Sultana

Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat. On April 27, 1865, the boat exploded in the worst maritime disaster in United States history. Although designed with a capacity for only 376 passengers, she was carrying 2,427 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee, killing an estimated 1,700 passengers.[1] This disaster has long been overshadowed in the press by other contemporary events; John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln's assassin, was killed the day before. The wooden steamboat was constructed in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard[2] in Cincinnati, and intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. Registering 1,719 tons,[3] the steamer normally carried a crew of 85. For two years, she ran a regular route between St. Louis and New Orleans, frequently commissioned to carry troops. wrote: