Christe Raber
Wyandot County Historical Society

Sultana Survivors Meet in Upper Sandusky

When the steamer docked at Vicksburg on April 23, on of Sultana's boilers was leaking steam. Wintringer found R. G. Taylor, a local boilermaker, to repair Sultana's boilers. The boilermaker wanted to make extensive repairs to the boilers. Captain Mason, however, refused to delay the steamer. Wintringer convinced Taylor to reduce the necessary repairs to a single patch over the leak. Taylor was not satisfied with the repairs and stated on record that all the boilers on the Sultana were unsafe.

A badge of the Sultana Association commemorating the reunion held on April 28, 1908 at Upper Sandusky.

While Taylor was quickly repairing Sultana's boilers, Captain Mason stormed into General Morgan L. Smith's office. General Smith was commander of the Post and the District of Vicksburg. Army officers had previously guaranteed Mason a portion of the prisoners at Camp Fisk. However, Mason was in financial trouble and wanted more prisoners. The government was offering $5.00 for transportation of each soldier and $10.00 for each officer. A large load of prisoners would generate money Mason desperately needed. Mason threatened to f'ile a complaint in Washington, DC if he did not receive all prisoners remaining at Camp Fisk. Captain George Williams and Captain Frederic Speed, other officers in charge of the prisoner transfer met with General Smith to discuss the possibility of transporting all prisoners remaining at Camp risk on the Sultana.  Captain Speed objected since rolls for only 300 to 400 men had been prepared. Captain Williams compromised by suggesting that the rolls could be prepared after the prisoners boarded Sultana.

The next morning, Williams and Speed traveled to Camp Fisk to load prisoners on trains bound for the Vicksburg docks. Since they decided to prepare the rolls onboard Sultana, Williams and Speed did not bother to count the number of soldiers they loaded. Each believed the number of prisoners remaining at Camp Fisk to be between 1,300 and 1,400. Incredibly, there were approximately 2, 400 men at Camp Fisk that day, all slated to board Sultana. Had the rolls been prepared at the camp as usual, the gross overloading of the Sultana would have been realized.

At nine o'clock on the evening of April 24, the overloaded Sultana headed out onto the Mississippi. Believing that the worst of the Civil War was in the past, soldiers on board Sultana did not mind cramped conditions. Survivors and witnesses on passing boats described a kind of festival atmosphere on the steamer. Soldiers danced, sand and discussed at length what they would do first when they reached home.

At two o'clock in the morning, most of the passengers were sleeping. Suddenly and without warning, three of Sultana's four boilers erupted like a volcano. The force of the explosion sent steam into the decks above the boilers. The entire middle section of the steamer was instantly reduced to bits. Hundreds of sleeping soldiers were hurtled from the ship and into the water.

Those left on the steamer faced an inferno, as Sultana was engulfed in flames. Those who were able grabbed shutters, chairs and chunks of the deck to use as flotation devices and jumped into the water. However, there were many who were terribly wounded from the blast and could not swim. Hot water and steam fatally wounded hundreds of passengers. Flying debris had impaled others or trapped them in the path of flames.

Those in the water watched while the night became a bright as day when Sultana became consumed by flames. According to Jerry Potter in The Sultana Tragedy, William Fies, a member of the 64th Ohio Volunteer Infantry remembered that "... the agonizing shrieks and groans of the injured and dying were heart-rendering, and the stench of burning flesh was intolerable and beyond any power of description."

Those in the water were not automatically out of danger, however. There were a large number of people in the river · and few materials that could be used as support, to float.. Panic ensued as men began to fight and claw their way over top of each other to reach pieces of debris. According to one witness, "... when the flames at last drove the men from the boat, [they were] fighting like demons in the water in the mad endeavor to save their lives, actually destroying each other and themselves by their wild actions..."

It was not long before others on the river that night realized a terrible tragedy had occurred. Other steamers soon noticed the bodies of dead and dying men floating down the river. Working feverishly all through the night, steamers fished Sultana's victims out of the water. One steamer captain ordered his crew to through anything that would float into the river giving the victims something to hold onto until they could be rescued. Residents along side the river used their own tiny boats to rescue victims. One Confederate soldier saved fifteen Union men single-handedly.

The total killed by the explosion was impossible to determine exactly, since the rolls of those on board were never completed. Many passengers' bodies were never found. The death toll was eventually placed at over 1,700.  In comparison, 1,522 lives were lost on the Titanic. Nathan Wintringer survived the disaster; Captain Mason's body was never found.

Survivors of the disaster refused to let the memory of that terrible night die along with 1,700 of their friends. They started the Sultana Association and held their meetings at Fostoria on December 30, 1885. A reunion of survivors was held here in Upper Sandusky on April 28, 1908. The association appointed a committee to petition Congress for funds with which to build a memorial. Congress never did set aside funds for a memorial, so a group of survivors from Tennessee established a monument in 1916 at the Mount Olive Cemetery near Knoxville.

- Christe Raber

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