by Alan Huffman
At daybreak, Fast, who had passed out, regained consciousness in the top of a small tree surrounded by deep water. About a quarter-mile downstream he saw the hull of the still-burning Sultana slowly turning round in an eddy, with a small group of men clinging to its bow. He decided to try to swim toward it, a seemingly foolish idea that probably saved his life. He made his way from flooded treetop to flooded treetop until he was close enough, then swam to the hull and caught a line from its bow. He was so tired that it took him an hour of slipping and scuffling to heave himself onto the deck. The hull was about three-quarters of a mile from the flooded Arkansas shore, and when Fast reached it, a few dozen men were still there, some of whom were badly scalded or otherwise maimed. The debris on the hull was still burning—everywhere except the twenty feet or so where the men were marooned—and the able-bodied men were beating back the flames with waterlogged clothes.
After he pulled himself from the water, Fast spotted another swimmer, whom he recognized as a man who had escaped Cahaba and been recaptured. He threw him a length of rope. With another length of rope the two tied the hull to a flooded tree to hold it in place. Then they began throwing water from the river onto the still-advancing flames. As they did so a young man was clinging to a brass mooring ring on the side of the hull, away from the bow, hemmed in by fire. “We could easily hear all he said indeed, could not help hearing it,” Fast recalled. “Sometimes he would pray, then shout for help, then would cry and beg and coax, in the most heartrending manner. He said that he had a mother in Indiana, and that she was well off, and if we would save him she would give us all that she was worth.” This went on, he recalled, “for an hour or two,” but the men could not save him because a wall of fire surrounded him. They attempted to float ropes to him, but each one caught fire before he could grasp it, and he was unable to swim. “Finally, as the fire crept closer and closer to him, and he breathed the hot air and smoke, his voice grew hoarse and more feeble.” The young man soon released his grasp and sank into the river.
Fogleman, the Arkansas farmer, watched the remains of the Sultana drift into the flooded trees and realized that the men on the bow were fighting a losing battle. No one on the rescue boats seemed to have noticed them, so Fogleman and his neighbors began hastily building a raft of twelve-foot-long logs. They set out at about 8 a.m., according to Fast, who saw them coming. By then there were perhaps three dozen men on the bow. About a hundred feet from the hull, Fogleman stopped to negotiate. He called out that he could take six at a time but would not come nearer unless they agreed to go in an orderly fashion. He was afraid, and rightfully so, of being swamped. Fast recalled, “Finally, a comrade, whom I called all the morning ‘Indiana,’ and myself stepped to the edge of the burning hull, and declared in the most solemn manner that if he would approach we would not get on his logs, and would not permit over six persons to get on.” So began the ferrying of the last passengers from the burning boat to the shore. In the interest of time, Fogleman discharged each group among the flooded trees, where they could await the final trip to dry land. Each time the passengers paddled with as much strength as they could muster. Meanwhile, the floor beneath the waiting men began to smolder and burn, and they covered themselves with wet blankets and poured water over their heads. Finally, with thirteen men left, the consensus was that they did not have time for everyone to be ferried to the trees before the remainder of the deck was consumed by fire. As Fast recalled, ‘“Indiana’ and I, and others, hurriedly discussed the situation. Should we strong ones take to the raft and leave the helpless? Human instinct struggling for self-preservation seemed to argue yes. But the maimed ones took in the situation at once, and begged for the strong ones not to abandon them.” When the raft returned, Fast and his Indiana friend loaded the injured men aboard. Because seven would have to go on this load or the next, Fast said, “Seven goes this load,” and slid onto the log. “We landed, the raft went back, got the other six off almost overcome with heat and smoke. The raft had got only about six rods from the burning hull when it sank, leaving nothing but the jack-staff sticking above the water to mark where she went down.” Hugh Kinser, who was resting in a treetop nearby, watched the Sultana’s hull go under, sending hissing water and steam high into the air.
Fast heard men in the distance calling out from their perches in trees or aboard debris in the river. Some sang army or minstrel songs. Others mocked the singing of the birds or the croaking of frogs.
Fogleman took the survivors to his plantation house, where they warmed themselves by the fire, and lay the seriously injured out to tend to their wounds. Among the men were Nathaniel Foglesong, William Boor, and Dewitt Clinton Spikes, who had lost his family. Spikes reportedly became crazed with grief when the bodies of his mother and sister arrived, but eventually he calmed himself and went on to help rescue survivors.
Daniel McLeod, with his broken ankles, bleeding wounds, and scalded skin, floated downriver about two miles before he managed to lodge himself in flooded brush at a place called Cheek’s Island, where he was rescued, along with Ogilvie Hamblin, and taken to the wood yard. As they were headed back to the yard they saw a young girl fighting to keep her head above water. She was about seven years old and wore a life belt, but it had slipped too low on her waist. McLeod, despite his injuries, dragged himself half over the gunwale to try to reach her, and the one-armed Hamblin struggled to assist, but she went under before they could save her. The last they saw was her tiny feet in “miniature high-heeled gaiters.”
When they reached a cabin in the Arkansas woodyard, McLeod was carried inside, as was Young, who dipped his burned hand in a barrel of flour to relieve the pain. Looking out the window, Young saw “a one-armed comrade who was entirely naked, poor from a long prison life, and shivering in the wind.” It was Hamblin, who hesitated to come inside because he was naked and there were women present. He lingered, shivering, outside until Young gave him the extra pants he had snagged soon after leaving the boat.
Albert King floated for hours on his raft of debris with Anna Annis, who continually called for help. Early on she had seemed to verge on hysteria, but she grew quieter over time, only asking now and then if he thought they would be saved. King said little because he was unsure himself. Then he touched something underwater, perhaps a submerged sapling, and found a foothold. They climbed atop a log, which partially sank, but kept their heads above water. By the time they were rescued, they were so cold they could barely speak. Fogleman ferried them to the cabin, where they were wrapped in blankets to warm by the fire. Meanwhile, young William Woodridge and the overseer of his family farm rescued a dozen victims with the help of a long pole and their skiff. Carefully avoiding large crowds of swimmers, they saved about forty-five men and built a bonfire on a spot of dry land.
Still floating in the river, Rush heard men calling out support to one another in army and prison camp slang: “Lie down and keep cool,” “Fresh fish,” “Mister, here’s your mule.” But not everyone was feeling sociable. Lugenbeal, in his alligator box, kept quiet when others were nearby. Some survivors were so terrified, and so alert to the threat of others in the water, that they would not even allow their rescuers to approach.
As the survivors drifted into the flooded cottonwoods and willow trees on the Arkansas side, a new problem presented itself. “As it got lighter,” White wrote, “I could see comrades all around me, some in trees and some on driftwood, and nearly all naked. To make it worse, the buffalo gnats were so thick that they nearly ate us up.”
Otto Bardon, clinging with a group of survivors to flooded saplings and shivering in the cold, broke open a floating trunk but found that “it contained only ladies’ dresses so it was no help to us.” It was an odd time to be concerned about being caught in a dress, particularly because, as Bardon added, “One of these men that had clung to the trunk was so cold that he drowned with his arms around a tree.” Instead, they remained exposed and were tormented by gnats and mosquitoes until their rescue at about 9 a.m.
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J. Walter Elliott and his companion floated three miles before reaching a stationary raft of driftwood near the Arkansas shore, where he crawled onto a cypress log and found he had difficulty using his legs. He took three packets of quinine that one of the Sisters of Charity had given him and rubbed his legs until he could stand and walk. His companion remained listless, and that prompted Elliott to begin hitting him with a switch. The man groaned each time and begged him to stop, but eventually he came around and climbed onto the log. Together they pulled a young woman and two men from the water, though the three died of exposure within minutes. Elliott watched the sunrise from his spot atop the drift. Up and down the river he could see men on debris, on rafts of driftwood, perched on snags, clinging to flooded trees. About a hundred yards upriver he saw a group atop a flooded barn.
James Brody, who had floated with fifteen or so men on a large board, and who had lost one sock to a drowning man, had by now made it to what was actually a flooded log stable, where twenty-three men awaited rescue. After the sun came up, “as far as the eye could see, upon every old snag and every little piece of drift big enough, you would see a man. That sight I never will forget. I see it now as I pen these lines.” He also saw a man swim to a drift a short distance away who had been “scalded almost to pieces” and who hollered “boys, it is going to kill me” before he died. “Then, there was a nice mule swam out to us just after daylight. He had a piece of railing twelve or fourteen feet long tied to his halter strap. One of the boys got down and unfastened it. What became of the mule I do not know, as he was there in the water the last I saw of him with just his back, neck and head out of water.” Soon they saw the smoke of the approaching Jenny Lind, which sent smaller boats to rescue them. A doctor on board “gave us something to make us throw up the water,” though Brody did not vomit until later, in a Memphis hospital.
In the early light, J. Walter Elliott watched the young man repeatedly trying to climb a tree trunk, each time losing his grip and falling. The man was clearly about to go under when Barton poled into view, retrieved him, and took him to the barn roof. Soon the Jenny Lind dropped anchor nearby, and Barton began transferring survivors to the steamer. Elliott and his companion were the last to go. He later wrote that he was helped aboard by an Ohio lieutenant whom he had known in prison, whose name was McCord but who was affectionately known, oddly enough, as “Susan.” Elliott recalled that Susan “had the autograph fever” toward the close of his prison stay, “but I reckon he lost his Andersonville collection,” because when he saw him he was dressed only in “a bob-tailed shirt. I stripped & gave him a pair of red flannel drawers.” Stunned to see a dugout canoe pull up to the boat with Daniel McLeod inside, “I helped lift him on board and lay him on deck and gave him a tumbler of whisky.”
As the Pocahontas, the Rosadella, the Bostonia II, and the Jenny Lind nosed in and out of the flooded trees, two more steamers arrived: The Rose Hambleton and the Silver Spray. The latter picked up Congressman Snow, Commodore Smith, Perry Summerville, William McFarland, and the woman he had seen dropping the infant into the water—all of whom survived. Summerville had been picked up a few miles from Memphis by a man in a canoe who ferried him to the Silver Spray. He was freezing, could not stand, and was spitting blood. “After I had been there a few minutes a young man was brought in who was so badly scalded that his skin slipped off from the shoulders to the hands,” he later wrote. “They wrapped him up in oil and he walked the floor until a few minutes before his death. There was a lady brought in also who had a husband and some children on board. She was almost crazy. I don’t think she ever heard of them after that terrible morning.”
Aboard the Pocahontas, McCrory ate breakfast, then sidled up to the bar and asked for a brandy. The bartender set out a bottle and a glass, and when McCrory held up his treasured wallet and said proudly that he could pay, the bartender said it was on the house. McCrory recalled that the survivors congregated on the starboard side, while the dead were placed on the larboard, and that a few who initially survived made the crossing from one side to the other before the boat landed at Memphis.
McFarland—who either was obsessed with Big Tennessee or was making things up, recalled that he again saw the big man near Memphis, where he refused to come aboard a rescue boat and swam the rest of the way. Big Tennessee—or, at least, his legend—also was said to have later refused a ride from a hack at the waterfront, and a detail of guards had to march him to a hospital.
At the Memphis waterfront, which was now teeming with people, women of the Sanitary Commission met the survivors; washed the soot, mud, and blood from them; and gave them blankets and red long johns. As the day wore on, large crowds remained at the waterfront, handing out coffee, food, clothes, and blankets, or simply gawking. The survivors were carried to several hospitals—Adams, Overton, Washington, Gayoso, Officers—and to the Soldiers’ Home. At Adams, McLeod was told that one of his legs—the right one, which had been shattered at Shiloh, and which he had convinced the field surgeon to save—would have to be amputated. At Gayoso, Anna Annis was heavily sedated and treated for shock and burns; she fell asleep while begging for news about her family.
J. Walter Elliott went with “Susan” to the telegraph office, where he gave his correct name, rank, and infantry division. It was the first time he had given his true identity since his capture, and, as he noted, “a Cincinnati paper published it so next day.” As a result he was listed as a survivor, while his assumed name was listed among the lost.
By early afternoon, the search for survivors was called off, though bodies continued to turn up for weeks, some as far downriver as Vicksburg. Among them was a dark-skinned soldier wearing a horsehair bracelet, and a red-haired man with an eagle tattooed on his arm, neither of whom was ever identified. Most of the bodies were never retrieved.
In the confusion of the aftermath, Romulus Tolbert’s hometown newspaper reported that he and his friend John Maddox had been killed. In fact, Tolbert was sent to Adams Hospital, where he was treated for chills. Maddox ended up at the Memphis Soldiers Home.
Chapter Thirteen
IN A DEAD MAN’S POCKET
AMONG THE SOLDIERS’ JOURNALS THAT SURVIVED THE disaster, John Clark Ely’s is one of the few that encompass the entire spectrum of events—the war, camp life, imprisonment, and finally the doomed voyage upriver from Memphis. Most diaries were lost during the disaster. John Clark Ely’s survived, waterlogged. Ely did not.
Before the war, Ely taught writing in school in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where he lived with his wife, Julia, and their four children. He was handsome, with a full dark beard, and, judging from a surviving photo, liked to wear his kepi cocked jauntily to one side.
After the disaster, all that survived of his life were the moments he had recorded—the prelude. He was an orderly sergeant in the 115th Ohio infantry before being captured near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in December 1864 and sent to Andersonville, after which he was promoted to lieutenant in absentia. What is most remarkable about his journal, aside from the fact of its survival, is the similarity of many of his accounts, whether he was a soldier or a prisoner. They illustrate the maxim: “Wherever you go, there you are.” As he inched toward his doom he wrote most often of performing “usual duties” in army camp—distributing rations, building and repairing shelters, writing and reading letters, cutting firewood, and participating in drills. Now and then Ely’s musings turned lyrical. Of the war he wrote, “Oh, how deep and dark is the human mind, how black are many of its pages, how edge’d with red and splattered, too.” He wrote of “the dark bitter flood” that flowed through his veins, then added, “Band went downtown for a general serenade this evening. Large drove of horses passed today.”
He wrote of picking blackberries and attending church services. After one service he noted that the sermons seemed dull and failed to evoke the realities of his life. He wrote of two women, Lizzie and Angeline, who visited a sick soldier for a “gay smutty time.” As the first menace crept h
is way, on August 31, 1864, he wrote, “Excitement continues, rebels coming closer, will probably see them today…” He rode into a town in an ambulance to buy a bottle of whiskey. Eight days later he wrote, “One year ago today I was home with those most dear, will another year find me there to enjoy their love and happiness, I hope and trust I may.” On September 23 he wrote of receiving a care package from his wife, Julia, which included a bottle of wine, “a lump of maple,” a can of tomatoes, and a letter. From September 30 to October 16: All were beautiful or very fine mornings.
Ely wrote of heavy and brisk cannonades during the night and on the morning of his birthday, when he turned thirty-nine, “for better or worse.” It would be his last. He was captured the next day and marched with about one hundred other prisoners, including twelve musicians, to a camp near Nashville, where he lay about the next day and wrote a letter to Julia. From there the men marched in sleet and snow along muddy roads, through abandoned towns and forests of oak and chestnut trees. He was soon “very lame.” He spent his last Christmas on a train loaded with prisoners, passing through West Point, Mississippi. “Hungry, dirty, sleepy and lousy,” he wrote. “Will another Christmas find us again among friends and loved ones?”