Sinking the Sultana: A Civil War Story of Imprisonment, Greed, and a Doomed Journey Home

ISBN: 0763677558

Author: Walker, Sally M.

Condition: New

The worst maritime disaster in American history wasnt the Titanic. 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 country was reeling from Lincolns assassination. Thousands of Union soldiers, released from Confederate prisoner-of-war camps, were to be transported home on the steamboat Sultana. With a profit to be made, the captain rushed repairs to the boat so the soldiers wouldnt find transportation elsewhere. More than 2,000 passengers boarded in Vicksburg, Mississippi . . . on a boat with a capacity of 376. The journey was violently interrupted when the boats boilers exploded, plunging the Sultana into mayhem; passengers were bombarded with red-hot iron fragments, burned by scalding steam, and flung overboard into the churning Mississippi. Although rescue efforts were launched, the survival rate was dismal - more than 1,500 lives were lost. In a compelling, exhaustively researched account, renowned author Sally M. Walker joins the ranks of historians who have been asking the same question for 150 years: who (or what) was responsible for the Sultanas disastrous fate?