Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat. On April 27, 1865, the boat exploded in the worst maritime disaster in United States history. She was designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, but she was carrying 2,155 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee, killing 1,192 passengers.[1] This disaster was overshadowed in the press by other events surrounding the end of the American Civil War, most particularly the killing on the previous day of President Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth.
The wooden steamboat was constructed in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard[2] in Cincinnati, intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. The steamer registered 1,719 tons[3] and normally carried a crew of 85. For two years, she ran a regular route between St. Louis and New Orleans, frequently commissioned to carry troops.
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