Sultana was a commercial
side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the
Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,864 people in what remains the worst
maritime disaster in United States history.

Because Union forces had captured Memphis in 1862 and turned it into a supply and recuperation city, numerous local hospitals treated the roughly 760 survivors with the latest medical equipment and trained personnel. Of this group, there were only 31 deaths between April 28 and June 28. Newspaper accounts indicate that the residents of Memphis had sympathy for the victims despite the ongoing Union occupation. The Chicago Opera Troupe, a
minstrel group that had traveled upriver on
Sultana before getting off at Memphis, staged a benefit performance, while the crew of the gunboat
Essex raised US$1,000 (equivalent to $20,541 in 2024).
[15]
In 1888, a St. Louis resident named William Streetor claimed that his former business partner,
Robert Louden, made a confession of having
sabotaged Sultana by the use of a
coal torpedo while they were drinking in a saloon.
[19] Louden, a former Confederate agent and saboteur who operated in and around St. Louis, had been responsible for the burning of the steamboat
Ruth. In support of Louden's claim, what appeared to be a piece of an artillery shell was said to be recovered from the sunken wreck. However, Louden's claim is controversial, and most scholars support the official explanation. The location of the explosion, from the top rear of the boilers and far away from the fireboxes, tends to indicate that Louden's claim of sabotage of an exploding coal torpedo in the firebox, below the front part of the boilers, was pure bravado.
[20][21] Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, the inventor of the coal torpedo, was a former resident of St. Louis and was involved in similar acts of sabotage against Union shipping interests. However, Courtenay's great-great-grandson, Joseph Thatcher, who wrote a book on Courtenay and the coal torpedo, denies that a coal torpedo was used in the
Sultana disaster.
[22]
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