This led to many accidents and groundings. It was a standard fare, no matter who you were. hide caption. Considered one of them was the biggest vessel ever to sail via the world. [23], An episode of the PBS series History Detectives that aired on July 2, 2014, reviewed the known evidence, thoroughly disputed a theory of sabotage, and then focused on the question of why Sultana was allowed to be crowded to several times its normal capacity before departure. At least thirty-nine passengers and crew members died in the accident. Click on links in the titles below to reach Lloyds descriptions of the accidents pictured. "The boat had a legal carrying capacity of 376 passengers," he says, "and on its up-river trip it had over 2,500 aboard," in part because the government had agreed to pay $5 for each enlisted man and $10 for each officer who made the trip. Men in skiffs from both riverbanks rescued people clinging to debris. Author Q&ADestruction of the Steamboat Sultana Soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee were among the first to die, he says, "because they'd been packed in next to the boilers. Down Yonder On The Yazoo - The Waterways Journal [9] In February 1867, the Bureau of Military Justice placed the death toll at 1,100. I think reporting was much more accurate, and less political, than it is today. GES: The dirty river water of the lower Mississippi was not really thought of as a problem by the steamboat captains or engineers. River of History - Chapter 4 - Mississippi National River & Recreation Aurora (1902) steam screw. BNSF Railway says two of three locomotives and "an unknown number of cars carrying freights of all kinds" derailed onto the banks of the Mississippi River around 12:15 p.m. Crews are now working . And the shrapnel, the steam and the boiling water killed hundreds. As to whether it is a good thing or not, yes, I believe that it is a good thing to do so much research and get so much information from the internet. Miller, of Vicksburg, who changed the name to Alice Miller and ran the boat on the Yazoo and Sunflower rivers. hide caption. In 2015, after I retired, I decided to look at all the known lists to discover who was actually on the Sultana and how many lived and died. web oct 10 2017 it was the steamboat sultana on the mississippi river and it could have been prevented in 1865 the civil war was winding down and the . Lawmakers voted 85-12 Monday to approve legislation that would exempt . You can see the wreck in low water just north of the Eads Bridge. Find out more about what this space is all abouthere. Lavish meals were served four times a day in a great central hall, and surviving menus list such gourmet delicacies as broiled pompano and stuffed crabs. Appendix A - List of Steamboats on the Upper Mississippi River, 1823 1 was no longer used to manufacture boilers after 1879. No one seemed to question the danger of a steamboat race until there was an accident or . Explosion of the Moselle, Near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838.. The ill-fated Sultana in Helena, Ark., just before it exploded on April 27, 1865, with about 2,500 people aboard. Introduced in 1848, they could generate twice as much steam per fuel load as conventional boilers. The remains of a ship on the banks of the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La., on Oct. 17, 2022, after recently being revealed due to the low water level. A potential reader should care about this story because it shows that greed and corruption in the government is not a new thing. 2), built in 1860 but coming downriver on her maiden voyage after being refurbished,[6] arrived at about 2:30 AM, a half hour after the explosion, and rescued scores of survivors. When railroads started carrying freight across the country, the days of the steamboats were over. Publisher James T. Lloyds 1856 book Lloyds Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters, is illustrated by 32 woodcuts of explosions, fires, and foundering ships, chronicling a decades-long history of steamboat mayhem. Example: Yes, I would like to receive emails from 64 Parishes. Highlights of the Mississippi River Cruise: Round-trip from New Orleans Length: Five days Price: Starts at $2,405 per person Enjoy a complimentary overnight in New Orleans before embarking on. 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. Now, through the use of the internet, people can search hundred, perhaps thousands, of newspapers, from the United States as well as from around the world. In his book River of Dark Dreams, historian Walter Johnson writes that the table of contents of Lloyds bestseller was sort of a nightmare poem of alphabetized Americana: a catalog of 97 major and hundreds of minor boat disasters. By August 1872 the count of steamboats under the Burlington Railroad Bridge was 147, while the 1,108 engines and trains crossed over that bridge during the same month. "The Arabia sank. and Mrs. M.V. Near midnight, Sultana left Memphis, leaving behind about 200 men. 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 boat and its entire cargo was a total loss. The men located around the twin openings quickly crawled under the wreckage and down the main stairs. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. And it was very cold. When steamboats went out to investigate the wreck, they reported on what was found. Most of its 91 passengers and crew were asleep. On May 19, 1947, the Golden Eagle left St. Louis on the Mississippi River and headed for Nashville. From 1817 to 1871, about 5,600 people died on Mississippi River wrecks of all sorts, including burst boilers, collisions and fires. Frank Barton is the descendant of one of those Confederate soldiers, a man named Franklin Hardin Barton. FS: What was the role played by the last Sultana in the Civil War, and how significant was that role? Passengers were blown apart or scalded by the hot water. BHYHA on Instagram: "On this day in 1865The steamboat Sultana Sultana had tubular boilers filled with 24 horizontal five-inch flues. 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 Category:Shipwrecks of the Mississippi River - Wikipedia Steamboat History: CAPE GIRARDEAU/GORDON C. GREENE Sign up to get updates about new releases and event invitations. Regaining control, Smith wheeled toward the island and shoved the bow against the bank as the boat listed to port. [4]:62, Sultana spent two days traveling upriver, fighting against one of the worst spring floods in the river's history. Thousands of recently released Union prisoners of war who had been held in the Confederate prison camps at Cahaba and Andersonville had been brought to a small parole camp outside of Vicksburg to await release to the northern states. The boilers exploded off Cairo, killing at least 1443 men, a loss of life never exceeded on the rivers, and rarely at sea. Yet Captain Mason of the Sultana, and Captain Reuben Hatch, the chief quartermaster at Vicksburg, saw no problem in crowding as many men as possible on board the boat, hoping to reap the biggest profit possible. No one seemed to question the danger of a steamboat race until there was an accident or the boilers exploded. The story of the Sultana isn't well-known even among people who live along the Mississippi. (Lloyd Spainhower/Post-Dispatch), Capt. Shipwrecks - Inland Waterways - WI Shipwrecks Leyhe died in 1956 in St. Louis at 83. FS: In the course of your story, you declare that It is now possible to write a work of historical nonfiction without ever leaving home. How do you actually feel about that? Eventually the Sultana turned so that the wind was pushing the flames toward the bow, where 25 soldiers remained. Paul recorded 41 steamboat arrivals in 1844, and 95 in 1849. Sultana launched on January 3, 1863, the fifth steamboat to bear the name. Pages in category "Shipwrecks of the Mississippi River" The following 50 pages are in this category, out of 50 total. Immediately, Captain Mason grabbed an armload of Cairo newspapers and headed south to spread the news, knowing that telegraphic communication with the southern states had been almost totally cut off because of the recently-ended American Civil War. "A few weeks earlier, he might have been attacking the Sultana if it had come in.". [4]:50,5556 Although Sultana had a legal capacity of only 376, by the time she backed away from Vicksburg on the night of April 24, she was severely overcrowded with over 1,953 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, over 70 fare-paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members, for a total of 2,130 people. The Hero and the Pavillion traveled the Des Moines River to Fort Des Moines in 1837. 2. (You can unsubscribe anytime), Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection, Steamboat Princess. 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. He has conducted interviews with some 75 high-profile people, including historians, government officials, combat veterans, journalists, explorers, and Hollywood stars. A BNSF Railway freight train traveling along the banks of the Mississippi River derailed near Ferryville, Wis., shortly after noon Thursday, the company said. Freight and cargo were much more profitablealthough the movement of animals could be a backbreaking, smelly proposition! BNSF train derails in Wisconsin near De Soto along Mississippi River Publisher James T. Lloyd's 1856 book Lloyd's Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters, is illustrated by 32 woodcuts of explosions, fires, and foundering ships, chronicling a. In a seeming paradox of frontier boosterism, Lloyds book sold this terrible recent history of the Mississippi as a romantic feature of the area. Nathan Smith eased the coal-burning steamer downstream through a narrow bend 80 miles below St. Louis. FROM THE VAULT: Rollin' on the River - The Vicksburg Post Train derails in Wisconsin, sends 2 cars into river | AP News Then the captain did his best to steer around the dead trees, but sometimes they were hidden underwater. [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. History of steamboats on the Mississippi: Lloyd's Directory of Disasters. Explosion of the Helen McGregor, At Memphis, Tennessee, February 24, 1830. Bodies of victims continued to be found downriver for months, some as far as Vicksburg. Captain Mason of Sultana, who was ultimately responsible for dangerously overloading his vessel and ordering the faulty repairs to her leaky boiler, had died in the disaster. Many of these boats were salvaged soon after the accident and rebuilt, but some remain in or near Iowa rivers. . The temporary museum it has created near City Hall includes pictures, personal items from soldiers, pieces of the Sultana, and a 14-foot replica of the boat. The St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April 29, 1865, states that the "steamer Sultana left New Orleans on Friday evening the 21st, with about seventy cabin passengers, and about eighty five employees on the boat. During the gold rush to Montana in the 1860s, steamboats traveled far up the Missouri to early mining towns. Concussion swept away the infrastructure, and the upper cabins, state rooms, and hurricane deck collapsed inward. The steamer registered 1,719 tons[2] and normally carried a crew of 85. To the left are the smokestacks of the Union Electric Co. plant at Cahokia. In 1859 the Princess was a four-year-old state-of-the-art side-wheel paddleboat. [7] Many died of drowning or hypothermia. It was reported that the steamer was insured for $8,000. However, Louden's claim is controversial, and most scholars support the official explanation. Writing about the scene after the explosion of the Louisiana (which blew up in the docks at New Orleans on Nov. 15, 1849), Lloyd wrote: The woodcut illustrations below, which ran small in the book, reveal a repetitive motif when looked at in a larger format: bodies thrown in the air, depicted in flight at the moment of explosion. An engraving of the Sultana explosion, published in Harpers Weekly, May 20, 1865. Students tour the pilot house of the Golden Eagle on display at the U.S. Army Engineers base at the foot of Arsenal Street on Jan. 4, 1948. They'd stay in a motel at night, but she loved to cook for the crew and the men from the Coast Guard. The steamboat business always had been a risky affair. The most recent investigation into the cause of the disaster by Pat Jennings, principal engineer of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which came into existence in 1866 because of the Sultana explosion, determined that three main factors led to the disaster: 1) The type of metal used in the construction of the boilers Charcoal Hammered No. The steamboat sank shortly after it struck submerged rocks at 2:20 a.m. All 91 passengers and crew members reached the island by gangplank, and were rescued later that day by a towboat. 2, a stern-wheel steamboat. The letters reside in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. After the disaster, Reuben Benton Hatch refused three separate subpoenas to appear before Captain Speed's trial and give testimony. William "Buck" Lehye, who sold the Golden Eagle one year before, and Mrs. Frank Lind, a lifelong fancier of steamboat travel. 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. Explosion of the Moselle, Near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838. On his trips up and down the river, Odis often took his wife, Rosa, along. He was company president for many years and sold the company in 1946. Dead trees fell into the river and got stuck on the bottom. As the steamboat made her way north following the twists and turns of the river, she listed severely from side to side. The Wreck of the Sultana for visitors to the Mississippi River GES: Goods and materials were by far the most important and more profitable cargo to carry. The Sultana Disaster | American Battlefield Trust But it was the last trace of St. Louis' own Eagle Packet Co., which Leyhe's father and uncle founded shortly before the Civil War, when the downtown levee was crowded with steamboats. Sometimes the boilers exploded. Low Missouri river levels expose 130-year-old shipwreck - kfyrtv.com This effect of careening could have been minimized by maintaining high water levels in the boilers. By eliminating the manpower required to row or paddle, often against powerful currents, steamboats fueled an exponential growth in trade and development. [citation needed] The next year, only one man showed up. While the Titanic caused more deaths, the great ocean liner was a British vessel and carried people from several different countries. (Post-Dispatch), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crews dismantle the wreck of the Golden Eagle on May 28, 1947, to eliminate its hazard to river navigation. Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard [1] in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. The stops were reversed on the downstream journey as passengers, mail, and tons of freight including four-hundred-pound bales of cotton were loaded and unloaded. Evidence like that may have led the government to downplay the Sultana tragedy, Potter says.
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