Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Sinking the Sultana: A Civil War Story of Imprisonment, Greed, and a Doomed Journey Home

Sinking the Sultana: A Civil War Story of Imprisonment, Greed, and a Doomed Journey Home

Walker, Sally M.

Hardcover

HistoryScience & NatureTransportation

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0763677558
ISBN13: 9780763677558
Publisher: Candlewick Books
Published: Oct 10 2017
Pages: 208
Weight: 1.58
Height: 0.80 Width: 7.80 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
The worst maritime disaster in American history wasn't the Titanic. It was the steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi River -- and it could have been prevented.

In 1865, the Civil War was winding down and the country was reeling from Lincoln's assassination. Thousands of Union soldiers, released from Confederate prisoner-of-war camps, were to be transported home on the steamboat Sultana. With a profit to be made, the captain rushed repairs to the boat so the soldiers wouldn't find transportation elsewhere. More than 2,000 passengers boarded in Vicksburg, Mississippi . . . on a boat with a capacity of 376. The journey was violently interrupted when the boat's boilers exploded, plunging the Sultana into mayhem; passengers were bombarded with red-hot iron fragments, burned by scalding steam, and flung overboard into the churning Mississippi. Although rescue efforts were launched, the survival rate was dismal -- more than 1,500 lives were lost. In a compelling, exhaustively researched account, renowned author Sally M. Walker joins the ranks of historians who have been asking the same question for 150 years: who (or what) was responsible for the Sultana's disastrous fate?

Also from

Walker, Sally M.

View All

Also in

History

View All