What caused the Sultana to explode?
Water Treatment – These boilers had no water treatment and used water straight from the Mississippi River. The mud in the water settled on the plates and surfaces acting as an insulator between the water and the iron. This caused the iron to repeatedly overheat and burn.
How many men died on the Sultana?
1,800 people
The Shipwreck That Led Confederate Veterans To Risk All For Union Lives On April 27, 1865, a steamboat named the Sultana exploded and sank while transporting Union soldiers up the Mississippi. An estimated 1,800 people died, but few today have heard of this disaster.
Was the Sultana sabotaged?
The Sultana remains the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history. Conspiracy theories quickly spread. The most popular: A Confederate messenger, Robert Louden, sabotaged the Sultana with a coal torpedo. On April 27, 1865, what happened to the Sultana was shunted off to the back page.
Who survived the Sultana?
Her grandfather, William Carter Warner, joined the Union Army’s 9th Indiana Cavalry as a teenager, became a prisoner of war and survived the Sultana, managing to swim ashore after he was blown into the river.
How many creek died in a steamboat crash on the Mississippi River?
During the journey, the steamboat Monmouth was cut in two by another steamboat as it ascended the Mississippi, and approximately half of the 600 Creeks aboard died in the collision.
Was the Sultana ever found?
In 1982, a local archaeological expedition, led by Memphis attorney Jerry O. Potter, uncovered what was believed to be the wreckage of Sultana. Blackened wooden deck planks and timbers were found about 32 feet under a soybean field on the Arkansas side, about four miles from Memphis.
How many people died from steam boats?
From the 1816 explosion aboard the Washington at Marietta, Ohio, that killed 13 to the end of 1853, when the federal government established the Steamboat Inspection Service, a forerunner of the U.S. Coast Guard, an estimated 7,000 people died in steamboat explosions.
What happened to the Creeks?
Upon defeat, the Creeks ceded 23,000,000 acres of land (half of Alabama and part of southern Georgia); they were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. There with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, they constituted one of the Five Civilized Tribes.
Why did steam ships explode?
“The principal causes of explosions, in fact the only causes, are deficiency of strength in the shell or other parts of the boilers, over-pressure and over-heating. Deficiency of strength in steam boilers may be due to original defects, bad workmanship, deterioration from use or mismanagement.”