Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana

The?Sultana?was a sidewheel Mississippi steamboat carrying almost?two thousand?recently-released?Union prisoners-of-war back north at the end of the Civil War. At 2:00 a.m. on April 27, 1865, when the boat was seven miles above Memphis, her boilers exploded. Almost 1,200 people perished in the worst maritime disaster in United States history. Gene Eric?Salecker?covers?this?disaster?in detail?and dispels the many myths that have been connected to the?Sultana?for too long. Almost every author?who?has written about the?Sultana has relied on the words of a few survivors?or?referred to?the?works?of previous authors to get their story.?Advancing the scholarship, the author has visited the National?Archives in Washington, DC to?comb?through the handwritten transcripts of the three investigative bodies that?looked into?the disaster or poured over the handwritten testimony from the court-martial trial of Capt. Frederic Speed, the only person tried for the overcrowding of the vessel.?In 1996, after extensive research and using the most current sources available at that time,?Salecker?wrote?Disaster on the Mississippi:?The?Sultana?Explosion, April 27, 1865.?Still, there were inevitable?omissions.?After almost?twenty-five years?of continued research on the Sultana, and all those involved in the disaster,?Salecker?has gleaned unparalleled knowledge into every aspect of the?disaster.?His?research, covering the National Archives, and?thousands of pages of newspapers from around the world and government documents, including pension records and service records,?has allowed Gene to tell the story of the?Sultana?as completely as?possible.?By bringing his research back to primary sources,?Salecker?dispels?myths?and?adds?to?the?story of the?Sultana.? In?Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana:The Worst Maritime Disaster in American?History?paroled?prisoners,?civilian?passengers, guards, crewmembers,?rescuers,?and?eyewitnesses?tell?their?stories in their own words. The true, and complete, story about the?Sultana?and the disaster has finally, and fully, been told.