Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865 (review)

book reviews355 Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 2j, 1865. Gene Eric Salecker. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. Pp. xxiv, 346. $32.95.) On April 27, 1 865, as the nation grieved for its slain president, the "worst maritime disaster in the history of the United States" occurred on the Mississippi River near Memphis. The side-wheel steamerSultana, overloaded with recently released Union prisoners of war, exploded and sank. Over 1 ,700 died. In the past six years, three books have been published about this minor footnote to the history of the Civil War: William O. Bryant's Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster (1990), Jerry O. Potter's The Sultana Tragedy (1992), and now Gene Eric Salecker's Disaster on the Mississippi. Salecker makes three contributions to our knowledge of the event. First, he shows that the prisoners were organized in groups, not crowded helter-skelter aboard the Sultana. Second, he reveals that the boiler exploded up and backward at a forty-five-degree angle, bifurcating the ship. Third, Salecker provides more detail about the tragedy than any previous study, describing virtually every individual and all the shipboard action for which there is any evidence. Salecker begins with the construction, launching, and fitting out of Sultana, providing technical details about the tubular boilers that caused the disaster. He then turns to the prisoners of war at Confederate prisons in Cahaba, Alabama, and Andersonville, Georgia. In March and April 1865, five thousand prisoners— weak, feeble, and starving—were moved to Vicksburg, where, in turn, they were to be transported home. The scene in Vicksburg, where officials struggled to move the former prisoners out rapidly, was one of chaos, disorganization, and corruption—conditions that contributed to Sultana's overloading. Her master, J. Cass Mason, sought to alleviate his financial difficulties by getting as many prisoners as possible. Greed motivated many steamboat men, and shipping prisoners was "a minor gold mine." As a result, during the negotiations for the prisoners, Captain Mason never mentioned that one of Sultana's tubular boilers had developed a leak, required patching, and should have been used only at low pressures. Salecker's narrative proceeds systematically through the story's components, so that by the middle of the book the different threads converge upon the catastrophe . However, excess detail weighs down the narrative, which has a difficult time presenting the horror of the crisis. Nevertheless, Salecker provides a clear explanation for the tragedy. The explosion occurred because of excessive pressure on, and insufficient water in, patched boilers and a slight careening of the boat. In turn, Sultana "careened" because she was top-heavy from the overcrowding on her upper decks. Thus, culpability for the disaster lay with those responsible for the vessel's overcrowding —men more interested in profit than safety. Although Captain Mason was drinking heavily, Salecker claims that Mason was apparently "unimpaired"—a questionable assertion for any reader familiar 356civil war history with the Exxon Valdez disaster. On the other hand, Salecker convincingly demolishes the argument that "military necessity" justified unsafe steamboat conditions . Other vessels were available to take the surplus passengers. Despite various investigations, "no one would ever be punished for the tremendous loss of life." In addition, the disaster was quickly overshadowed by the momentous events ofApril 1 865. To this day, no monument commemorates Sultana's victims—"ordinary citizens and common soldiers"—while the vessel lies buried in an Arkansas soybean field. Nevertheless, the explosions aboard Sultana and two other steamboats in 1 865-66 did result in two positive developments. All tubular boilers were replaced with more conventional, and safer, flue boilers. In addition, the forerunner of the Hartford Insurance Company was founded in 1866. Steamboat inspection was beefed up and steamboats, in the future, became safer. Those improvements were small consolation to the families of the 1,700 people who died, as Gene Salecker shows, because of the greed of a few men. Kenneth J. Blume Albany College of Pharmacy State ofRebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina. By Richard Zuczek. (Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 1996. Pp. xi, 250. $29.95.) Reconstruction in South Carolina has proven fertile historical terrain. Thomas Holt's Black Over White (1977) and...