Sultana

by Alan Huffman

  In late January he had arrived at Andersonville, where adhering to routines kept him going. His description of arriving at the stockade was remarkably brief and opaque: The ground was sandy, the weather was cold, and there were four thousand prisoners inside. “Commenced fixing a place to stay, worked all day,” he wrote.

  He wrote frequently, even in the purgatory of prison, of “fine days,” but by February 12, it was evident that a fine day could only count for so much. He wrote, “Again a fine day…Feel much depressed in feeling today, anxiety of home weighs heavy.” On February 22, someone stole from his shanty a shirt, a pair of pants, a haversack, and four days’ worth of rations. Five days later, he was sick again. Just as he seemed to be reaching his lowest ebb, after hearing unfounded rumors of a parole for months, Ely and the other Andersonville prisoners were removed from the stockade. He departed on March 24, traveling by train and boat to Jackson and from there to the Big Black River bridge on foot. In an odd coincidence, the Confederate troops who released his group to the Union Army were the same who had captured him near Murfreesboro. He immediately began building a shelter—something he had gotten pretty good at by now—and fashioned a bower of cane above it for added shade. He then wrote a letter to Julia. He kept his mind on the future.

  In early April, Ely was sick again, and he wrote Julia another letter. He was feeling better by April 13, when the prisoners heard a heavy cannonade in nearby Vicksburg, signaling the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Robert E. Lee. He was jubilant. On April 14, he wrote of his joy at the war’s end and the news that they would be exchanged: “Bully, may we soon see our sweethearts.” On April 15, the prisoners from Andersonville drafted a resolution thanking the Sanitary and Christian commissions for their aid. On April 16, he wrote, “Beautiful morning and day, wrote to Julia.” On April 18, they heard of Lincoln’s assassination. April 19 was another fine day.

  On April 24 he wrote, “Beautiful day but very warm sun, about 10 a.m. we were ordered to take train to Vicksburg and then up the river, went from cars to boat Sultana, a large but not very fine boat. Vicksburg is truly a city set on not only a hill but hills. Left sometime in night for Cairo, Ill.” The next day: “Fine day, still going up river very high over country every where, no places along the river where white people live but very many monuments of where people had been.” April 26: “Very fine day, still upward we go”

  There was no punctuation at the end.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  AS J. WALTER ELLIOTT ROAMED THE MEMPHIS WATERFRONT he ran into George Safford, whom he had known back in Indiana, and who was searching for his father’s body. “Together he and I opened more than a hundred coffins on the wharf,” Elliott wrote, “hoping to have the satisfaction of giving him a burial, that his body should not be lodged on some bar to become food for fishes.”

  It is hard to imagine a more daunting task than peering into a hundred coffins containing the remains of people who had died in every conceivable horrible way, and Safford was no doubt equivocal about finding his father there. Though he desperately wanted to know what had happened to him, and finding his father’s body would have been better than not, it would have eliminated the chance that he had somehow survived. As it turned out, he was not there, so Safford and Elliott decided to visit a local newspaper office to see if there had been any word. There they met a U.S. Army scout who had been aboard the Sultana, who produced the elder Safford’s watch and said that he had, in Elliott’s words, been rescued “in an unconscious state by some Negroes on President’s Island.” George Safford took a boat to the island, where he found his father alive. It was likely the high point of the younger Safford’s life.

  Accounts of the number of survivors vary, as do those of the total number of passengers aboard the boat when it went down. Many people boarded without being counted, and the counting itself was questionable. By the most reliable accounts, more than twenty-four hundred people were aboard—about six times the boat’s legal carrying capacity. Of the more than seven hundred who initially survived the disaster, between two hundred and three hundred died in Memphis hospitals in the days after. Even allowing for a fairly wide margin of error, the accepted toll of about seventeen hundred made it the worst known maritime disaster in American history and it would remain so even after the sinking of the Titanic, in which about fifteen hundred died.

  The Washington, Adams, and Gayoso hospitals each took in about one hundred fifty survivors, while Overton took in just under one hundred. About two hundred fifty of the less seriously injured, including John Maddox, Oglevie Hamblin, William Peacock, and Commodore Smith, went to the Soldiers’ Home. The Memphis Daily Bulletin reported that an additional twenty-four people did not require or declined treatment. For many it would be years before their injuries took their toll. But in some cases those injuries and debilitations would be the primary or contributory cause of death up to sixty years later.

  Erastus Winters was taken to the Adams Hospital, which, like all the facilities, was overwhelmed by the disaster. He reported that his burns went unattended until almost nightfall. In the following days, Winters roamed the hospital searching for old friends and meeting new ones, including the indomitable Daniel McLeod. Among the other patients at Adams were Romulus Tolbert, Truman Smith, George Robinson, Stephen Gaston, and Nathaniel Foglesong. Robinson was treated for chills, scalded arms, and injuries to his wrist and chest; Gaston, for scalds and a thigh wound; Foglesong, for diarrhea. Only nine men of Tolbert’s and Maddox’s 8th Indiana Cavalry survived, and one of those later died of exhaustion at Gayoso.

  In Disaster on the Mississippi, Gene Eric Salecker noted that Indiana, the only state that attempted to compile a cumulative tally of its soldiers lost on the Sultana, settled on a figure of two hundred forty-seven lost of the four hundred thirteen Indianans on board.

  Survivor John Lowery Walker, who was taken to the Soldiers’ Home, was less concerned with his own recuperation than with learning the fate of his best friend, William Morrow. The next day, after hearing that Morrow might be at Overton, Walker borrowed a pair of pants and set out for the hospital, barefoot. He later remembered that “people would stop and look, and I could hear such expressions as, ‘There goes one of them,’ or ‘There’s a Sultana victim.’” He arrived at Overton before it opened at 9 a.m. and sat down outside, where he could see the clock. As he entered the door he encountered Morrow leaving, in search of him. They embraced. Walker recalled that it was “indeed a happy meeting; we had been together for so long, had endured the same hardships, and had shared the same joys, that only those whose lives have been so closely attached to each other can fully comprehend just what this reunion meant to us.” It may have been similar for Tolbert and Maddox, but there is no record of their reunion, and in fact they lost sight of each other until reaching home.

  Simeon Chelf, who survived after another man allowed him to share his floating log, also ended up at the Soldiers’ Home, where he remained for more than a week. The April 28, 1865, Memphis Daily Bulletin listed a Private Richard Pearce—whom some identified as Big Tennessee—among the survivors being treated at the Gayoso Hospital for six days.

  The disaster was obviously big news in Memphis, as it was in the passengers’ hometowns, though its importance was muted elsewhere by coverage of the Lincoln assassination and the end of the war. On April 29, the New York Times ran a brief article titled “Dreadful Disaster,” and four days later the newspaper noted, “No troops belonging to States east of Ohio were lost.” Then the Times apparently lost interest and ceased mentioning the disaster altogether. Harper’s Weekly ran an illustration of the boat in flames. The Memphis Argus interviewed first mate William Rowberry, who reported that he “saw a flash, and the next thing he knew he was falling into the water with a portion of the pilot house.” Slightly injured, he had grabbed on to a plank with five soldiers. In addition to Rowberry, the Sultana’s chief engineer, Nathan Wintringer, and pilot George Kayton surv
ived, the latter of whom was found uninjured on Island 42. As Elliott pointed out, Kayton knew better than anyone else the nature of the currents and the lay of the land along that reach of the river, even if most of that land was inundated by the flood. Twenty-three other crew members survived, including deck and cabin hands, which would later become a source of controversy because they had allegedly forced other passengers from the eventually righted yawl. Five crew members escaped aboard the yawl, and all five of the crew members’ wives aboard died. Wintringer left Memphis for Pittsburgh shortly after the disaster; a subsequent investigation concluded that the boilers had been inadequately repaired and that he was ultimately responsible, though one crew member claimed the cause was the frequent careening of the boat as the crowds moved from one side to the other—an argument that seems implausible because most of the passengers were asleep at the time.

  On May 3, the Jenny Lind returned to the site of the wreck, and its crew retrieved several bodies. The next day, the boat retrieved twenty-eight more, and the Rosadella found six. Fogleman and his sons tied twelve decomposing bodies to the shore for recovery. Scores of others were recovered at various points along the river, but some were buried where they were found as the water fell, because they were in such advanced states of decay. One boat pilot saw bodies being devoured by feral hogs. The Memphis Argus reported on May 7 that a total of one hundred thirty-three more bodies had been found. Eventually about two hundred were buried in city cemeteries. The majority were never accounted for.

  When the steamer Arkansas traveled upriver soon after the disaster, its crew reported that the water was “full of bodies floating like cordwood, and all of them were dressed in the uniforms of Union soldiers.” The engineer of the Vindicator reported that his crew had to frequently dislodge bodies from the boat’s paddlewheels.

  Among the survivors, Anna Annis remained at the Gayoso for at least a month, possibly as long as six weeks, during which time she searched numerous morgues in vain for the bodies of her husband and daughter. Newspaper articles reported that the Sisters of Charity collected clothes for her, and the crew of the Essex raised $1,000 to help. Annis eventually departed for her home in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The Chicago Opera Troupe, which had disembarked in Memphis before the disaster, also held a benefit for the survivors; their performance and other fundraisers distributed money to beneficiaries, including $200 to Dewitt Clinton Spikes and $100 to Daniel McLeod.

  A few days afterward, Truman Smith was walking downtown in his red underwear. When asked if he had been on the boat and he said he was, he received a new suit of clothes and $13. Such scenes were repeated all over town. After the hospitals overflowed, private residents took in survivors, and one woman even took in the bodies of the Spikes women, fearing they would not be properly cared for otherwise (they were buried in Elmwood Cemetery the next day). Seth Hardin ran an ad in the local papers offering a $100 reward for anyone who recovered his wife’s body, but there is no evidence that she was ever found.

  Young remained a bundle of nerves after his rescue. He could not sleep for several nights, and even when he was able to sleep, “Night after night I would jump up on hearing any noise, and I had to change my sleeping-place from a bunk to a cot, for I had bumped my head till it was sore.” After two weeks in Memphis, he was put on a steamer home.

  Fast recalled that he also wore only his red long johns after being released from the hospital. “We promenaded the streets of Memphis three days in that picturesque garb, hatless and shoeless. Then Uncle Sam came to our relief, hunted us out a full new suit of army blue, and soon we were on our way to Cairo and Camp Chase.”

  By then, most of the surviving paroled prisoners were once again setting off for home, where for many of them a different, and longer, survival challenge awaited.

  TWO DAYS AFTER THE DISASTER, approximately three hundred surviving soldiers boarded the Belle of St. Louis, headed upriver. They were bound for Cairo, Illinois, a rowdy steamboat and railroad town at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. From there they would travel by train to Camp Chase, near Columbus, Ohio, and be discharged.

  Senator-elect Snow had managed to get out of town the day before, also headed for Cairo. Kayton, the Sultana’s pilot, chose—perhaps wisely—to head in the opposite direction, to New Orleans.

  Within a few days, about a hundred of the survivors in Memphis hospitals had died, which left nearly four hundred men who were ready to travel but had no clear plan for getting home. A group of them, impatient to leave and weary of the military’s delays, approached J. Walter Elliott and asked him to help organize their transportation. Elliott, who said he was selected because he was the senior able-bodied officer among those still in Memphis, clearly relished the opportunity to assume a leadership role. He managed to book passage for about two hundred fifty men, including Tolbert and Maddox, on the Belle of Memphis, also bound for Cairo. That Saturday he toured the Memphis hospitals and invited those who were well enough to travel to come to supper at the Soldiers’ Home, where he unveiled the itinerary.

  A few of the more industrious survivors had already departed on their own, including Rush and a friend who smuggled themselves aboard an earlier steamer and, “being out of money, begged our way home, telling our story as we went.” From the steamboat, Rush made his way overland to Lake Erie, where he managed to find a boat and row the remaining twelve miles alone, in the middle of the night, to his home in Sandusky, Ohio.

  Some of the survivors were so afraid of setting foot on a boat again that they booked travel by train, which delayed their departure by several weeks. Those who were in the worst shape—about a hundred and thirty men—remained behind in Memphis hospitals. “Almost forgotten among the departure of the paroled prisoners,” Salecker noted, “were the Sultana’s surviving crew members,” though they would not be forgotten for long. The five crewmen who fled in the yawl were later arrested in St. Louis, allegedly for contributing to the deaths of other passengers.

  About a dozen injured men who were still able to travel were placed on the Belle of Memphis’s cabin floor. Most had to be carried aboard and nursed by their friends along the way. The remainder bedded down in whatever space was available, much as they had on the Sultana, though conditions now were obviously much improved. The atmosphere was one of trepidation as the Belle of Memphis departed the city shortly after nightfall. The men on the deck, who included Tolbert and Maddox, were notably quiet. The river was dark but for the rippling water reflected in the lights of the boat. It was the second time they had left Memphis on an upriver steamer in the darkness, and nerves were on edge. If anyone felt a tinge of joy about being headed home, it was doubtless undercut by memories of similar feelings only a week before. During the night, Elliott wrote, some of the passengers sprang up at each unexpected sound, and John Lowery Walker recalled that the men became “greatly alarmed” when the boat ran aground as the pilot took a shortcut between bends in the channel.

  William McFarland, among those who had taken matters into his own hands and caught a ride on the St. Patrick, reported similar misgivings. He was so frightened about being on the boat that he climbed into the yawl and did not get out until he reached Evansville, Indiana. He later said he jumped every time the crew blew off steam or sounded the whistle.

  When the Belle of Memphis reached Cairo, the injured were taken to area hospitals, and the rest were put up in army barracks. A few slipped away to the city’s Soldiers’ Home in search of food. The next morning they departed Cairo by train and reached Mattoon, Illinois at about 11 a.m. Along the way, some again felt a wave of panic each time the train lurched across rough spots in the rails. It was becoming clear that surviving the aftermath of the disaster was going to be a long and disturbing haul. Most of the men had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and were grateful to see that the people of Mattoon had turned out at the station to greet them with baskets of food—roasted chicken, boiled ham, cake, pies, eggs, and hot coffee. That night they were treated to wel
come speeches at a local hotel. Many of the men no doubt wanted only to get home, though William Boor, for one, was up for the celebration. His favorite part was when a group of forty women dressed in red, white, and blue sang patriotic songs. It was at the Mattoon event that the public evolution of the Sultana story began—a process that would continue, for many, for the rest of their lives. As survivor William Hulit observed, “some comrade would give his experience while a prisoner, or relate the frightful scenes and marvelous escape from the burning boat.” Though it seems strange that such terrible memories would be trotted out so soon for entertainment, Hulit was there, and the outpouring of memoirs and public speeches in the coming months and years confirm a pressing need among some of the survivors to lay claim to the tragedy. Others, including Tolbert and Maddox, had the opposite reaction and rarely spoke of it again.

  Because the survivors’ passage had not been booked beyond Mattoon, Elliott had to bargain with the station master to allow the train cars to continue to Indianapolis, pledging that they would be returned. He then telegraphed the Indiana governor and the mayor of Terre Haute to announce their impending arrival, and the train departed at 1 a.m. From Terre Haute the train continued to Indianapolis, where the governor met the survivors and intervened on their behalf, saying it was unnecessary for them to continue on to Camp Chase to be discharged. He ordered the sick to be admitted to area hospitals and the rest to be sent home. The soldiers who were not from Indiana continued on to Columbus.