Two members of Company K, 1st Michigan Sharpshooters – Louis Miskoguon and Amos Ashkebugnekay (along with 250 others from Michigan) — were aboard the Sultana when it exploded and burned. How ironic. After surviving the horrors of the Confederate Prison at Andersonville, Georgia, to face death a second time on the way home to Michigan. Fortunately they were able to swim ashore and may have walked the rest of the way home.
It was the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history, more costly than even the April 14, 1912 sinking of the Titanic, when 1,517 people were lost. But because the Sultana went down when it did, the disaster was not well covered in the newspapers or magazines, and was soon forgotten. It is scarcely remembered today.
April 1865 was a busy month; On April 9, at Appomattox Couthouse, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Five days later President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. On April 26 his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was caught and killed. That same day General Joseph Johnson surrendered the last large Confederate army. Shortly thereafter Union troops captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The Civil War was over. Northern newspapers rejoiced.
News of a terrible steamboat tragedy was relegated to the newspaper’s back pages. In a nation desensitized to death, 1,700 more did not seem such an enormous tragedy that it does today.
The accident happened at 2 a.m., when three of the steamship’s four boilers exploded. The reason the death toll was almost exactly equal to the number of Union troops killed at the battle of Shiloh (1,758) was gross government incompetence. The Sultana was legally registered to carry 376 people. She had six times more than that on board, due to the bribery of army officers and the extreme desire of the former POWs to get home.
Sources:
Who was who in Company K, 2010, by Chris Czopek.
Remembering Sultana from Stephen Ambrose, Expedition Journal, National Geographic News, May 1, 2001.
Philip P. Mason and Paul J. Pentecost, “From Bull Run to Appomattox : Michigan’s Role in the Civil War. Detroit, MI : Wayne State University, 1861 includes a chapter on the sinking of the Sultana.