Nightmarish Negligence: The Tragedy of The Steamboat Sultana

Had to re-upload this one... and not by choice. Suffice to say, Youtube's Copyright system is extremely broken, and NOT in the way that favors the creator. The last 2 months, behind the scenes, have been my most stressful as a creator, to date. Support My Work Here: www.patreon.com/BrickImmortar

2,300 men + livestock vs a capacity of 386 is just utterly insane.

Now, every major air crash is followed by a massive investigation and complete overhaul of pilot training and construction/repair procedures. It's unfathomable to me that a bunch of boats could just up and explode and the only reaction would be "Oh yeah, they do that sometimes🤷."

Boiler operator here. Having turbid water and solid fuel will cause any boiler no matter how well designed to inevitably fail. Boiler water treatment is super crucial for safe operation. This doesn't include the lack of understanding with pressure servicing from back in the day.

Imagine experiencing the horrors of war, being captured by the enemy, rotting away in a p.o.w camp for years and miraculously surviving all that. Then, just as you slowly make your way back toward home at last you find yourself mortally wounded and drowning in a river.

I knew about the Sultana before this, but I didn't know that the majority of the soldiers onboard were POW's. just magnifies the tragedy 10 fold, when you think about what these men had endured before even embarking on the doomed vessel. these men had already survived hell on earth, only to perish via hell on the water.

Very classy ending the video with the list of the victims and having no commentary while it was on screen. Great video. Beautifully presented!

I found out doing some genealogy research that I have an ancestor that died on the Sultana a few years ago but didn’t know much else. Really great to see the whole story, thanks for sharing.

Also, to expand a little on how bad Andersonville prison was, the compound was built to house at most 10,000 at any one time. And at its peak, the rebels crammed more than 30,000 men inside the walls. They were former union soldiers who turned on their fellows and formed a gang they called The Raiders and literally took over the prison. Any new group of captured soldiers first entering were lured to a spot then the unsuspecting men were jumped, beaten and robbed of whatever they had by the Raiders. Many of these men were murdered. Till finally the rest of the weak and dying men had enough a man they called Limber Jim led a revolt they called The Regulators and attacked the Raiders. Once they arrested every Raider, a few men went to the Warden (Wirz) and asked if they could hold a trial. He consented, and he took the Raiders outside the prison for their own safety. Once a new group of soldiers arrived, who had no knowledge of what was happening, they began the trial, the new men acting as the jury. They found the Raiders guilty of every charge presented. They handed down the sentencing and several dozen Raiders were to run the gauntlet. Basically every man was aloud to beat these men with anything they could find...needless to say a lot were beaten to death. They charged 6 men they determined were the leaders, and were promptly hung on a gallows built within the prison. Incredible history, and you can find several books written by survivors who saw it all. Some of which are written in the form of a journal, and tell the story literally what happened day by day. Its unreal. Recommend x10!

Being a maritime history buff I appreciate the content of this video a great deal. Thank you. Though at over 2,300 passengers aboard, I would venture it is MORE tragic than Titanic. It is Titanic on fire and with a far more heart wrenching loss of life. Especially with the factors of these being POW's trying to get home. As well as the greedy corruption leading to them being crammed aboard the ship as they were.

Retired from Hartford Steam Boiler two years ago after a 35 year career. The story of the sultana was always part of our imagery. A few years ago one of our engineers did some extensive research into this disaster.

"Those who ran industrial concerns simply assume that their boilers would explode, and they would lose one or two workers." Wow. Workers were truly treated like livestock.

When I was about 7, we used to got to a laundry mat behind the veterans cemetary in Memphis. We jumped the fence on day(this was about 1966) and wandered through the cemetery and ran into a worker who asked what we were doing. He then pointed out the section we were next to was the burial site for quite a few union civil war soldiers who died in the Sultana tragedy, who had been re-buried in that spot

Railway engines equipped with Salter safety valves were constantly blowing up also. Enginemen would screw when down tight so they could not open, as to get more pressure & thus power from underpowered & generally overloaded locomotives. Boilers went up for other reasons, too, such as shoddy repair work (often patched as one would repair a leaky barrel as opposed to a high-pressure vessel) & faulty construction. It didn't help that the boiler of locomotives at the time was the main structural element, bearing far greater stresses then they otherwise would. In the 1830s, on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, the back of the firebox of 'Patentee', was literally ripped off, & she exploded with some violence. The coupling which bore the entire weight of the train was riveted to the firebox backplate, which itself had been forged on to the boiler faultily, in such a way as to weaken it.

The ads for ocean cruise vacations popping up are giving me a chuckle.

The three worst American marine disasters have all happened on rivers. The Eastland took more than 800 when she capsized on the Chicago river in 1915, The General Slocum burned on the Hudson river taking over 1000 in 1904, and of course, the Sultana. While there was not much left to salvage from the Sultana, ironically, the hull of the General Slocum was raised and converted to the coal barge Maryland. Eventually, she sank off New Jersey in a storm on December 4, 1911. The Eastland was raised, her superstructure cut down and converted to a US coast-guard cutter, the Wilmette, operating on the Great Lakes until being scrapped just after WWII.

One small error: they would rig the safety valve to stay closed, not open.

Just wanted to say thank you so much for covering the tragedy of the Sultana. My grandmother (and therefore myself) is a decent of one of the survivors of the sinking and actually has a book with the list of names of survivors covering the entire tragedy. Something so significant to my family, yet not many know about this awful tragedy...thank you so much for covering it and allowing others to learn about something that has been a part of my family’s history.

Minor quibble: at 4:55 you mention Cairo, Illinois. This town's name is pronounced "Kay-row" instead of "Ky-row" for whatever reason. This is by the way a fantastic documentary. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to get this uploaded. Boo on youtube for its poor copyright system.

A surprising number of folks back then did not even learn how to swim ... I know many in NYC today that cross rivers daily and don't know either! Great documentary, as always!