Remember the Sultana (2015) - full transcript

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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)