Saving History Saturday: Sultana Museum Receives A New Grant & Future

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There’s interesting preservation news from Marion, Arkansas! The Sultana Historical Preservation Society learned that the Union Pacific Railroad Board has approved a $10,000 grant which would allow the preservation society to undertake renovations and create a new home for the Sultana Disaster Museum.

The Sultana Disaster took place in April 1865 when the steamboat exploded and burned in one of the most deadly accidents in U.S. Maritime history, claiming the lives of 1,800 passengers and crew—many of them returning Union soldiers.

The museum’s displays focus on the steamboat, the history of the tragedy, and the passengers who were onboard on that fateful night. Some exhibits also spotlight the rescuers who attempted to save lives during the disaster.


The Sultana, photographed in Helena, Arkansas, on April 26, 1865–the day before she exploded. Note the deck packed with Union soldiers.


According to the museum’s website, the new museum project which is supported by the grant will take over a 1938 school auditorium-gymnasium which will be redesigned by a team of architects and exhibit experts to use the 17,000 square foot facility to tell the account of the Sultana and the ending of the Civil War effectively in a permanent setting.

Original Press Release: https://www.kait8.com/2020/08/04/sultana-historical-preservation-society-awarded-grant/

Sultana Disaster Museum Website: http://sultanadisaster.org/future-museum/

Continue reading...

 

[5fish]

@O' Be Joyful

I learned that the SS Sultana was built in Cincinnati shipyards... The Link tells how the sinking effected Cincinnati...

LINK: https://www.wvxu.org/post/sultana-d...0-years-ago-took-its-toll-cincinnati#stream/0

The paddlewheeler was built in 1863 at the John Lithoberry Shipyards on Front Street in Cincinnati, alongside the Ohio River.

Snip...

It took about three days for the news of the Sultana to reach Cincinnati – the destination port for many of the soldiers on board.
Historical records show that at least 50 soldiers from Cincinnati – probably more – died in the Sultana explosion. Ohio had the greatest number of dead – 791 -many of whose bodies were never found. Those whose bodies were recovered were buried in the National Cemetery at Memphis.

One of those Cincinnati soldiers was Adam Schneider, a 42-year-old immigrant from the German village of Ingelheim am Rhein, down the Rhein River from Frankfurt. He came to Cincinnati in 1854 with his wife Catherine; the couple had three small children, all daughters. They lived in a house on W. Liberty Street, near John Street.

Snip... Adam was a German an assassin ... @rittmeister

He had basically fled Germany because of an incident in 1849, Newhouse said.
In his home town, she said, he belonged to a social activist and gymnastics club that did not much like the Prussians. When they heard that that Prince of Prussia was to ride through Ingelheim am Rhein, the club decided they were going to assassinate him.
They drew straws, Newhouse said, “and Adam drew the short straw. So he was to do the deed.” When the prince rode through town, Schneider took a shot at him and missed. He was arrested and spent months on trial, finally being declared not guilty, “even though he clearly was guilty,” Newhouse said.
“Well, things got a little hot for him over there so he decided to immigrate here; and as many Germans did, he ended up in Cincinnati,’’ she said.

 

[O' Be Joyful]

I learned that the SS Sultana was built in Cincinnati shipyards... The Link tells how the sinking effected Cincinnati...

LINK: https://www.wvxu.org/post/sultana-d...0-years-ago-took-its-toll-cincinnati#stream/0

Yes she was. And WVXU is the Xavier University NPR radio station that still plays great classical and jazz music.

But being U.C. Bearcat the X.U. Musketeers are the "hated" cross-town rival. It gets "serious' at times.

The annual non-conference game is called The Crosstown Shootout.

 

[5fish]

Here is this : Sultana memorial Mount Olive Baptist Church Knoxville, TN.

 

[5fish]

It was the Boilers...https://www.pmengineer.com/articles/92128-the-worst-boiler-accident

Negligence or sabotage?
On April 21, the ship’s engineer found that the two-year-old boilers had bulges and were badly leaking. Captain Mason ordered a temporary patch to be installed. During a layover in Memphis, Tenn., three days later, more leaks were discovered and the ship hired local boilermaker R. G. Taylor to assess the problem. Taylor felt the leaking boilers required extensive repairs but reluctantly agreed to another temporary patch on them.
In addition to the extra passengers, the captain arranged to haul a load of 1,000 bushels of coal, each weighing about 80 lb. The ship was so overloaded the crew had to reinforce the deck because it was afraid it would collapse under the weight of all the passengers. The first clerk and part owner of the ship, William J. Gambrel, warned that if the passengers went too close to one side of the ship, it could capsize.
At 12 a.m., the ship sailed from the port of Memphis. The current was fierce on the Mississippi River that spring, so the captain ordered the boiler pressure increased to overcome the fast river current and the overloaded ship. About an hour north of Memphis, three of the four boilers on the ship exploded, engulfing the ship in flames and flinging passengers into the frigid river. Another contributing factor to the extreme loss of life was that the POWs were malnourished and suffered various injuries and illnesses, making it difficult to save themselves.

SNIP...

It was a coal bomb torpedo...

Was it really an accident?
A rebel Confederate agent, Robert Louden, on his deathbed confessed the Sultana boiler explosion was due to a coal torpedo he placed on the ship. The coal torpedo was invented by a brilliant Confederate spy named Thomas Edgeworth Courtnay. It was a 4-lb. artillery shell that was cast to resemble a piece of coal and filled with gunpowder. The outside was coated with soot making it look like the coal used to power the boiler. Coal torpedos were usually hidden in the coal pile and the boiler tender would unknowingly shovel it inside the boiler.
It was rumored that coal torpedoes were the cause of boiler explosions on the USS Chenango in April 1864 which killed 33 people and the Greyhound on Nov. 27, 1864. Investigators did not believe Louden’s claim, though, and assumed the overloaded ship, leaking boilers, uncontrolled boiler water level and excessive steam pressure caused the explosion.
At the time of the accident, codes for the construction of ships as well as boilers were almost nonexistent. I like to believe the severity of the accident partially contributed to safer construction of both boilers and steamships. The year after the accident, the Hartford Steam Inspection and Insurance Co. was founded. It was the inventor of the Hartford Loop in 1879 that has been installed on almost every steam boiler since its inception. Maritime safety codes were written and published in 1874 and the Steamboat Inspection Service was created in 1871.
I believe boilers are an amazing feat of engineering as well as a very reliable heating source. The boilers on the SS Sultana only failed after being overloaded by 600%, poorly maintained and possibly bombed. If the boilers had been properly mai

 

[5fish]

The last one...


Albert Norris of Ohio, last survivor of the Sultana, died in 1936.

 

[5fish]

@O' Be Joyful

Cincinnati shipyard had another boat go boom!

The Moselle was a riverboat constructed at the Fulton shipyard, in Cincinnati, Ohio.[1] between December 1, 1837 and March 31, 1838.[2] The Moselle was considered one of the fastest river boats in operation at the time, having completed a record-setting two-day, sixteen-hour trip between Cincinnati and St. Louis.[3][4] On April 25, 1838, the Moselle, piloted by Captain Isaac Perin,[5][6] suffered a boiler explosion just east of Cincinnati, killing 160 of the estimated 280–300 passengers.[7][8] The boat had just pulled away from a dock near the neighborhood of Fulton, when all four boilers simultaneously suffered a catastrophic failure resulting in the total destruction of the ship from the paddlewheels to the bow. The ship drifted approximately 100 yards before sinking to the bottom of the Ohio river.[4][9] Negligence may have been a factor in the explosion: many eyewitness reports claimed that Captain Perin had been racing another riverboat, the Ben Franklin (1836) at the time of the explosion, and therefore the pressure in the boilers was excessively high.[10][7][11][12]