The worst maritime disaster in American history wasn't the Titanic.
It was the steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi River--and it was
completely preventable.
In 1865, the Civil War was winding down and the country was reeling from
Lincoln's 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 ship so the soldiers wouldn't 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 ship's 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
Sultana's disastrous fate?