The Forgotten Inferno: How 1,164 Men Died on the Sultana

The Forgotten Inferno: How 1,164 Men Died on the Sultana

Everyone thought they were finally going home: a photo taken April 26, 1865 shows a steamboat built for 376 men packed with 2,127 souls, and by the next night more than 1,000 were dead - how did a cracked boiler, a paid overloading, and the timing of Lincoln’s death conspire to erase this disaster from public memory?

In this episode, we tell what happened on the Sultana, how decisions by military and ship officers led to the worst maritime disaster in American history, and why the nation turned its attention elsewhere; could a single patched boiler and a single financial deal doom thousands of recently paroled soldiers?

Person: James Cass Mason Date: April 26-27, 1865 Location: Vicksburg and on the Mississippi River Event: Sultana boiler explosion and maritime disaster Number aboard: 2,127 passengers

- The Sultana was designed to carry 376 passengers but had 2,127 people aboard when photographed in Helena, Arkansas on April 26, 1865. - By the night after the photograph, more than 1,000 men were dead; the episode title cites 1,164 deaths from the transcript. - One boiler seam cracked ten hours south of Vicksburg and was patched with a plate thinner than the original boiler wall. - Captain Reuben Benton Hatch arranged payments per soldier to Captain Mason, creating an incentive to overload the Sultana. - The Sultana’s four fire-tube boilers were each 18 feet long and 46 inches in diameter, built to an 1848 specification.

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