Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865
The worst maritime disaster in American history has received little historical attention, even though more people died from the 1865Sultanaexplosion than drowned when theTitanicsank in 1912. Gene Eric Salecker painfully reconstructs the events leading up to the tragedy, when more than 2,000 federal troops crowded onto a side-wheel steamboat built to carry fewer than 300 people. Most of them were former prisoners of war, paroled after the Confederate surrender and finally heading home after years of struggle. We will never know why three of theSultana's big boilers blew up and claimed 1,700 lives, although Salecker runs through several possible causes.Disaster on the Mississippiis an authoritative account of a forgotten chapter of American history.