On April 27, 1865, the steamboat Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River while heading north, dangerously overloaded with some 2,200 passengers, most of them freed Union prisoners of war from the Andersonville and Cahaba camps. A weakened boiler, which had been patched instead of fixed, blew up about 7 miles north of Memphis and hurled men into the frigid river. Men from Marion were among those who tried to save passengers, but around 1,800 people died in history's worst maritime disaster, and no one was ever punished for the tragic loss of the Sultana.
