Original subtitles

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(metallic clanging)

(waves lapping)

(paddle thumping)

(ship's bells clanging)

(whistle hooting)

- [Narrator] Early on the morning of April 27th, 1865,

the sidewheeler steamboat, Rodolf,

navigated its way northward on the Mississippi River.

Standing at the bow: 13-year-old deckhand, Louis Rosche,

gazed out on the waters before him.

- [Louis] The war had ended.

The great cotton fields of Dixie,

rutted by the wheels of caisson cannons,

once more were being marked with neat furrows.

Normal passenger traffic was being reestablished

between the North and South,

and people weary by four long, bloody years

sought to forget.

Many of the victorious regiments were now returning home

by steamboat.

(whistle tooting)

The weather was perfect that day.

We were just below Memphis.

I had developed a boatman's habit

of keeping a weather-eye ahead

for anything on the river,

and suddenly, I spotted a floating object.

I shaded my eyes with my hands and watched it.

(angelic vocalizing)

It was the body of a boy, face down.

I was about to signal the pilothouse

when I saw the body of a woman, too.

One of her legs was hanging downward into the water, bare.

The other leg had a stocking on it.

Then suddenly, a call, a shout.

The river was full of bodies floating like cordwood,

all of them dressed in the uniform

of Union soldiers.

(whistle blasting)

(bell clanging)

- [Narrator] The Sultana is a story of endings,

the last days of war, the end of slavery,

the death of a president,

and the end of terrible suffering and captivity.

The river was supposed to take them home.

At war for over four years, battle after battle,

by the end of April, 1865, over half a million dead.

(military drumming music)

By the early spring of 1861,

it appeared that the United States

was inexorably headed to war.

However, this time, the nation was going

to war against itself.

Ironically known as the Civil War,

it would set neighbor against neighbor,

father against son, and brother against brother.

They were from the Heartland, the Bluegrass, Appalachia,

from deep in the Hoosiers' nest, and homes made of buckeye.

First-, second-, and third-generation Americans,

true born Sons of Liberty who would,

in the Spring of 1861, answer President Lincoln's call

to preserve the Union.

- My great-great-grandfather was Adam Schneider.

He came to Cincinnati in 1854, with his wife

sort of under a cloud.

He lived in Ingelheim am Rhein in Germany,

and he was a part of a conspiracy

to assassinate the prince of Prussia

as he rode through Ingelheim.

My great-great-grandfather drew the short straw

and it was his job to assassinate him.

So, he took a shot at him from the side of the road,

and missed.

There was a big trial, and he ended up being judged

(speaks in foreign language), not guilty,

but that was because he was tried in his home territory.

And obviously, things got a little hot

for him over there, and they immigrated to Cincinnati.

- [Narrator] At age 42, Adam Schneider was drafted

into the 183rd Ohio.

He was captured at the Battle of Franklin,

in November, 1864.

George Washington Carney,

originally conscripted into the Confederate Army,

switched sides during the war.

- My great-great-grandfather actually was mustered

into the 59th Infantry

of the Confederate States Army, initially,

and so he lived in East Tennessee.

He was an orphan, and as an orphan,

you were a ward of the state,

and so we believe the state kind of provoked him

into joining the Confederate states, initially.

He came here and was captured at Champion Hill

in the early fighting, 1862,

by Grant's Army, and then our records show

that he basically disappeared for about 12 months,

probably laid low before being coerced

to join the Union forces,

the 3rd Cavalry of Tennessee, Company K.

- My Sultana ancestor was Daniel Garber,

102nd Ohio, Company E.

There's a story that was in one of the Ohio newspapers

and it featured Daniel, and his picture

with a rifle, when he joined up,

leaving a wife and six children.

And the phrase was, "going to see the elephant,"

and I think you still see it occasionally,

about looking for a sense of adventure,

that this was gonna to be a short-term lark,

something exciting.

And of course, it wasn't,

not in the way they maybe thought.

- [Narrator] They marched to the front,

unit by unit, cavalry and infantry

covering hundreds of miles on foot and horseback,

preparing for the fight.

And fight they did,

at Chickamauga, Stones River, Missionary Ridge,

Sulphur Trestle, the Battle of Franklin, Gettysburg,

Beyond the victorious, the wounded,

and those killed in action,

thousands of soldiers on both sides

were captured in battle.

For the Union soldiers seized,

there were two final destinations:

Confederate prison camps in Andersonville, Georgia

and Cahaba, Alabama.

- We know they were holding prisoners here

from the Battle of Shiloh,

which was 1862, and we have a lot of accounts

left by those men.

Course, it was a very different situation in '62.

Some of the men that were here said

they were allowed to walk around town.

They went into the some of the stores.

They went into the press.

They borrowed books, like a lending library

at the newspaper editor's office.

They flirted with the girls.

A girl threw flowers at them and blew them a kiss.

Very different than if the prisoners that where here in '65,

much more difficult.

Not the same situation at all.

The attitude to the war at the beginning

was very different in this community

than it was towards the end, also.

- Well, at the high points of Andersonville's operation,

August of 1864, there was more than 33,000 men

held in an area that was 26-and-a-half acres.

At that point of the war,

had it been established an actual city,

it would've been the fifth largest city

in the Confederacy.

The disease was rampant,

because of the large area and the latrine area

was at such a low spot, so far from so many of the prisoners

that with the sickness of diarrhea and dysentery,

that just getting there was a huge issue, and just...

You can only imagine the ground conditions.

As far as the individuals, the lack of food,

dying men everywhere, in August.

At the high point, there was more than 100 a day dying,

so you can imagine just the corpses to be carried.

- [Narrator] With dwindling rations,

facing the rain and occasional winter snowfall,

each day in the camps became a brutal fight for survival.

- [J. Walter] Oh, the suffering from cold,

hunger, and the petty tyranny of cowards,

clothed with a little brief authority.

The stench of rotten meat,

of which we had not half enough to eat,

the bitter, bitter feeling that our country

had abandoned us to our fate,

refusing to exchange because it would be

exchanging able-bodied soldiers for us

who were starved until we could be of no service.

J. Walter Elliott, Company E, 10th Regiment, Indiana,

Volunteer Infantry.

- [Narrator] As the weeks and months dragged on,

casualties mounted.

From February to October, 1864,

over 10,000 were lost,

nearly a third of the camp's population.

One of the prisoners, Lieutenant John Clark Ely

of the 183rd Ohio, kept a diary during his confinement.

- [John] December 27th, 1864.

Prison life has commenced in dim form,

all its dirt, dullness, and eagerness for food.

December 31st.

The usual scenes: catching lice.

Someone stole our mess last night.

January 3rd, rain, again.

January 26th, so cold.

Men die, every day.

(birds singing)

- [Eliza] My heart aches for the poor wretches,

Yankees though they are,

and I am afraid God will suffer some terrible retribution

to fall upon us for letting such things happen.

If the Yankees ever come to Southwest Georgia

and to Andersonville, and see the graves there,

God have mercy on the land.

Eliza Frances Andrews.

- [Narrator] By early March, 1865,

it was evident that the South was losing the war.

With Union forces preparing to move

against the Confederate stronghold at Petersburg, Virginia,

Cahaba and Andersonville prison camps began

to give up their occupants.

- In the Spring we had the first flood

that inundated this town.

The whole town was under water.

We had 3,000 men held captive in the space

that was only 200 feet by 125 feet,

so they were practically shoulder-to-shoulder,

and now the water has come up,

and they had to cook their own meals,

and mostly what they got was cornmeal.

So, they're standing in water.

They all have diarrhea.

It was just a horrible, horrible situation,

and so that's when they decided to move them

away from here and take them to a parole camp

in Vicksburg.

- Well, I picture in my mind having

to experience the end of the war myself.

the joy that was in their heart and the expectation

of going home and seeing their friends, and their family,

and rejoicing together,

even though they were in a miserable state a lot of 'em,

but they were happy to be out of the prison

and on the way home.

- [Joseph] There was never a happier lot of men

that marched out of Andersonville Prison

on March 20th, 1865 on the way to freedom,

not that any of them were in a physical condition

to cause happiness,

but because of the horrors they were leaving

and the comforts they hoped soon to find.

The rosiest dreams of children on Christmas Eve

are no fairer than the visions

that floated through their minds.

I was one of them.

There was no ceremony about our release,

we were simply told that the hour

of our deliverance had come,

and were marched up to the railroad

to await the train to Montgomery.

Coming like cattle across an open field

were scores of men, nothing but skin and bones

hobbling along as best they could.

Every gaunt face with its staring eyes

told the story of the suffering.

Protruding bones showed through their tattered garments.

One might have thought that the grave

and the sea had given up their dead.

There was hardly a station on the road

where we did not leave the remains of some poor fellow

to be buried by strangers.

How hard to die in the morning of their deliverance.

After a wearisome march, we came to the Big Black.

We had to wait till the ferryman had orders

to take us over.

We were probably more patient in doing so

because we could see the Stars and Stripes

floating over the camp.

It was too far away to even see the stripes,

but we knew it was the old flag,

and as it floated out,

I felt that I loved it as I never had before.

Long may it wave.

Lieutenant Joseph Taylor Elliott,

124th Indiana Infantry, Company C.

(bugle tooting)

- [Narrator] Waiting on the other side of the river

was Camp Fisk, designated as a holding area

for 5,000 Union soldiers released

by Confederate forces.

- These men were in horrible shape.

Many of them weighed less than 100 pounds,

and they had all sorts of diseases,

especially those from Andersonville.

And when they got to Vicksburg, and Camp Fisk,

even though they were still prisoners,

they were under control of the Union Army,

so they got new uniforms, they were fed.

- [Narrator] Eight days later,

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered

to the Union forces commanded by General Ulysses S. Grant

at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

The news would not reach the soldiers

at Camp Fisk until April 13th, four days later.

To celebrate, the Union forces at Camp Fisk

joined in a 100-gun salute.

Four years of devastating Civil War

were at long last, finally over.

Now it fell to the Union commander

of the Department of Mississippi, in Vicksburg,

Major General Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana,

to get the men home.

With the rail lines throughout the South in tatters,

it was decided to send them North by steamboat.

On April 13th, the boat, which would ultimately transport

the most POWs was leaving its home port in St. Louis

for the journey South.

It was called the Sultana.

In 1862, a former steamboat captain named Preston Lodwick

commissioned the Litherbury Boatyard in Cincinnati, Ohio

to build two steamboats,

the most prestigious ever built by owner, John Litherbury.

One would be named the Luminary.

Her big sister would be called Sultana.

- Because Sultana means a beautiful sultan woman.

He wanted it to be the most beautiful steamboat ever built.

He funded the Sultana,

took $80,000 out of his own pocket.

Through his experience of building

and designing steamboats,

he designed the Sultana.

- [Narrator] Like Lodwick's former boat,

the Northern Belle, the new boat

would be a side paddle-wheel steamer,

large and elegant with a 1,000 ton capacity.

When completed,

the boat would carry up to 376 passengers

and a crew of 80.

- A round-trip from Cincinnati to Wheeling

would cost you $12,

and that was in the prestigious suites.

Preston Lodwick furnished it

with the most prestigious chandeliers of the time,

actual silver.

They had to have a Saturday

where they took the Sultana downtown

to the public landing to show the Sultana to the world.

All the major newspapers from St. Louis,

Chicago, New York,

they all come to Cincinnati to see the Sultana.

- [Narrator] The Sultana was fifth boat to carry that name.

The previous four Sultanas were all lost

in fires and various accidents.

Captain Lodwick was certain that his Sultana

would have better luck than the others.

She was 260 feet long, 42 feet wide,

and ran the river at an average

of nine to 10 miles per hour.

Preston Lodwick had big plans for his steamboat.

- He constructed the Sultan

for a run up the river to Pittsburgh.

Actually it's a pleasure boat,

to sometimes take cotton, sugar, pigs.

His initial trial run to Pittsburgh,

his smokestacks wouldn't clear Wheeling, West Virginia.

- [Narrator] In 1864, the Sultana settled in

to a St. Louis to New Orleans run

under the command of J. Cass Mason,

an early investor in the steamboat.

- When I finally found that photograph,

he looks like a kid instead of the villain I was expecting,

but he was a daredevil.

He like have the elk antlers on his boat,

indicating that he was the fastest boat.

He liked to get there the quickest.

- [Narrator] The Sultana was one of 4,000 steamboats

in operation during the war.

Although indispensable to the American economy,

they were notorious for having a relatively short lifespan,

often lost to accidents.

- [Jerry] The problem with steamboats during the Civil War

was that there were regulations,

but during the war, those regulations were put aside

for the urgency of the Army,

in order to transport materials and men.

- [Narrator] The river many colorful characters

and all of them knew how unforgiving the river can be,

especially in the Spring.

April, 1865 would also bring

the pivotal closing events of the war.

Throughout the conflict, Mississippi steamboats

had played a critical role.

- The Sultana had been used as a troop transport

during the Vicksburg campaign,

and there was a Confederate deserter

that had deserted from Vicksburg,

come over to Grant's lines,

told him how many men General Pemberton had,

and then he was sent North on the Sultana.

It had been fired on a few times

by Confederate soldiers.

Never really any bad damage,

but just enough to give 'em a scare.

- [Narrator] Since the Union capture

of Vicksburg the year before,

river traffic resumed in earnest.

The boats had become even more indispensable

since the South's telegraph lines had been cut

and its railroad corridors destroyed.

Having just been re-inspected in St. Louis,

the Sultana was heading downriver for stop

at Cairo, Illinois.

It would arrive early on April 14th, Good Friday,

and continue on the next morning, April 15th, 1865.

(ship's bells ringing)

The day was fateful.

The Sultana departed Cairo on the morning of April 15th,

draped in black, its flag at half-staff, tolling its bell.

Arriving in Vicksburg, Captain Mason's runners

immediately jumped ashore and ran

into the streets with the news.

Church bells soon began to ring.

- [Alonzo] As we got up in the morning,

we found the colors at half-mast.

It was some time before we learned that the president

had been assassinated.

All thought of home was banished,

and every man swore revenge.

- [Samuel] It caused greater grief than any defeat

we'd received while on the battlefield.

For the remaining time, the assassination

was the subject of heated conversation,

and Southern sympathizers kept well out of our way.

- [Narrator] As debate of the likely villains

of the assassination began,

the first person to step aboard the Sultana in Vicksburg

was Colonel Reuben Hatch,

Quartermaster of the Mississippi Department

for the Union Army.

- He was from Springfield, Illinois.

In Cairo, Illinois, early in the war,

he was an assistant quartermaster.

He got caught taking bribes,

and Grant, who was the commander at Cairo

at that particular time,

was ready to court-martial him.

They had evidence.

Something happened, though.

He never appeared before a military tribunal

to be court-martialed, because his brother.

O. M. Hatch was the Secretary of State

for the State of Illinois,

and was one of Lincoln's primary financial supporters

during Lincoln's presidential campaigns,

and it was O. M. Hatch that contacted President Lincoln

and asked for Lincoln to intervene, which Lincoln did.

He appointed a civilian commission.

Two of the three commissioners

were from the State of Illinois,

and after they did their investigation,

they concluded that Reuben Hatch

was nothing more than an honest person.

In January of 1865, Hatch appeared

before an investigative committee in New Orleans

to determine whether or not he was qualified

to be an assistant quartermaster.

He was tested on regulations and rules,

and found to be just totally ignorant

of all the regulations,

and they concluded, the board concluded

that either he had had some type of mental disability

or someone had been negligent in allowing him

to remain in the Union Army as an assistant quartermaster.

Within a few weeks, he was appointed Chief Quartermaster

for the Department of Mississippi

and sent to Vicksburg.

- [Narrator] With the fall of the Confederate Army,

the Union prisoners at Camp Fisk were reclassified.

No longer parolees, they were free men

to be mustered out of the military

at Camp Chase, Ohio as soon as possible.

The responsibility for drawing up these rolls

fell to a senior adjutant, Captain Frederick Speed.

- Frederick Speed volunteered

to take over Captain Williams' place at Camp Fisk

of organizing the prisoners and taking care of the prisoners

and notifying Northern newspapers who was there.

Captain Williams had gone up to Cairo, Illinois

to the nearest telegraph in order

to try to get some information

about the exchange of prisoners.

"Are they gonna send any Confederate soldiers

"down to Vicksburg so that I can get them

"to release the Northern soldiers, a man-to-man exchange?"

While he was away, Speed volunteers.

Speed does an admirable job.

He sends lists of the prisoners up to St. Louis

and they're published in the St. Louis newspapers.

- [Narrator] Captain George Williams

had his own dubious past.

- George Williams had been kicked out of the Army

in Memphis when he was in charge

of a Confederate prison here,

and when they made a surprise inspection,

the conditions were so horrible,

they immediately booted him out of the Army.

But he was was a West Point graduate,

and General Grant and General Sherman

came to his aid and he was allowed to rejoin the Army,

and sent to Vicksburg.

- [Narrator] While Frederick Speed prepared his rolls,

the Sultana left Vicksburg for New Orleans,

bringing first word of Lincoln's assassination

to the Crescent City upon its arrival, early on April 19th.

While in port, Chief Engineer Nathan Wintringer

supervised a routine cleaning and scraping

of the Sultana's troublesome boilers.

Meanwhile, other steamboats were working their way

back up the river a day or two ahead of the Sultana.

(boat whistle hooting)

Miles away, in the nation's capital,

the body of Abraham Lincoln was leaving in a funeral train

bound for the American Heartland.

Back in New Orleans, with 40 passengers

and 80 crew members safely boarded,

the Sultana's final, fateful voyage had also just begun.

(whistle hooting)

- When the Sultana arrived in Vicksburg

on the evening of April 23rd,

the metal larboard boiler had developed a leak.

- [Narrator] Aware of two recent repairs

on the Sultana's taxed boilers,

Chief Engineer Nathan Wintringer

informed Captain Mason

the boat could not depart Vicksburg without a third repair.

Captain Mason knew this could mean

losing the soldier transport job.

- A section of the boiler had buckled

and steam was escaping,

so when the boat landed at Vicksburg,

the chief engineer and the captain

got a local boilermaker by the name of R. G. Taylor

to come and look at the boiler,

And he told Captain Mason it would take several days

to do a complete repair job,

and Mason knew that if he didn't leave the following day

that he would not get a load of prisoners.

- Captain Mason wanted money.

The government was paying $5 per enlisted man

and $10 per officer for the steamboat captains

to carry them home.

He wanted the money.

He needed the money, 'cause his boat was in ill repair

and had bad boilers.

He cuts a deal with Colonel Reuben Hatch,

the chief quartermaster at Vicksburg.

"If you give me enough men, I will make sure you

"get a little bit of,

"grease your palm."

- So he tried to convince R. G. Taylor

to place a temporary patch over the buckled area,

and initially, Taylor refused.

He actually walked off the boat,

but for some reason, he came back,

and he agreed, finally, to put a very small, thin patch

over the buckled area.

And he was repairing, doing the repair work,

as the men were being loaded on the Sultana

during the day of April 24th.

- At the time, R. G. Taylor

noted that the the sheets on either side of the patch

were in bad shape.

They were burnt plates,

and he recommended that they be replaced.

These were not replaced.

So therefore, we know that when the Sultana returned

to service, the bulge was still there.

They just replaced the patch over it,

and the two burnt plates that were suggested

to be replaced were not.

(man shouting)

- [Narrator] The steamboat Henry Ames

departed Vicksburg prior to the Sultana's arrival

with 1,300 soldiers onboard.

Early on the morning of April 23rd,

Frederick Speed was surprised to discover the appearance

of the Olive Branch, despite his orders

that he be notified of all steamboats docking in Vicksburg.

Colonel Hatch had purposefully failed to notify Speed.

By the end of the day, the Olive Branch

would head North with another 700 prisoners.

- Probably close to 2,000 people had already

been shipped North, 2,000 men.

When the Sultana arrived, the officer that was in charge

of the prisoner transfer, Captain Frederick Speed,

had decided not to ship any men on the Sultana

because he didn't have the records,

which greatly angered Captain J. Cass Mason,

and Mason went into Vicksburg and met

with Lieutenant Colonel Reuben Hatch,

who had already promised Mason on his downriver trip

a large load of prisoners for his upriver trip.

And on the evening of April 23rd,

Captain George Williams arrived back in Vicksburg.

Now Williams had met with Speed that evening

and convinced Speed that there really wasn't any reason

to prepare the paperwork in advance

of loading the men on the boat,

and the records could be prepared after the boat left.

- [Narrator] At Camp Fisk, boarding of the first train

to the Vicksburg wharf had begun.

One by one, the name of each soldier was called.

It took over two hours.

- When Williams returns, he will take over the loading

of the Sultana at the dock.

Captain Williams stands at the dock and counts the men

as the go on board.

Speed was out at Camp Fisk putting the men on trains

that were taking them into Vicksburg.

He goes off to lunch.

In the meantime, a second train showed up.

He misses that train, which carried about 700 men.

He is around for the third train,

but the same thing happened on the other end.

Captain Williams was that the Sultana

when the first trainload arrives.

He then hears that there's bribery taking place,

and he believes that it's Speed taking the bribe,

and thinks he's delaying people at Camp Fisk

until another steamboat can come up.

So, George Williams leaves the Sultana

to go into town to make a formal complaint to General Dana.

In the meantime, the second train arrives,

and those 700 men are now put onboard the Sultana.

So, Speed did not know they were there.

Neither did Williams know that they were there.

Speed then finishes up with the last of the soldiers,

believing there's about 1,400, maybe 1,500 men

on board the Sultana,

when really there's about 2,200, 2,300.

- [Narrator] Mason return to the Sultana

just as Frederick Speed dutifully sent a telegram

to Camp Fisk that summarized the agreement:

Special Order 140.

- Mason, the part-owner of the Sultana,

and master of the Sultana had bribed

some of the military officers at Vicksburg

in order to be certain that he was gonna get

not only a large load of prisoners,

but all the remaining prisoners at Vicksburg.

There were two other steamboats at Vicksburg,

they were actually larger than the Sultana,

that wanted a portion of the men,

and those two steamboats went North

with a total of 17 passengers.

And the Sultana left Vicksburg

with probably closer to 2,500.

Prisoner after prisoner talked about hearing the sound

of hammering coming from the boiler area

of the boat, and they were concerned.

And well they should have been,

because when he finished the work,

R. G. Taylor told Mason the boiler was not safe,

but Mason assured Taylor

that he would have a complete repair job

when the boat arrived in St. Louis.

- [Narrator] Despite the crowding, a handful of new,

paying customers came aboard,

including 30-year-old Ann Annis,

traveling with her husband and young daughter.

- Harvey and Ann had a private quarters

but the Army paid for it.

On his way in, Harvey did tell them

that the upper deck was sagging

and they should put more supports,

and they did that,

which means that it was already loaded.

- One man, John Clark Ely, was with the 115th Ohio.

He kept a diary during the war.

On April 24th, 1865, he wrote

that he was boarding the Sultana,

a large but not very nice boat.

- [Gene] At one point, I think Captain Mason

does get a little worried

because when his decks start to sag

and they have to put bracing under the decks,

I think he's worried that his Sultana's gonna fall apart

because it was in ill repair to begin with.

But at that point, the Union officers in charge say,

"We're loading this.

"We're putting everybody on board.

"It's out of your hands now."

I think Captain Williams was very culpable

for overloading it.

Again, he did not know how many people were on board

'cause he had missed the second train,

but he was the one who got his dander up

and said, "I'm loading this and every last soldier

"is going on board.

"They're not going on any other vessel.

"I don't care who's bribing who."

- [Narrator] Major William Fidler,

a commander with the 6th Kentucky Cavalry

launched a formal complaint on behalf of the soldiers

to Captain George Williams.

- And Williams ignores him

and basically says, "I'm in charge.

"I'm putting everybody on board."

"You can't put them on the other boats

"because the other boats have smallpox."

And of course, the prisoners in their weakened condition

were more afraid of disease than being crowded on a vessel.

- A lot of the prisoners didn't feel comfortable

with the very crowded conditions

because there was really very little room

to lie down to sleep, and there was one one cook stove

for all the soldiers on board the boat.

The Army really didn't provide a doctor,

and a lot of these men were sick.

And a lot of them had written home

that they were going home,

and they were anticipating,

as bad as the conditions were,

they looked at that boat, many of them,

most of them, as their salvation

from the horrors of war,

and it was gonna to take 'em home

to be with their family and friends again.

(gentle piano music)

- [Narrator] With the sun setting and loading of the Sultana

nearly complete, (bosun's whistle tweets)

the Pauline Carroll put on steam and left Vicksburg

with only 17 civilian passengers.

(ship's bell clangs)

The Lady Gay, docked next to the Sultana,

departed carrying no one.

One hour, later at nine p.m.,

the Sultana was finally underway

with over 2,500 souls aboard,

including a seven-foot alligator

housed in a wooden crate.

Sergeant Alexander Brown, 2nd Cavalry Ohio,

struck up a conversation with the Sultana's first clerk,

William Gambrel.

- [Alexander] We had quite a chat,

and he seemed to take quite an interest

in my prison experiences.

I broke in on his questioning to find out

how many they were on the boat.

He replied, "2,400 soldiers, 100 citizens,

"and a crew of about 80.

"In all, over 2500."

If we arrived safe at Cairo,

it would be the greatest trip ever made

on western waters, as there were more people on board

than were ever carried on one boat on the Mississippi River.

It is well, my friends, that we cannot see into the future.

- [Narrator] "The main thing that occupied every mind,"

wrote Chester Berry, "was home, the dearest spot on Earth."

From his stateroom, Captain Will Friesner

of Ohio's 58th Company K, took in the view.

(steam hissing)

- [Will] We went merrily up the river,

past homes with wide verandas, dark with shade,

groups of deserted Negro cabins near,

past the ugly miles of swampy bayous,

miles of cottonwood brakes that could only raise

their leafy tops above the water,

hamlets; rich, cotton land filled with the litter

of former crops, and tumbled fences

spun past us like a flood crest.

We seemed sailing along the edge of the world.

(whistle blasts)

- I can't imagine what it must have been like

when they had nothing more than river water to drink,

when there was no facilities that they could use.

Food was difficult to find,

but that didn't matter to them because they were going home.

- [Narrator] While the prisoners grappled

with life on the overcrowded boat,

the Sultana confronted its own challenges.

- Now, it's struggling against a flood current

because the snows and such up in the North

had started to melt.

They go into the rivers.

The rivers all flow into the Mississippi,

and the Mississippi really is raging, a flood.

At points, the river was three miles wide,

because the levees had broken.

The Chief Engineer Nathan Wintringer,

and his assistant, a man named Samuel Clemens,

who was not the famous Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens

are working on the boilers.

They're trying to keep the Sultana going at its usual rate,

which to me is showing that they're

really putting higher pressure on the boilers.

When you're fighting against the flood current

and you're trying to maintain an average speed,

you've gotta be pushing a little harder.

It's just like a car trying to go up a hill.

- [Narrator] Earlier that morning,

the Sultana's itinerary included a brief stop

in the small city of Helena, Arkansas.

- At that point, an enterprising photographer,

a man named T. W. Banks,

sees the Sultana, and says,

"Oh, my God, this is a fantastic sight."

He goes to set up his camera

and the soldiers saw this onboard,

and of course, they all wanna be in the photograph,

so they crowd to one side of the boat.

The boat starts to tip.

Captain Mason of the Sultana had enough sense to say,

"Be careful, we're gonna flip us over

"or you're gonna cause an explosion."

And Fidler went throughout the men telling them,

"Keep in, keep in spot, don't move around."

- [Erastus] Put yourself in our place

and you may begin to realize what a happy lot we were.

Those of us from Cahaba were used to being overcrowded,

men who had suffered from hunger, disease,

and exposure of all kinds, all these things were forgotten.

Each of us had sought some place of repose,

whiled away the time gazing at the shifting scenes

along the shore, playing little tricks on each other,

singing little songs, laughing and talking

about the happy times we expected when we reached our homes,

the warm and welcoming caresses of fathers, mothers,

brothers, sisters, wives, sweethearts and friends.

Few of us dreamed of danger.

- [Narrator] As the Sultana approached Memphis,

a group of 200 Union Cavalry men

stationed on the bluffs above the city gave a loud cheer,

and the men on the boat cheered back.

(men cheering)

- When the Sultana reaches Memphis, Tennessee,

it will unload 400,000 pounds of sugar

from the hold.

Unfortunately Captain Mason,

the chief mate, a man named Rowberry,

and Nathan Wintringer, the chief engineer,

should've known that you need to replace that ballast.

You need to switch your load a little bit.

The Sultana is top-heavy with all these soldiers on board.

It was top-heavy before.

- When they landed at Memphis, my great-great-grandfather

got off, along without about 200 other men,

and according to oral history from the family,

I don't have documentation,

he didn't get back on the Sultana,

but he stayed in town that night at a bar,

where he was drinking.

So, he missed the boat.

- [Narrator] The Sultana was docked in Memphis

for only a few hours while its cargo was unloaded.

Before leaving, the Sultana took on a handful

of additional passengers,

including a newly-elected United States senator

from Arkansas, and Private Epenetus McIntosh

who had been assigned to the Henry Ames

in Vicksburg two days before but was left behind

during its brief stop in Memphis.

A survivor of Andersonville, McIntosh weighed

less than 100 pounds, but he later noted,

"could set a rebel back as quickly

"as I could when in possession of all my powers."

He'd soon need everything he had.

- About 10 o'clock at night,

the Sultana will go about a mile upriver

to some coal barges, where they will load up

on 1,000 bushels of coal.

- [Narrator] There was one last passenger

yet to come aboard: Private George Downing,

who had written home from Camp Fisk

and just received money from his family in Indiana

had lost track of time and been left behind.

- He had paid a couple of dollars

for somebody to row him down.

When he gets onboard, he says,

"It's a good thing I had sent for that money

"from my family, otherwise I would've been left behind."

- [Narrator] It would cost him his life.

Shortly after midnight, the Sultana eased away

from the coal barge and started upriver.

An hour later, Captain Mason turned command

over to his chief mate and went to bed.

Meanwhile, passengers settled into an uneasy sleep.

- It's about two o'clock in the morning.

The pilot in charge, George Cayton, at the pilot wheel,

with this guy, William Rowberry, behind him,

the chief mate.

- [Narrator] Stephen Gaston, a veteran at age 15,

having enlisted at 13, was on the top deck

with his friend, William Block.

They were gorging on the sugar they'd scraped up

from a split barrel at the dock in Memphis.

- [Stephen] We filled everything we could find,

intending to eat the sugar with our hardtack

while going up the river.

We'd stored it in front of the pilothouse at our heads,

for we had made this place our bunk

and turned in for the night.

Our evening dreams were sweet, of home and loved ones.

(soft snoring)

- [Narrator] Erastus Winters slept alongside his comrades

in the 50th Ohio.

- [Erastus] We bunk together close to a spot

just forward of the smokestacks on the cabin deck.

At that drowsy time of early morning,

the majority of us were sleeping peacefully,

dreaming of home and the joys awaiting us there.

- [Narrator] Major Will Fidler said goodnight

to Captain Friesner under his command.

- [Will] He assured me that he and another major

were going to remain up and would attend to anything

that might come up.

We shook hands, and never met again.

- [Narrator] Private Phillip Horn of Ohio

was already deep in his slumber, somehow,

at the base of a flight of stairs.

- [Phillip] After I fell asleep, I knew but little,

and then,

I seem to live 1,000 years in a minute.

- At two o'clock in the morning, on April 27th, 1865,

(high-pitched whistling)

(explosive booming)

(flames crackling)

Out of the four boilers on board the Sultana,

three of 'em will explode.

- [Narrator] For the passengers,

all is chaos and confusion.

- [Joseph] Hurled into the river,

covered with ashes, cinders of timber,

I thought the rebels had fired us.

- [Simeon] All those around me were skulls.

- [George] Steam, brickbats, chunks of coal,

came thick and fast.

I gasped for breath.

- The blast comes not from the weakened spot

where the patch was, which was down below,

in the middle left-hand boiler, but from the back.

Which boiler it was, nobody knows for sure

'cause they disintegrate with the explosion,

but the blast comes upward from the back of the boilers

at about a 45-degree angle.

- [William] A piece of timber ran

through my partner on deck, killing him instantly.

- [Phillip] Lost, whirled into the air.

- It tears through the bottom of the cabin deck

where the staterooms are,

rips up through the hurricane deck,

rips up through the texas deck,

does not tear off the first part of it

'cause it's going at about a 45-degree angle.

- [Dan] I was blown to the outer edge of the crater.

Both my legs were broken at the ankle.

All near the bow went up and down into the chasm.

- Nathan Wintringer, who was off duty,

is in the second stateroom.

He survives.

The blast hits the pilothouse,

tears the pilothouse completely off.

Chief mate Rowberry, who was sitting on a bench

inside that pilothouse is blown outward

and lands in the water.

Pilot George Cayton, instead of going outward,

goes straight up because he is at the edge

of this 45-degree blast.

He's blown up with the pilothouse,

comes down with the wreckage, and lands in the hole

where the boilers were.

- The entire center the boat was destroyed,

almost like a volcano,

and around the boilers, a lot of the sick man

had been placed because it was warm,

and a lot of those men were killed instantly.

The upper decks collapsed like a house of cards,

trapping hundreds of men in the wreckage.

- Clouds of steam were rolled back

into the stern cargo area

and down the cavernous salon.

In fact, the officers had been sleeping on their bunk beds

in these salons.

One of them, William McCown, will stand up,

and as he sees this coming, his face is scalded,

his arm is scalded.

He takes a breath of air

and he sucks in this superheated air,

and ends up burning his lips and the mucus membrane

off of his tongue.

- Within 20 minutes, that entire superstructure was on fire,

and there's story after story of men

that could hear their friends screaming

as the flames were drawing closer,

and there wasn't anything they could do,

and they were relieved when the screaming stopped.

- [William] I saw 100 sink through the roof

into the flames.

- [William] Agonizing shrieks, the stench of burning flesh.

- [Will] A mass of wreckage, kindling,

the boilers lay scattered in a bed of fire.

- [Arthur] Such hissing of steam, the crash of decks,

red-tongued flames bursting up through the mass of humanity.

- William McCown and Captain William Fidler

will go down to the lower decks,

looking for the fire buckets.

They figure they can put the fire out

before the fire gets out of control,

they can just float on the Sultana.

They can't find them because the soldiers

had used those fire buckets for fetching water

out of the Mississippi River.

They're not in the racks where they should be.

The soldiers, in that case, added to their own demise.

- [Joseph] I looked up to the ceiling

and saw the fire jumping from one cross-piece

to another in a way that made me think

of a lizard running along a fence.

- [Erastus] All was confusion.

Pandemonium reigned supreme.

- [Manley] I heard the officers give orders,

but soon saw that it was every man for himself.

- [William] I told my mates the boat was on fire.

Kenny got up, stepped backwards, and fell into the river.

Meade did likewise.

I've never seen them since.

- And the men that survived the initial explosion,

they had two choices: they could stay on the boat,

face the flames or they could try to jump into the river.

- The smokestacks are standing there,

and without any support, they start to tilt a little bit.

There's a bracing in between,

so as they start to tilt, one goes forward, one goes back.

The bracing eventually gives way.

The one smokestack falls backwards into the hole

where the explosion has occurred,

where the pilothouse used to be.

- [Narrator] Young Stephen Gaston and his friend,

William Block, saw the smokestack fall.

- [Stephen] I felt for Block and called his name,

but no answer came.

- The forward-falling smokestack falls directly

onto the center of the hurricane deck.

There was a bell in the center,

at the very front of the hurricane deck.

It hits this bell, splits in half, crushes that deck,

down onto the second deck, the cabin deck.

- [John] I was on the upper deck,

close to the bell.

A smokestack fell across it, split, and fell over,

killing Sergeant Smith, who laid by me.

- [P.S.] Hundreds of souls ushered into eternity.

- [Walter] Women and little children in night clothes,

confusion and horror, wringing their hands,

tossing their arms wildly in the air.

- Anybody behind the Flames is now worried

about catching fire, and they panicked.

So, you've got people from three different decks

jumping on top of each other, colliding, hitting,

grabbing once they get into the water.

- [Narrator] Harvey Annis, his wife, Ann,

and their four-year-old daughter, Belle,

watched the disaster unfold before them.

- Harvey Annis, the husband, looks outside of the stateroom,

sees the disaster, comes back into the stateroom,

ties a belt around himself, and a life belt

around his wife, Ann.

Put his child, Belle, on his back,

told her to hang on.

- And he went to the stern and tied a rope,

and went down carrying the little girl,

and told Ann to follow.

Ann went down, and she was,

someone else jumped on top of her,

and she was knocked into the hole.

- Her life belt was knocked askew,

so she took some time to straighten it out.

In the meantime, Harvey Annis and Belle,

with Belle hanging onto his back,

climbed down, got into the water.

And he was peddling his way through the water

when other soldiers grabbed him

and little four-year-old Belle

and pulled them under.

And Ann Annis, standing on the lowest deck

of the Sultana, and fixing her life belt,

witnessed the death of her husband and four-year-old child.

- There's story after story of men jumping into the river,

and of course, it was dark,

and there was just a mass of drowning people.

The wise men actually waited until the people

that had initially jumped off the boat

had drowned or floated on past the wreckage,

then they broke things off the boat,

and floated towards Memphis, downstream.

- [Narrator] The explosion and fire

loosened the two paddle-wheel housings.

- One of them, I believe the left-hand side,

falls away first, and it's laying in the water.

It doesn't burn completely away from the hull,

and that's a problem because now,

the flood current hits that

and it gives the Sultana the appearance

of a bizarre outrigger canoe,

where the current is hitting that,

and now it's starting to spin the Sultana.

And with the flames being blown towards the stern,

the good thing was, is if you survive the initial rush

off of the bow, if you weren't pushed over or something,

you've realized, "Hey, wait, the flames

"aren't coming this way.

"We could just stand here and everything will be safe,"

but now, as the Sultana starts to turn,

the Flames are still being blown,

we'll say, towards the south,

but with the Sultana turning and facing the south,

now that bow is downriver, and the flames

are blowing towards you.

- [Nathan] The boat was swinging around,

which would bring the heat from the fire near me.

I got a plank, eight feet long, eight inches wide,

held it a short time, thinking what was best to do.

Made up my mind I could swim better with my clothes off,

so off they came.

- [Adam] I was standing near the jackstaff

when the wind veered and set the flames

in a solid mass against us, sending us,

in a body, overboard.

I could not swim at all.

- Captain Mason, who survives the explosion,

will be seen on the top deck throwing some debris over,

seen on the second deck, or the cabin deck,

throwing some stuff over,

and actually on the lowest deck, throwing stuff over.

Some of the men will say, "Come on, it's time to get off,"

and he's like, "No, no, no, I still have to help out.

"I still have to help out."

Whether he eventually jumped off or not, nobody knows,

'cause he will die in the disaster

and his body will never be found.

- [Joseph] I remained on the boat

until the fire burned me off.

Falling in, I sank, never expecting to rise again,

but by some mean, I came to the surface again.

I saw the Captain tearing off window shutters

and throwing them into the river for the boys.

I commenced swimming, dog fashion.

- About 400 people that had crowded onto the bow

thought it was safe.

- [Narrator] Soon, the right-hand paddle wheel burned away

causing a second panic.

- This time, however, there are no longer any debris,

any pieces, no gangplank, nothing to grab onto,

and now it becomes a life-or-death struggle

for these guys down below. (people shouting)

These are the guys that probably couldn't swim,

didn't want to get off the boat,

didn't have anything to grab onto,

and now, they have to get off.

- [Michael] I noticed Charlie Ogden of my company

who appeared dazed.

I told him he must go or he'd burn,

but he appeared to take no notice of what I said.

- [Soldier] No!

- [Michael] I felt the deck tottering,

ran, then sprang into the river,

and as I came to the surface,

the deck had fallen in and I have no doubt

Charlie perished in the flames.

- [Narrator] The massive inferno finally forced

the remaining survivors into the frigid waters.

- [William] It seemed to me as if the boat

were lying on its side.

- [Joseph] It looked like a huge bonfire

in the middle of the river.

The man who were afraid to take to the water

could be seen clinging to the sides of the boat

till they were singed off like flies.

Shrieks and cries for mercy--

- Over here! - Were all the could be heard.

- Please! - My great-great-grandfather

jumped in the river and he was never seen again,

and my great-great-uncle made his way

to the front of the boat,

and they said there was a rope hanging down,

and he lowered himself down into the water.

There were a lot of people there, you know,

fighting for survival and clamoring with each other,

trying to stay afloat.

- [Manley] I went to the edge of the boat,

removed my shoes, pull my cap down,

and plunged into the water.

- Most of the debris will burn away,

and the flames do subside a little bit.

Some of these guys will climb back onto the bow,

and even pull some other people out of trees and such

until there's about 25 guys back onboard the bow.

- [Narrator] The remaining survivors

floated downriver clinging to any debris they could find.

- One soldier from 3rd Tennessee Cavalry

had gotten him off the boat

and was holding onto the tail of a swimming horse.

(horse whinnying) The swimming horse kept going

back towards the flaming wreckage,

and a dead mule floated by,

and this soldier got the dead mule,

and floated to Memphis.

And for the rest of his life,

he said that was the best horse trade he'd ever made.

- Private William Lugenbeal, Ohio 135th Infantry,

discovered the crate housing the Sultana's alligator

in a closet.

Running the alligator through with his bayonet,

Lugenbeal shoved the creature overboard,

grabbed the crate, and jumped into the flooded river.

- [William] I drew myself in it with my feet

out behind so that I could kick,

the edges of the box coming under each arm

as it was just wide enough for my breast,

and my arms coming over each edge.

So, you see, I was about as large as the alligator,

- [Jacob] I made a leap, diving head-first,

getting away without anyone catching hold of me.

Coming to the surface and getting my hair out of my face,

I looked back and could see quite a number

leaping from the boat.

As I drifted out of sight,

I could still see by the light of the boat,

persons clinging to her.

- [Nathan] It is as fresh in my memory today

as it was years ago, and I suppose

to you survivors, it is also.

- [William] I could hear the cries of those burned

and scalded, screaming all along the river--

- I can't swim! - No!

- [William] Away in the distance, the burning boat.

- [J. Walter] We parted company with the wreck

and drifted into the darkness, alone.

- [Joseph] Icy cold, in every direction,

men shivering, calling for help,

the water carrying us swiftly downstream.

- [Narrator] Having survived the explosion,

the scalding steam, and intense fire,

the hundreds of sick and injured soldiers

now fought a new enemy: hypothermia.

- This is flood waters, winter runoff from the North

that has now flooded in Mississippi.

It's icy cold.

A lot of the soldiers that jumped into the water

did not realize how cold it was.

It saps what little strength they have.

Other soldiers are starting to fall asleep.

That's hypothermia setting in.

They don't realize it,

but they're starting to die from hypothermia.

- [George] The river, outer banks, the levees overflowed.

- [William] The dark prevented us

from seeing each other.

We couldn't tell which way to go.

- [William] And some were swimming,

others floating on driftwood,

and all conceivable kinds of raft,

anything that would float.

Praying, singing, laughing, swearing.

- [Narrator] Over an hour after the explosion,

help was finally on the way.

- There is a rescue boat that does come along,

the Bostonia II, to on its maiden voyage

on the Mississippi River.

They see a flame ahead of 'em.

As they get closer and closer,

they realize, oh, it looks like it's moving.

Maybe it's a steamboat.

As they got closer, they saw it

was not only a steamboat on fire,

but hundreds of heads and men in the water,

and leaping overboard.

Captain Watson will give the order,

"Throw anything overboard that can float."

When they eventually get about 250 people rescued,

Captain Watson decides,

"I'm gonna break off my rescue attempts.

"There's more people than I could ever rescue,

"and I'm gonna race downriver to Memphis

"and let other steamboats know."

- [Narrator] Captain Watson was unaware

that other rescue boats had already been alerted

to the disaster.

- One man, Wesley Lee from 102nd Ohio Infantry

had already floated seven miles downriver,

and as he floated past the darkened Memphis waterfront,

he started shouting and screaming for help,

and some guys on a steamboat hear him,

and will fish him out of the water and say,

"Gee, did you get caught in a flood?

"What happened?"

He says, "No, I was on the Sultana.

"The Sultana has exploded, and is burning,

and everybody's dying."

So, they start ringing their bells on their steamboats,

and up and down the river, suddenly bells are going off,

and the steamers are trying to build up their steam

in their boilers to get out into the river

to go up to rescue the Sultana victims.

In the meantime, they're sending rowboats,

and yawls, and stuff out into the water

to try to pick up these people that are now starting

to float past the Memphis waterfront.

- [Narrator] Aboard the Union steamer, Tyler,

deck officer William Michael was among those

who raced to rescue the remaining survivors

- [William] Of the 65 persons saved by my cutter,

not one was free from severe bruises or scalds.

Most of them were nearly nude.

One poor boy clutched the limb of a tree so tightly

that we could not force him to let go of his maniacal grip.

We took him and the limb aboard together.

The flesh sloughed off another

when we pulled him over the gunnel of the boat.

A young lad, reduced to a skeleton

by his confinement in prison,

had his sight destroyed by steam.

He thanked God that he was saved,

and within moments,

breathed his last in the arms of one of my sailors.

His last words were, "Tell Mother."

How often I have wished some angel

would tell me where to find that bereft mother

that I might break to her the unfinished sentence.

(somber instrumental music)

- [Narrator] In the closing days of the war,

Union forces had gone up and down the river

sinking boats, skiffs, and canoes

belonging to Confederate landholders

in an effort to prevent retaliatory raids.

A handful of families had hidden theirs,

and came out to assist in the rescues,

including Frank Barton's great-great-grandfather.

- You got to remember the war was over.

There's people out there in the river

and at that point in time,

they were probably just people to him.

He might have known that they were former Union soldiers,

but they still had uniforms

'cause they'd just issue fresh uniforms.

He had one of the few boats available

It's just speculation.

I just think they were people in need of help.

- This is where some rescuers from Fogelman's Landing,

a man named John Fogleman and his son

will tie together some rails to form a raft.

- And managed to go back and forth to the remains

of the burning hull and pick some people up from the boat,

transport them over to treetops.

The river, of course, was out of its banks,

but hadn't covered all the trees,

and the quick thing to do was

to get as many people off.

And rather than take them all the way back to the dry land,

deposit 'em in the treetops.

- After about five or six trips,

he'll get the last guy off and be, maybe, 30 feet away

when the Sultana will give a shudder and finally sink.

The hull burns through, and it sinks

below the waters of the Mississippi.

The only thing that stays above water

is the jackstaff, sticking up with, presumably,

the American Flag still onboard.

(gentle piano music)

- [Narrator] By sunrise, the people of Memphis

had awakened to a tragedy on a scale

it had never witnessed before.

Members of the U.S. Sanitary Commission

were first on the scene with clothes and blankets.

Medics and ambulances were ordered to the wharf

and immediately began pulling survivors from the water.

- There are bodies just lined up

that had been pulled from the water.

Caskets, wooden caskets, will be brought down

to the waterfront, and the people of Memphis

start putting the bodies in there.

Eventually, Memphis runs out of caskets.

They just don't have enough, there's too many bodies.

The bodies are then brought up onto those levy

and they're covered with blankets.

- [Narrator] With daylight to help them, now,

the rescue flotilla continued to pick up the living

still strewn along the river.

Once ashore, the injured survivors

would fill almost every available bed

in Memphis' hospitals:

Gayoso,

Adams,

Washington,

Overton.

- [Lewis] I was supplied with a blanket,

which I kept wrapped around me,

and I was given hot stimulants.

We were landed at Memphis and taken

to Gayoso Hospital in carriages sent

to the war for that purpose.

- [Narrator] Of the 700 or so who were rescued,

it's estimated a third died within days,

mostly from burns.

- Of the 560 or -70 people that survived,

about 35 of those are crewmen or passengers

that were onboard the Sultana.

So, it's about 550 ex-prisoners-of-war

that still have to get home.

Now, they're stranded in Memphis.

- [Narrator] The lucky few who escaped unharmed

were fed and housed at the Soldier's Home.

Others were taken in by the good people of Memphis.

- Now soldiers are looking for relatives.

They're looking for friends.

They're looking for comrades.

So, it must have really been a horrendous scene

of these guys, broken-hearted,

some of them finding their relatives,

others never able to find a relative or a friend

that they've known for years

and really got camaraderie in camp, in battle,

in prison, and onboard the Sultana.

To suddenly loose them like that

is just amazing, devastating.

- [Narrator] Recovery for some would take weeks.

Just two days after the disaster,

those who could travel were boarded onto other steamboats

and resumed the journey North.

- As they're getting on this second steamboat,

they're understandably jittery.

They've just been through one

of the most horrendous experiences of their life:

the largest maritime disaster in American history,

even to this day.

And these guys are understandably worried.

- [Narrator] The long journey ahead included a stop

in Cairo, Illinois, then a train ride

to Camp Chase, Ohio for the surviving soldiers

to be mustered out and find their way home.

But first, they would have to pass the spot

where the Sultana had sunk,

its jackstaff still rising above the surface

as a final marker. (whistle hooting)

Survivor, Will McFarland,

a private in the 42nd Infantry from Indiana was uneasy

at the prospect, like a burnt child dreading the fire.

He spent the entire trip in a lifeboat,

never leaving his quarters, as he called it,

until the Saint Patrick safely arrived

in Evansville, Indiana.

"Every time the boat would escape steam

"or blow the whistle," he wrote,

"I prepared to jump."

Others vowed never to board a steamboat again.

- Some of the boy from the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry

that came from the Knoxville area,

they figure, "We're already in Tennessee.

"We're up here in Memphis.

"We can walk home.

"Yes, it's hundreds of miles, but we've marched

"this far in the Army,

"and if we can make it, probably, to Nashville,

"we can catch the train from Nashville to Knoxville."

And so they start walking home.

- [Narrator] Still, home, God's country, awaited them.

Back in Memphis, the true scale of the disaster

was becoming clear.

- For days after the Sultana,

bodies were floating downriver.

The people of Memphis will send some steamboats

up to the site of the wreck

and they will actually fire a couple cannons

over the top of the Sultana

to try to shake the bodies that are lodged

within the wreckage, up.

When they do come up, they do fish 'em out of the water,

and they will try to bury 'em.

Some of 'em are buried after the river

goes down a little bit.

They're burned on Hen Island,

which is where the Sultana actually hit and sank.

- [Narrator] As word of the disaster spread,

the enormity of what had happened

curiously failed to take hold in the national consciousness.

- The nation had just incurred four horrible years

of Civil War.

Over 600,000 lives had been lost,

and people were accustomed to reading about death.

And so, the stories in the newspapers at the time,

very few newspapers carried front-page stories.

The New York Times carried a very small article

on, like, the fifth page.

- President Lincoln's death train

was making its way across the country

and everyone wanted to know about the train.

It was front page news.

Secondly, also on April 26th,

John Wilkes Booth was cornered in a barn

by group of Army officers as the barn was burning.

John Wilkes Booth's death was also very, very newsworthy.

- Senator John Covode, from out in the East,

will go down to Memphis to find out what has happened.

He reports back that the victims onboard

were from the states of Ohio, Indiana,

Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee,

and a sprinkling from West Virginia.

In other words, at the time of Civil War,

the Western states.

At this point, he writes back to the newspapers and said,

"The only people onboard were from the Western states.

"Really, we got no more reason to cover this."

- History remembers the famous,

and so often, history doesn't record those stories

of the common people.

And these man were basically enlisted man,

Union soldiers, very few officers were on the boat.

These men had really not made a mark in life.

- But there was also another reason,

a more economic reason why the Sultana's story

may never have been told as it should have,

and that is the relationship

between the great steamboat corporations

and the newspapers up and down the Mississippi River.

A great amount of money, vast amounts of money

were spent with these newspapers

by the steamboat corporations

and they themselves did not want this story out

because it would frighten people from buying tickets

and traveling aboard steamboats.

- [Narrator] The investigation into the disaster

began that very morning in Memphis.

The initial focus: the loading of the boat.

- General Washburn of the United States government

is sent down to look into what happened

with the Sultana.

He goes down to Memphis where there's already

an investigation by a man named Hoffman.

Hoffman has interviewed some people.

When he finds out that Washburn is there,

he will turn his papers over to the Washburn Commission.

Down in Vicksburg, General Dana has also

started looking into what's going on.

When he hears that there are two investigations,

he then stops his investigation

and turns over all the information

to Washburn and Hoffman.

- [Narrator] Reuben Hatch is subpoenaed,

but having resigned his post and slipped into Arkansas,

he fails to appear.

- He realizes what could happen,

and he quickly resigns from the Army.

He becomes a civilian again.

And in those days, a military court

had no jurisdiction over a civilian at all.

George Williams is a West Point graduate.

He's part of an elite group among the other officers,

the generals, and such,

and they just don't go after him

even though he was really responsible

for making sure that the Sultana

is the only boat that gets people.

He was not involved in the bribery at all,

but he was the guy that said,

"They're all going on the Sultana, and that's that."

Morgan Smith, he's in charge of Hatch.

He's in charge of the quartermaster.

He does not come down to the boat at all

and see what is happening,

even though William Kerns, the quartermaster

in charge of transportation,

and should've been the person that picked the Sultana,

complained to both Morgan Smith

and General Dana, and neither of them get out

of their chairs and come down to the wharf

to see what's happening.

So in that regard, yes, Morgan L. Smith

should be held accountable for that.

- The fall guy was Captain Speed, Frederick Speed

who volunteered to help out

and was in Camp Fisk loading up the troops

to send them to the Sultana.

And he had no idea what the status of the Sultana was

till came on the last train and saw

how heavily overloaded it was,

and then he could've stepped in, but he didn't.

But he was pretty much the fall guy.

There was a couple of charges against him,

dereliction of duty, that kind of thing.

- In January of 1866,

he is put on trial for negligence,

for grossly overloading the Sultana.

He, at first, says, "I have no problem.

"I think I'm gonna beat this.

"I wasn't the guy that selected the Sultana.

"I didn't physically put the people onboard the Sultana,

"and in fact, at one point,

"I asked Captain Williams,

"'Should these people be moved to a second boat?'"

So, he thinks he's gonna get off scot-free.

- There was a six months trial,

and he was found guilty on one

of those really minor charges,

but then, that was later overturned

by The Advocate General for the Army

because it was pretty plain that he was a scapegoat.

He was just one cog in the wheel

that created this disaster.

- And when the military finished all their investigation,

they concluded that while the Sultana

may have been overcrowded, it was not overloaded.

- Once he was exonerated,

actually there's nobody that was responsible for this,

the worst maritime disaster in American history.

- [Narrator] Frederick Speed remained in Vicksburg

where he practiced law.

In 1871, he married Esther Adele Hillyer

with whom he had five children.

He remained active in local politics

until his death in 1911.

Reuben Hatch died on July 18th, 1871

in Griggsville, Illinois, having never answered

for his part in the Sultana tragedy.

In response to the disaster,

the Hartford Steam Boiler Company was formed

to vastly improve and regulate the manufacture

of boilers used in the steamboat industry.

- Although there were thousands of boilers

in operation in the United States,

there was estimated an explosion

one every four days.

Industry itself viewed it as an act of God,

and businessmen viewed it as just a course

of doing business, and so it was a very tumultuous period.

- The Sultana disaster was the seminal event

that led to the formation of Hartford Steam Boiler.

The problem of catastrophic boiler explosions

had existed for some time,

but this was the thing that really propelled the founders

of our company to create Hartford Steam Boiler

just about a year after the Sultana disaster.

- Hartford Steam Boiler developed the Hartford standards,

the first technical standards

adopted by the U.S. boilers manufacturers in 1869,

They were mathematical calculations

that defined materials used, spacing between rivets,

seams, welding seams, et cetera,

that ultimately became the core standard

for boiler manufacturing.

- It's important because Hartford Steam Boiler

one of the first organizations in the United States

formed for the purpose of preventing industrial accidents

and things like catastrophic boiler explosions.

And while we look back at the Sultana

and the catastrophic loss of life,

the fact is that today's technology also presents risks,

and it's important that we remain vigilant,

aware of those risks and focus on how to manage them.

- After the disaster, life had to go on

for these people that were onboard,

the rescuers, for just the Mississippi in itself.

The Civil War was a much greater disaster than the Sultana

and the whole nation had to heal the wounds,

and forget about this, and try to come back together again.

So, with the Sultana disaster,

these men are in the same position.

These people, I should say, 'cause there was men, women,

and, well, no children lived,

but the men and women that survive the disaster,

their life has to go on.

- [Narrator] For the survivors,

the questions would remain unanswered

and fade as they returned home.

In the next election, their leader,

Ulysses S. Grant would become the 18th President

of the United States.

For eight years,

with the help of a reconstituted Congress,

he would oversee the reconstruction of the South.

Returned to their families,

the surviving passengers of the Sultana

in the towns and fields of Ohio, Indiana,

Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan

would become carpenters, grocers,

carriage men and cobblers, masons and miners,

blacksmiths, postmen, pastors,

physicians, bankers, clerks, and tailors.

Most of them were farmers.

- Romulus Tolbert was mustered out on 19th,

I believe, at Camp Chase.

He was from Saluda, Indiana.

His family farmed there,

and he went home in 1875 or so

and he bought a farm in Chelsea,

which is right in that same area,

and that's where he was the rest of his life.

- [Narrator] Some were unable to work,

living on modest pensions.

- Some of these veterans were damaged physically

and emotionally, and they just weren't able

to hold a job, so they did the best they could.

And there were several of them who had little cards

written up, said, so-and-so, "Survivor of the Sultana,"

and then would go out on street corners like beggars,

and tell their stories and hope that people

would put change in their box.

- Epenetus McIntosh, of Illinois unit,

one of the few Illinois guys

that accidentally got on board the Sultana,

he will be so emaciated and so physically beaten

from his time in the prison, and onboard the Sultana,

and in the water that he can no longer do any manual labor.

And luckily, he knew how to write songs,

and how to play pianos, and a banjo

and stuff like that.

And he puts together a little songbook,

and had some pictures of himself taken,

and he travels around the nation

selling his postcards for 10 cents

or his songbook for 25 cents,

and that's how he survived.

- Glenna Jenkins Green recalled the memories

which haunted her father,

3rd Tennessee Cavalry member, Samuel Jenkins.

- She told me a story that when she was a little kid,

Samuel Jenkins was an old man.

He was sitting in front of the fire,

and he was real quiet.

And Miss Green asked her father what was wrong,

and he said, "I can still hear the screams

"and there wasn't anything I could do."

- One of the problems is these guys would like a pension,

but a government pension says you have

to have two eyewitnesses or a commanding officer

to your wound.

Well, if you're wounded in battle,

and somebody grabs you and pulls you back to a hospital,

there's probably several people that saw you get shot,

and there's definitely a commanding office

that knows that you've been wounded.

But on a Sultana at two o'clock in the morning

when this boat explodes,

who is there is as an eyewitness?

- Veterans weren't treated much better then

than some of them are now,

but it was difficult for the men, to get pensions.

- Ann tried to get her pension.

She tried for years.

Eventually, she was awarded $15 a month,

and she live to be 82,

but she talked to her grandchildren.

And I guess she felt the need, certainly,

to do it until, as a healing process,

- I believe my great-great-grandmother finally

got a $13 a month pension,

and she had three small girls, three small children,

and it looked like she moved around from place

to place in Cincinnati with various relatives and friends.

And then finally in 1912, very auspicious year

because it was the year of the sinking of the Titanic,

she did die.

- [Narrator] Frustrated in his attempts

to obtain a pension for his Sultana injuries,

Chester Berry, now a gospel minister,

wrote to as many survivors as he could,

asking them to send their memories of the disaster,

some 25 years later.

They were published in 1892.

"The average American is astonished

"at nothing he sees or hears," Berry wrote

in his introduction.

"He looks for large things.

"The ordinary is too tame."

"The idea that the most appalling marine disaster

"in the history of the world

"should pass by unnoticed is strange,

"but still, such is the fact.

"The majority of American people today

"do not know that there was ever such a vessel."

Many of those who responded were able

to recall the disaster in vivid detail.

A few chose the same exact words,

noting that they were rescued more dead than alive.

Others were more circumspect.

- [Woman] I remember jumping into the water,

but knew nothing more until sunrise

when I was picked up on the Arkansas side.

- [Man] About all I can say is that I got very wet

and quite cold.

- [Man] I have no doubt there will be plenty

of far greater interest than mine.

I will state, however, that my feet were severely scalded

and I did not walk for five months after.

- [Narrator] Another simply said,

"I do not think it worth my while

"to give my Sultana experience."

- I think what was even almost worse than dying

on the Sultana would be you're a soldier,

and you go through all the privations of battle.

You see all the things, all the damage of people around you.

Maybe you're wounded, too, and then you're captured,

and then you, say, go to Cahaba or Andersonville

and you see all that.

I mean, who could survive that?

And then you get on the Sultana, and you survive that,

and then you go home and everyone says,

"Good, you're home.

"Now you can live a normal life."

And I think they could never live a normal life.

- Although the nation will eventually forget

about the Sultana, the soldiers themselves never did.

- These men had endured so much together,

and those that had survived Andersonville and Cahaba,

they had survived the Sultana disaster,

when they got home they formed survivors' associations.

One was in Tennessee, in the Knoxville area

where the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry was from,

and another one in Ohio near Sandusky, Ohio.

And they met every year on the anniversary date,

or close to the anniversary date.

- They will get together and have this common thread.

They all went through this disaster.

They're the only ones that know what it was like

to be there that night.

I'm sure that in order to survive,

they pushed, they shoved, they fought.

They might've grabbed onto somebody

and that person drowned,

and you were able to grab onto a stick or something.

That's something that you have in common

'cause you know the other guys did the same thing.

They pushed and they shoved.

They fought their way to survive.

It's something you may not be proud of,

may not even talk about, but you know deep down

in your heart, everybody in this room

went through the same thing that I did,

and that brought a closeness to these guys

that would be with them until basically,

the very last guy ends up dying.

- [Narrator] In 1885, they gathered for the first time

in Fostoria, Ohio to mark the 20th anniversary

of the disaster.

- Samuel H. Raudabaugh was elected the first president

of the association, and named an honorary colonel,

'cause he was a private throughout the war.

And after that, about 4 years later,

there was another group of survivors

down in Knoxville, Tennessee that formed a second group.

So, they made a Northern camp

and a Southern camp.

- [Narrator] For many of the survivors,

the emotional wounds remained open.

- My great-great-grandfather had a friend

from the 183rd Ohio, his regiment: Michael Conrad.

And Michael Conrad and he were standing at the railing

after the explosion, and agreed they would both jump

in the water and see each other back home.

Michael Conrad did make it back home,

but Adam did not.

Michael was so torn up about this

that he only lived, I think, five years after that,

but for those five years,

on the anniversary of the disaster,

on April 27th, every April 27th,

he'd come to my great-great-grandmother's door,

knock on the door.

She'd answer and he'd just stand there

and cry like a baby, which was sad.

There was a lot of angst, and a lot of,

a lot of people suffered.

Not just the ones who died, but the ones who

were left suffered terribly.

- [Narrator] In April 1930, the last attending member

of the Survivor's Association, Private Pleasant Keeble,

traveled to Rockford, Tennessee at the age of 84.

It would be the group's final meeting.

Keeble had been rescued with five others,

holding hands and clinging to two pieces of siding

that had burned away from the sultana.

They were pulled from the water by a black farmer

who had spotted and followed them,

running along the riverbank in the pre-dawn light.

- [Pleasant] He waded in, up to his neck.

He reached out with a long pole, something like a hook.

We took hold of it and he swung us to the shore.

He saved our lives.

- [Narrator] Keeble's brother, John,

also with the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry

had been aboard the Sultana,

sleeping under one of the smokestacks.

His body was never found.

(somber music) For the reunion in Rockford,

there would be only one.

As was the tradition, Keeble ate his dinner, sitting alone.

He then read aloud the membership roll to an empty room,

with only himself being present.

The next day, he returned to his home in Knoxville,

and died the following year.

(bell tolling)

The remaining handful of survivors soon followed.

The memories of the greatest Maritime disaster

in U.S. history would soon fade away.

- Once those Sultana survivors quit meeting,

the story was totally forgotten,

and it was not resurrected until Norman Shaw,

a lawyer in Knoxville, Tennessee,

learned the story of the Sultana

and discovered that the survivors used

to meet in Knoxville, Tennessee.

- So he decides to run a little ad and say,

"Anybody interested in the Sultana,

"we're gonna to meet at Mount Olive Cemetery,

"the Sultana Monument."

And he walked up there, expecting

two, three, four people,

and there was 50 people waiting for him.

- And he created an organization called

The Descendants of the Men of the Sultana,

and now that organization with its own website,

Sultana Remembered, is keeping this story alive.

- Our goal is to carry on the mission

of the soldiers themselves,

and that is to keep the story of the Sultana alive.

And we've picked up that mission,

and everywhere we go, people find out about Sultana

through our reunions, especially when we go

to other cities, such as Memphis and Franklin, Tennessee,

and Athens, Alabama.

I really hope this association continues on.

We're all getting older and our numbers are decreasing,

but we do have some younger members,

and I'm gonna place some emphasis on that.

I really hope that our reunions don't disappear

like the reunions of the original survivors.

Of course, they died off.

We're gonna die off, but we hope

that we'll don't have enough people coming in

that keep this, the reunion legacy going.

- I think we need to remember the Sultana

because these were real people.

These were somebody's father, somebody's brother,

somebody's son, my great-great-grandfather.

These were real people and they gave their lives

for our country in a tragic way,

and we need to remember and support them

because then they never die.

- The story of the Sultana is as compelling

as any of the battles fought in the Civil War.

The death toll, the destruction and tragedy,

equally as great as any battle,

and it's a story that needs to be told

because it has affected so many thousands of lives

not only at the time of the event,

but also down through history.

It's an event that is equally as great

as most of those events in the war itself.

It happens to be the greatest disaster

in American maritime history.

It needs to be told because

those voices of the 1,800 or so who died,

and the five to 600 who survive

still cry out through their descendants for recognition.

- In Memphis, we have the Memphis National Cemetery.

Beautiful 40-acre cemetery, opened in 1867.

And today, if you go out there,

you'll find 23 graves of men that died on the Sultana,

and the hundreds and hundreds of bodies

that were recovered, of soldiers, Union soldiers,

are buried at the Memphis National Cemetery

in graves that just say, "Unknown U.S. Soldier."

And to me, that's, kindly, a footnote

on why so few people know about the Sultana.

The nation really forgot about these men.

And to me, it's one of the greatest tragedies

in American history.

- [Narrator] When Major Will McTeer,

adjutant of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry

learned of the Sultana's fate

the morning after the disaster,

he wrote:

- [Will] In the bosom of the Mississippi,

they found their final resting place

No stone or monument marks that spot.

There is no tablet with their names,

not even a hillock to which friends

and survivors can go.

Flowers are strewn over the graves

in the cemeteries of our dead,

yet, there are no flowers for those

who went down on the Sultana.

But, let us remember them.

(whistle hooting)

(somber military-style music)

(gentle instrumental music)

(rhythmic percussive harmonies)