No one seemed to question the danger of a steamboat race until there was an accident or . [citation needed]. The last Iowa steamboat to carry goods was the coal fired sternwheeler the Loan Star in 1967. Explosion of the Steamboat Constitution, May 4, 1817, Point Coupee, Louisiana. "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. 0:12. The exact number of steamboat accidents in Iowa Rivers is not known. The preliminary crest of 19.61 . A Look Back The day the Golden Eagle steamboat sank in 1947. 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. Barrels of flour were emptied on the ground, and the terribly burned victims were rolled in it and placed in the shade. . Category:Shipwrecks of the Mississippi River - Wikipedia No one was ever held accountable for the tragedy. ARCHERAt Galena, from St. Louis, Sept. 8, 1845; sunk by collision with steamer "Di Vernon", in chute between islands 521 and 522, five miles above mouth of Illinois River, Nov. 27, 1851; was cut in two, and sunk in three minutes, with a loss of forty-one lives. The Nick Wall was a sternwheel river packet that struck a snag on the Mississippi River near Grand Lake (Chicot County) on December 18, 1870. But perhaps the best explanation is that after years of bloody conflict, the nation was simply tired of hearing about war and death. 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. Frank Barton is the descendant of one of those Confederate soldiers, a man named Franklin Hardin Barton. Iowa is the only state with four border rivers, the Mississippi, Missouri, Des Moines, and Big Sioux. "It won't move!" The Worst Marine Disaster in U. S. History. American Queen steamboat crewman falls in Mississippi near Baton Rouge [4]:12 On the morning of April 15, she was tied up at Cairo, Illinois, when word reached the city that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had been shot in Washington, D.C. [17], In 1888, a St. Louis resident named William Streetor claimed that his former business partner, Robert Louden, made a confession of having sabotaged Sultana by the use of a coal torpedo while they were drinking in a saloon. The location of the explosion, from the top rear of the boilers and far away from the fireboxes, tends to indicate that Louden's claim of sabotage of an exploding coal torpedo in the firebox was pure bravado. The owners of the Effie Afton decided to take the railroad companies that had built the bridge to court. He was a passenger on its trip to Nashville, Tenn. (Post-Dispatch), Passengers pass time on Grand Tower Island until they were picked up by a passing towboat. Train derails near Wisconsin-Iowa border; 2 cars float down Mississippi The vessel was heading from St . By the 1830s steamboats had navigated the Missouri River to the mouth of the Yellowstone River. Recollections of a Rebel ReeferVol. In the early hours of April 27th, 1865, mere days after the end of the Civil War, the Sultana burst into flames along the Mississippi River. All contents PDF Download Free Sinking The Sultana A Civil War Story Of Imprison Pdf [4]:33,3435,38,4041, While the paroled prisoners, primarily from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia,[4]:226290 were brought from the parole camp to Sultana, a mechanic was brought down to work on the leaky boiler. Traveling by steamboat on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was common in the 1800s. This effect of careening could have been minimized by maintaining high water levels in the boilers. A Brief History of Steamboat Racing in the U.S. | History| Smithsonian FS: In writing this book and having devoted much of your lifetime to telling the true stories of the vessels named Sultana, when did your aim to dispel myths and legends take over your outlook? I gave only short shrift to the coal-torpedo sabotage theory. Plowing upriver from New Orleans, the Natchez was the first steamboat to arrive on the scene. It was reported that the steamer was insured for $8,000. In later years the steamboats pushed huge rafts of logs from the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota to sawmills farther down the river. [4]:197202 Captain George Williams, who had placed the men on board, was a regular Army officer, and the military refused to go after one of their own. The U.S. government would pay US$2.75 per enlisted man and US$8 per officer to any steamboat captain who would take a group north. They wanted the railroad companies to pay for damages to the Effie Afton and its cargo. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. GRAND TOWER, ILL. It was the first trip of the season for the Golden Eagle, an antique steamboat with twin stacks, gingerbread woodwork and a splashing sternwheel. Bridges, shipwrecks, islands, and secret spots on the Mississippi River The steamboat business always had been a risky affair. Through the corruption of Captain Reuben Hatch, a Union officer at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the captain of the Sultana, James Cass Mason, those 2,000 ex-prisoners were crowded onto a boat with a legal carrying capacity of only 376 passengers. The Tricky Missouri River and the Steamboat Bertrand, The First Bridge Over the Mississippi and the Effie Afton, Majestic Riverboat Reigned on the Mississippi, Simulated travel guide describing travel conditions in Iowa from 1830 to 1879, Personal accounts from a steamboat captain describing life on the Mississippi transporting lumber, Article describes the history of steamboats in Iowa City in the 1800s, Transcribed official records, newspaper clippings, historical accounts and diary entries about life on the Mississippi River, Transcribed official records, newspaper clippings, historical accounts and diary entries about life on the Missouri River, Audio story about the last riverboat gambling cruise of the Mississippi Belle II in 2007, Ginalie Swaim Ed., Steaming Up the River,. [12] In 1880, the War Department placed the number of survivors at 931, but the most recent research places the number at 961. 3) The design of the boilers. Among those killed were Louisiana state representatives H. J. Huard and Charles Bannister. He is currently a freelance writer living in Annapolis. Sultana launched on January 3, 1863, the fifth steamboat to bear the name. The giant paddle wheel started turning faster. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. But some of the most poignant stories involve Confederate soldiers rescuing their Union counterparts. In support of Louden's claim, what appeared to be a piece of an artillery shell was said to be recovered from the sunken wreck. Low Mississippi River ranges expose sunken WWII ship - Dailynationtoday "And the entire center of the boat erupted like a volcano.". In his book recently published by the Naval Institute Press, Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana: The Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, author Gene Eric Salecker sheds new light on the Sultanas tragic fate. Jan. 3, 1844 Steamboat wreck kills as many as 70 on the Mississippi 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. Steamboating | Tennessee Encyclopedia Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. 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. [4]:79 First one boiler exploded, followed a split-second later by two more. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. 1, which tends to become brittle with prolonged heating and cooling. Near midnight, Sultana left Memphis, leaving behind about 200 men. Fortunately, the sturdy railings around the twin openings of the main stairway prevented the upper deck from crushing down completely onto the middle deck. "A few weeks earlier, he might have been attacking the Sultana if it had come in.". Then the captain did his best to steer around the dead trees, but sometimes they were hidden underwater. Steamboats traveled into Iowa border waters even before Iowa was legally open for settlement. It went upward at a 45-degree angle, tearing through the crowded decks above and completely destroying the pilothouse, instantly killing Captain Mason. Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. ", Discovery Gives New Ending To A Death At The Civil War's Close. Burning of the Orline St. John, near Montgomery, Alabama, March 2, 1850. Most river travel was between the years of 1846 and 1866. "They had survived war," O'Neal says. It's estimated between 300 and 400 boats have sunk along the Missouri River. (Lloyd Spainhower/Post-Dispatch), Capt. Like us onFacebook, follow us on Twitter@slatevault, and find us onTumblr. hide caption. 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. Preston Lodwick, then a consortium including Capt. FS: It seems to this reader that one of the main reasons for such a series of disasters for vessels named Sultana is that the owners of the steamers and the people entrusted with actually navigating the ships [boats] were ignoring the fact that overcrowding may have been the principal reason for the long list of tragedies. A tall mirror glistened behind the walnut bar. Long before Kanesville or Council Bluffs were settlements on the Missouri river, the steamboat the Western Engineer arrived in the area in 1819. Most of Sultana's officers, including Captain Mason, were among those who perished.[8]. ", Jerry Potter, lawyer and author of The Sultana Tragedy. Mrs. Lind's birthday cake was lost, but fellow evacuees serenaded her as morning sun warmed their island refuge. Many of these boats were salvaged soon after the accident and rebuilt, but some remain in or near Iowa rivers. This led to many accidents and groundings. By the time the repairs would have been completed, the prisoners would have been sent home on other boats. The Chicago Opera Troupe, a minstrel group that had traveled upriver on Sultana before getting off at Memphis, staged a benefit performance, while the crew of the gunboat Essex raised US$1,000 (equivalent to $17,702 in 2021) [14], In December 1885, the survivors living in the northern states of Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio began attending annual reunions, forming the National Sultana Survivors' Association. That meant another expensive trip and more time. Steamboats of the Mississippi - Wikipedia They can search material held in small, local historical societies. Lead was a very important export from the Dubuque area. Charcoal Hammered No. On May 19, 1947, the Golden Eagle left St. Louis on the Mississippi River and headed for Nashville. The name stuck. Although the mechanic wanted to cut out and replace a ruptured seam, Mason knew such a job would take a few days and cost him his precious load of prisoners. A crew member fished liquor bottles from the half-flooded bar. In the 1820s, steamboats on the Mississippi carried lead from Julien Dubuque's lead mines near Dubuque. 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. (You can unsubscribe anytime), Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection, Steamboat Princess. 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. The sediment tended to settle on the bottom of the boilers or clog between the flues and leave hotspots. The story of the Sultana isn't well-known even among people who live along the Mississippi. 2, a stern-wheel steamboat. Steamboats ultimately carried more men and freight in the Civil War than the faster and more expensive railroads. A female fan exclaimed what a lovely shade of Cardinal in reference to the trim on the new uniforms.