Final Voyage

by Eyers, Jonathan

  More men tried to fight or bribe their way aboard, so by the time the Sultana left Vicksburg at around 9pm that evening, there were at least 2,400 people on the ship. One survivor described the steamship as looking like a hive of bees about to swarm. Overcrowded by more than six times her legal capacity, the Sultana showed signs of struggling to carry this many. After every berth and cabin had been filled, and it was standing room only, the men filled the top deck (called the hurricane deck). Those on the deck below reported to the crew that the ceiling seemed to be sagging under all those stamping feet. Of course, Mason was reluctant to let anybody off, so his solution was to get his crewmen to install stanchions beneath the top deck, buttressing it against the excess weight.

  Overcrowded by more than six times her legal capacity, the Sultana showed signs of struggling to carry this many.

  As concern spread and word reached the army officials managing the ship’s loading, Mason tried to convince them he had carried this many before and that his ship would be fine. The army officials didn’t need much convincing. After all, they would receive their per head kickback for ignoring the legal capacity limit. And the men themselves didn’t seem to mind being so tightly packed in. This was no worse than the overcrowding most of them had experienced in the prisoner of war camps, and being on board the Sultana at least carried with it the promise of being home by the end of the week.

  It wasn’t just freed prisoners who boarded the Sultana at Vicksburg. Private passengers who had booked a cabin in advance joined the throngs of men at the dockside. They included pump-maker and retired army officer Harvey Annis, his wife Ann and their seven-year-old daughter, Isabella. Ann was sufficiently worried about the large number of men being crammed into such a small ship to talk to the Sultana’s chief clerk about it. He told her everything would be fine, and otherwise ignored her.

  The raging waters of the Mississippi

  Warmer weather in the Northern states had started the spring freshet. As the winter receded, the run-off from melting snow and ice poured into the tributaries that fed the Mississippi. The river ran very high, and the Sultana would later pass points at which the river had burst its banks, flooding low-lying countryside for miles on either side. Backing away from the wharf at Vicksburg and turning north, the Sultana battled against the raging current trying to drive her in the opposite direction. Weighed down by her exceptionally heavy human cargo, the steamship made slow progress into the night.

  The Sultana suddenly developed a noticeable list.

  The first stop Mason made was when the Sultana docked briefly at Helena, Arkansas, about 200 miles north of Vicksburg and less than 70 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. On shore, someone with a camera thought the extraordinary sight of a steamship so overflowing with men a spectacle worth capturing. Some of those on board the Sultana spotted him and word quickly spread amongst those on her hurricane deck. There was a rush to the port side, as hundreds of men tried to squeeze into the shot. Top heavy as she was, the Sultana suddenly developed a noticeable list. Realising what had caused it, Mason’s crew ordered all the men on the hurricane deck to move back to where they were. As overheard by a survivor, Mason expressed concern for his ship’s safety for the first time. With all those men on the hurricane deck she was top heavy, and another mass movement could, if combined with the strong current, cause the ship to capsize (as happened with the Neptune in 1993, see chapter eight).

  The Sultana reached Memphis at about 8pm on the 26th, and stayed until around midnight. Many of the men left the ship, though most did not go far. Others headed into town in search of liquor. On leaving Memphis the Sultana headed across the river to Hopefield, Arkansas, where she took on several tons of coal. Some of the men who had gone into Memphis looking for alcohol had found rather too much of it, and they came back to the docks only in time to see the steamship leave without them. Though they may have cursed themselves for missing the boat then, within a couple of hours they would probably have been counting their blessings.

  Though they may have cursed themselves for missing the boat then, within a couple of hours they would probably have been counting their blessings.

  At 2am on the 27th, the Sultana was about 10 miles north of Memphis. Most of those on board who could find room to sit or lie down were sleeping. Others found it impossible to sleep as the steamship rocked from side to side due to the current and the constant twists and turns of the river. Some of the men whiled away a sleepless night gambling.

  As the Sultana tilted from port to starboard then back again, the water in her four interconnected boilers spilled from one to the other. When she tilted to starboard the water ran out of the left-most boiler and pooled in the right-most. The left-most boiler continued to be heated, though suddenly dry, so when the Sultana tilted to port, the water flooding back in hit these red-hot spots and flash-boiled instantly to steam. This created a sudden surge of pressure every time the ship careened from one side to the other. Mason could have minimised this effect by ensuring the water levels in the boilers were high enough that none of them ever ran empty. But then, he didn’t really consider that necessary. He had probably allowed the working steam pressure to exceed safe levels throughout the journey because the extra power was needed to overcome the strong freshet current. As far as he was concerned, the boilers had safety gauges that would lock open if the pressure ever reached dangerous levels.

  As the patch burst open, the sudden change in pressure caused the boiler to explode.

  For Mason’s own sake, the boilermaker in Vicksburg should never have allowed the Sultana’s captain to dismiss his professional wisdom. That patch he had riveted to the boiler on the port side could not withstand the excessive pressure. As the patch burst open, the sudden change in pressure caused the boiler to explode. That in turn caused two of the other three boilers to explode. The force of the blast was so big that it threw hundreds of those crowded on the deck 25ft (8m) into the air and into the river.

  In the seconds it took to tear through the doomed steamship, the explosion destroyed the pilot house completely. Both funnels crashed down onto the hurricane deck, killing dozens instantly. Many more were killed as splintered timber turned into shrapnel. The blast also caused fatal damage to the Sultana’s superstructure. Those upper decks that had already been sagging under the weight of overcrowding finally collapsed. Hundreds of men – those not killed by the explosion, the falling funnels or the shrapnel – fell to their deaths as the ship suddenly opened up beneath them.

  The burgeoning inferno

  Described by one person on shore as sounding like the roar of a massive earthquake, the explosion woke people as far away as Memphis, and before long eyewitnesses could see the glow of the burgeoning inferno from 10 miles away. The blast had torn a gaping space through the decks above the boilers and ignited several tons of coal, sending it rocketing in every direction. As burning coal fell out of the sky much of it landed back on the wooden steamship. The highly flammable paint that coated much of her upper decks helped the fire spread even faster than the falling coal.

  Described by one person on shore as sounding like the roar of a massive earthquake, the explosion woke people as far away as Memphis.

  Below decks, hundreds of men never stood a chance of escape. The first they knew of the explosion was when collapsing deck timbers fell on them where they were sleeping. Not all of them were killed outright. Many remained trapped whilst their comrades fled in panic and confusion. For some of those there was no way out either, with much of the ship around the boiler room already impassable, blocked by wreckage that piled in as the decks above imploded. Boiling water continued to spray from ruptured pipes and clouds of superheated steam flooded crowded passageways, scalding men to death in only a few seconds as they tried in vain to fight their way through the darkness.

  In their cabin, Harvey Annis and his wife woke the moment the explosion rocked the Sultana. As steam started hissing into their cabin Annis realised they needed to get off the ship. He
quickly put his lifejacket on and then helped his wife with hers. In his haste he tied it on her incorrectly. Then, taking seven-year-old Isabella in his arms, he opened the cabin door. They followed the other men rushing to reach the side of the ship. Coming up on deck they were met by a scene of abject horror – men lying dead or dying all around, cinders and ash falling like hellish rain, and sheer panic in the faces of everyone they encountered.

  There were men lying dead or dying all around, cinders and ash falling like hellish rain, and sheer panic in the faces of everyone they encountered.

  Men were already jumping overboard on both sides of the ship, most of them not even bothering to look for a lifejacket first. Some were screaming in terror. The boys who had lied about their age to enlist now looked like the children they were rather than veterans. As the fire spread so rapidly, the flames creeping across the Sultana’s wooden structure with an almost liquid quality, nobody stopped to try and fight it. Those pumps, buckets, axes and that hose were all useless now.

  Harvey Annis saw that there were now so many men in the water beside the ship that it was impossible for any more to jump without landing on top of those below. Some climbed down the swinging fenders hanging over the side of the ship. Others swung themselves down on ropes. But there was no room in the water. As the fire spread in their direction, men surged toward the stern, and Annis and his family went with them.

  Some of the merchants who had booked passage on board the Sultana from New Orleans to St Louis were taking their livestock to market. In the stern were the pens for up to 60 horses and mules. Just as panicked as the humans around them, many of the terrified animals broke free, and began stampeding up and down the deck, trampling anyone who got in the way. Some also jumped over the side, landing on men struggling in the water. The fall killed many of the animals.

  Many of the men still on board couldn’t swim. In desperation they looked for anything they could use to help them stay afloat. Men wrenched doors off their hinges and threw them overboard before going in after them. Others broke into a cabin, pulled a mattress from the bed and then lowered it over the side. But too many of those already struggling in the water grabbed it. When it sank, they sank with it.

  Many remained trapped in the burning wreckage.

  In the last reported sighting of Captain Mason he was on the upper deck, heaving large planks of broken timber over the side, along with wooden barrels that would also float, whilst supposedly shouting to his passengers not to panic.

  Within 20 minutes of the explosion the Sultana’s entire superstructure was ablaze. Many remained trapped in the burning wreckage, and the fire now made it impossible to rescue any of them, even if the other men had tried to. Many survivors would later claim there had only been time to save themselves as they left their comrades to be burned alive. The fire soon reached the stern, at which point even those who couldn’t swim and had no aid to flotation decided to jump.

  Survivors of the Sultana

  Carrying Isabella, Harvey Annis climbed down a rope to the deck below and then waited for Ann to follow them. Now only a short drop to the water, they would jump together. At the last moment Ann discovered her husband hadn’t fastened her lifejacket properly, so she stopped to redo it. When she turned back round she saw Harvey and Isabella jump without her. The lifejacket may have saved her life in more ways than one. Still aboard the Sultana she watched in horror as her husband and child were swept away by the fierce current. But she didn’t have time to break down. Flames forced her to climb over the back of the ship and onto the rudder. When the rudder itself caught fire she had to let go herself, and take her own chances in the raging Mississippi.

  The men began to panic, grabbing at each other and hollering for help that wasn’t coming. Some prayed for salvation.

  Even for those men that could swim, the river was hardly any safer than the conflagrated steamship. The melted ice and snow that had bloated the Mississippi to more than a mile wide north of Memphis left the water barely above freezing. It was so cold that men who had been badly burnt escaping the Sultana didn’t realise just how terribly their skin had been seared by the flames. Some men also found it impossible to swim in their clothes so stripped off in the water. With no rescue forthcoming, and the powerful current preventing all but the strongest from reaching the riverbanks, many in the water around the ship started to succumb to hypothermia. Realising what was going to happen to them too, those who had jumped in at the last minute began to panic, grabbing at each other and hollering for help that wasn’t coming. Some prayed for salvation.

  Later that morning, rescuers who came too late for everyone else would find someone clinging to almost every tree for several miles between Memphis and the point where the Sultana met with disaster.

  Several hundred men made it to the riverbanks, where they grabbed on to the tree branches that hung low over the water. Exhausted, they had only the strength to hold on and await rescue. Later that morning, rescuers who came too late for everyone else would find someone clinging to almost every tree for several miles between Memphis and the point where the Sultana met with disaster.

  The freshet torrent that swept Harvey and Isabella Annis – as well as countless others – to their deaths overcame plenty of strong swimmers too, but some of them managed to survive. Miraculously a woman with a baby was dragged several miles until they were rescued by a small boat. A mule that had broken free of the pens at the stern of the Sultana and died from the fall as it jumped overboard provided one man with a life-saving means of staying afloat. Other survivors reported seeing an uprooted tree being carried downriver with several men clinging to its roots, all of them singing the Star Spangled Banner as they went along.

  Whilst many of those who couldn’t escape the river’s flow drowned, some managed to keep their heads above water for 10 miles or more. A teenage boy reached Memphis, where baffled sentries helped him ashore. There he told them what had happened to the Sultana, and putting his story together with the fiery glow they could see in the distance, they raised the alarm and spread the word.

  At 3am, an hour after the explosion, the captain of the steamship Bostonia II saw the same fiery glow from the other direction as he came down the river toward Memphis. By this time the Sultana was drifting helplessly, at the mercy of the current, just like many of her passengers. The Bostonia II turned a bend in the river and suddenly her captain realised that glow he’d seen wasn’t buildings or woodland on fire. After overtaking the Sultana the Bostonia II’s captain ordered the crew to weigh anchor, then launched the ship’s boat to pick up survivors. It was a dark, moonless night, and the only light his crew had to work with was the orange glare of the fire reflecting off the water. In total the Bostonia II pulled only about 100 men from the river.

  With word now spreading in Memphis other vessels powered north and joined the rescue efforts before morning, including other steamships, the Arkansas and the Jenny Lind, as well as the ironclad gunboat USS Essex. The side-wheel gunboat USS Tyler, which had seen action at the Battle of Shiloh and later the Siege of Vicksburg, also came to help. Her wartime crew had already been discharged, so she was manned by volunteers. But there was some reticence amongst other boat owners, who didn’t want to risk launching their vessels in the freshet current at night. Even without them, the other rescuers managed to save 500 people from the water.

  Her search for her family was ultimately in vain. Their bodies were never found.

  Ann Annis was found hours later floating on a wooden board from the Sultana. Cold, exhausted and barely conscious, she supposedly gave the man who pulled her from the water her wedding ring out of gratitude, though that was from his account of the rescue; she had no recollection. After recuperating in hospital in Memphis she spent over a month in the city trying to locate Harvey and Isabella. She had survived being dragged away by the current, after all, so she had every reason to believe they could have survived too. Her search for her family was ultimately in vain. Their bodies were never fo
und.

  The Sultana stayed afloat for several hours after the explosion. By the time the fire burnt through the outer hull she was only several miles north of Memphis. What still remained of her gutted shell drifted toward the Arkansas side of the Mississippi and sank there, near Mound City, just before dawn.

  A nation forgets

  According to the US Customs Service the official death toll from the disaster was only 1,547, but that toll was based on the tally taken by the army officials at Vicksburg. Survivors from the group of 400 men the army officials missed attested to the fact that they weren’t on any list, and nor were friends of theirs who had died. With Captain Mason and the rest of the Sultana’s senior officers also dead, there was nobody who could confirm just how many had been on board the ship when she left Memphis. The most realistic estimate, therefore, is that about 1,800 perished. That’s about the same as the number of men both sides lost at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, at that point the deadliest battle ever fought on American soil. For months after the disaster, bodies continued to be found downriver, some as far south as Vicksburg.

  Of the 500 survivors, up to 300 later died either from their burns or from the effects of exposure in the near-freezing water. Many others never made a full recovery either, and died within a matter of years. Those that survived into the long term numbered very few, and every year most of them reunited in Tennessee on the 27th April. The last reunion was held in 1928, when only four survivors were left.

  Even at the time, the loss of the Sultana quickly became a footnote to history.

  Even at the time, the loss of the Sultana quickly became a footnote to history. News of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination had finally spread through the South, and the day after the Sultana exploded the biggest story was about his assassin John Wilkes Booth being hunted down and killed. Almost 620,000 Americans died during the Civil War, with the biggest battles in the second half of the war claiming thousands of lives a day. Another 1,800 at the tail end of such bloody conflict just wasn’t a significant enough number to warrant special attention. Ironically it was the people of Memphis, who had been the enemy only a week before, who had lived through occupation by the Union army for almost two years by that point, who responded to the tragedy with the most charity. Food, clothing and money was collected for those who had lost everything.