Union Soldiers Perish in Steamboat Disaster
3 min readJul 28, 2020
The greatest maritime disaster (yes, even worse than the Titanic) occurred on April 27, 1865, when the steamboat Sultana exploded and sank on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee. Approximately 1,700 passengers, most of them recently discharged Union soldiers on their way home, lost their lives.
When it was built in 1863, the Sultana was considered a state-of-the-art steamboat…
