News of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, overshadowed the tragedy of the Sultana two weeks later. The actual number of casualties from the SS Sultana is unknown, but some estimates are as high as 1,800. The SS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, with a loss of 1,517 people, and the Sultana tragedy was the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. The steamboat Sultana exploded at 2 a.m. on the Mississippi River near Marion, Arkansas, on April 27, 1865. More than 2,000 recently released Federal prisoners of war and civilians were on board, though the authorized human capacity was 460. Approximately 1,500 people either burned to death or drowned. The Sultana was 260 feet long and 42 feet wide. When the Civil War ended, the Federal government paid $5 per soldier and $10 per officer for passage home on a steamer. Disease infestation and shortages of food and pure water had caused thousands of Federal soldiers to die in the overpopulated prison camps at Andersonville, Georgia, and Cahaba, Alabama. Fragile soldiers who had survived the horrors of battle faced a cruel destination when they climbed aboard the ill-fated Sultana. Arkansans rode aboard wooden rafts to pull survivors out of the river, townspeople carried the near-dead to in-house and riverbank care stations, and others who swam to the opposite shore were taken to the hospital or the Soldier’s Home in Memphis, Tennessee.
