by David Markland on July 4, 2009
Son Volt is currently touring the US to promote its new album, "American Central Dust," which features a song about the Sultana disaster.
The popular alternative country band, Son Volt, have a new album being released on July 7th featuring a song about and titled, “Sultana.” You can listen to a clip from the track on the Amazon page for American Central Dust
. [the song will also be available for download beginning Tuesday for 99 cents]
The album, and by association, the Sultana disaster, has even received attention in the Wall Street Journal. Singer-songwriter Jay Farrar told the highly respected newspaper what inspired him: “It struck me as a sadly powerful name and a shame that more people don’t know about it.”
Farrar founded Son Volt in 1994 after the breakup of his previous band, Uncle Tupelo, was triggered by a falling out between Farrar and bandmate Jeff Tweedy, who went on to form Wilco with other former group members.
Farrar is a native of St. Louis, which is also the hometown of the Sultana’s Captain J. Cass Mason.
Tour info at Son Volt’s official site… Additional album coverage at St. Louis Today.
by David Markland on April 16, 2009
Yesterday, the Sultana disaster was the hour’s topic on NPR’s nationally broadcast “Diane Rehm Show” with author Alan Huffman as the featured guest. (listen to a recording here)
During the show, Rep. Victor Snyder from Arkansas called in to say that earlier this month he had introduced House Resolution 329, that would give Congressional recognition of the anniversary of the Sultana tragedy of April 27, 1865. The purpose of the resolution would be to:
(1) recognizes the 144-year anniversary of the tragic accident of the steamboat ship SS Sultana;
(2) honors the memory of the soldiers and passengers who lost their lives in this disaster;
(3) regrets the lack of military and civilian oversight that led to the explosion and tremendous loss of life; and
(4) rededicates itself to honoring all our veterans and military families with the highest level of support in quality resources, equipment and services.
This would be the first time the U.S. government officially acknowledged the lack of responsibility taken that may have prevented, or at the least limited the magnitude, of the disaster. The only additional wording I’d like to also be included would be acknowledgement that the even after the tragedy, the government didn’t take care of the soldiers to the best of their ability, or seriously hold those involved in the overloading of the boat responsible. Regardless, this resolution is long overdue, and very welcomed.
You can read the full text of the bill here, entitled “House Resolution 329: Recognizing the anniversary of the tragic accident of the steamboat ship SS Sultana.” Co-sponsors of the bill are Rep. John Boozman [R-AR], Rep. Robert Berry [D-AR], Rep. Zach Wamp [R-TN], Rep. Danny Davis [D-IL], and Rep. Mike Ross [D-AR].
A personal thanks to Alan Huffman, who mentioned me and this site by name on air. In the hours following the broadcast, this blog’s traffic spiked to over 1400 page views, above and beyond the average of 30 to 50 per day… additional coverage here.
by David Markland on April 15, 2009
If you’re looking for a way to present the Sultana story to younger readers, Alice Morrison tells me her novella “River Reunion: Seven Days Aboard the Sultana” may be the answer as it was written “with middle-school aged kids in mind, as my protagonist is a 13-year-old boy,” but that adults will also find it engaging.
Morrison, a published writer with over 40 articles to her credit, was inspired to write about the Sultana after hearing the story of her friend Laurie Bries’ great great grandfather Winfield Scott Colvin, with the 6th Kentucky Cavalry, who survived the disaster.
She’ll be attending the Sultana reunion later this month where she will be selling and signing the self published book, which can also be ordered online
through her website.
by Alan Huffman on March 17, 2009
It’s the one indelible image associated with the Sultana saga: The photo of the overcrowded boat at the Helena waterfront, taken the day before the disaster.
The photo has been much-reproduced in books and on the web. The Library of Congress has a copy, which is attributed to an “unknown photographer.”
Credit goes to Gene Eric Salecker for identifying the photographer in his book and noting that the original is housed at the Cincinnati library. Herewith, some gleanings about the photographer from the web:
T.W. Bankes, a native of England, arrived in Arkansas with federal troops in 1864 to photograph the Civil War. Though he is not well-known today, he was an accomplished photographer who managed to be on hand for a rare spectacle: The docking of the Sultana, with more than 2,400 people crowded aboard.
Recognizing the oddity of the scene, Bankes preserved the only known image of the boat, which, as most readers of this website know, sank less than 24 hours later a few miles north of Memphis, taking with it an estimated 1,700 lives. Though the sinking of the Sultana remains the worst maritime disaster in American history, Bankes’ photo was eventually relegated to the status of an obscure historical footnote. Yet the original, housed at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, depicts a scene freighted with momentous history.
The nature of the disaster did not lend itself to a preponderance of artifacts or mementos, and Bankes’ photo is undoubtedly the most telling that survives. In the photo, men crowd every corner of the decks, and according to some reports, nearly capsized the boat by rushing to the port side in an effort to be captured by Bankes’ lens (it is hard to imagine the crowds being capable of actually capsizing such a large boat, but they could easily have caused damage or resulted in men being trampled or thrown overboard). Bankes certainly knew he was recording a noteworthy moment, but he had no way of knowing just how rare and momentous the resulting image would be.
Bankes remained in Helena after the war ended. He eventually moved to Little Rock, where he set up a gallery and made his living primarily from popular carte de visites — small (2½ by 4 inches) albumen photo portraits. His photo clearly provided the inspiration for a good bit of later artwork depicting the Sultana, including a mural at the Vicksburg waterfront which is sometimes erroneously described as illustrating its loading there.
by Alan Huffman on March 15, 2009
Alan Huffman's new book about the Sultana will be released March 24, 2009.
As anyone familiar with the Sultana story knows only too well, public interest in the disaster has always been a curious issue. The disaster failed to sustain widespread public interest at the time primarily because people were already accustomed to mass death by the bloodshed of the war, and because other events overshadowed it – Lincoln’s assassination, the end of the war, and the killing of John Wilkes Booth.
Still, it seems remarkable that so few today have heard of what remains the worst maritime disaster in American history, and that the location of the wreckage of the Sultana is still officially unknown (despite Memphis attorney Jerry Potter’s believed discovery of the remains in the 1980s). Ask most people what they think is the worst maritime disaster and they will likely say the Titanic, which was the object of a concerted effort to locate the wreckage and the focus of a blockbuster movie.
There have been several books about the Sultana, some of them very good, including Potter’s The Sultana Tragedy (1992)
and Gene Eric Salecker’s Disaster on the Mississippi (1996)
. There have also been numerous books about topics related to the disaster, such as the Andersonville and Cahaba prison camps, and untold volumes on the Civil War itself.
But as I set out to write my own nonfiction book on the subject, it seemed to me that the public still had not embraced the full breadth of the Sultana saga. For that reason, “Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History” recounts the true stories of three survivors, through the entire range of their experiences — during the war, in the prison camps, during the disaster itself and in the years afterward. What intrigued me, and what I hope will intrigue readers, is how they managed to survive seemingly every menace the world can throw at you. Like many others aboard the boat, these survivors had lived through enough drama for many lifetimes before they reached the age of 21, and as I found during my research, living the rest of their lives presented its own survival challenges. Along the way, I came to see the Sultana saga as not only a gargantuan tragedy but as a remarkable, true story of adventure and endurance. What happened to these men was essentially a staged experiment in human survival, and it offers food for thought about how people survive extremely trying episodes in any era.
My hope – and obviously my motivations are in part self-serving – is that a wider public will finally see this story for what it is: An epic saga whose importance is no less relevant today than it was for those who were directly involved in it at the time.
“Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History,” which is both a chronicle of this comparatively forgotten historical event and an exploration of just how much the human body and mind can take, will be released March 24, 2009, and can be pre-ordered now at Harper Collins.
A more detailed description of the book and a related photo gallery can be found at www.alanhuffman.com.
by David Markland on March 15, 2009
by David Markland on March 13, 2009
Including pictures of Captain D.L. Lowrey and his descendants. Lowery was with Company G, One Hundred Fifteenth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, when he and most of his command were captured at in the Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in October, 1864, and sent to Andersonville. He was killed in the Sultana disaster.
eBay link
by David Markland on May 22, 2007
Tom Koba, who for the past few years had been working on a documentary about the Sultana disaster, passed away Saturday in Norwalk, Ohio.
The Toledo Blade published a fine obituary this morning (click to read), that talks about his lifelong love of filmmaking, and passion for telling stories about the Ohio and the Civil War, producing at least 12 feature documentaries.
His longtime companion, Jennifer Wertz, who had accompanied him to some of the Sultana reunions, provided the Blade with his background:
Ms. Wertz said that at the time of his death, Mr. Koba was working on a
film about an 1865 disaster involving the Mississippi River steamboat
Sultana, whose boiler exploded during a northward voyage carrying 2,400
passengers, mostly freed Union war prisoners.
Mr. Koba swore several times that he would stop making films about the
Civil War, she said, “but then he’d see some memorial plaque and say,
‘That would be a great subject for a film.’ He was intrigued by stories
that had never been told before.”
Mr. Koba’s interest in film-making began during his late-1950s
childhood in Lorain, Ohio, where his parents encouraged his use of the
family home as a movie set. He and high-school friends produced a
feature-length movie about a World War II beachhead battle that
premiered at a Lorain cinema and made enough money to finance his next
project, Ms. Wertz said.
He became Ohio University’s first film student, graduating with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1968, she said.
At a reunion a few years ago, Tom showed some his footage for the Sultana documentary, which included recreations of the tragedy for which he’d built a portion of the ship, brought in Civil War reenactors from three states, and even hired stuntmen to portray soldiers who’d jumped off the ship while on fire.
Behind the scenes photos from the shoot can be found at the website for North Coast Casting (click here to see).
The Blade reports that funeral services will be held Wednesday, 1pm at Toft Funeral Home in Sandusky.
The family requests “tributes” be made to wild animal rescue group Back to the Wild (donation info here).
by David Markland on January 18, 2007
Internet research has turned up two alleged Sultana artifacts that may still be in existance – one at a small Kentucky museum, the other in the hands of a private collection.
An article from the Dec. 7th edition of the Birmingham News tells of an elderly couple – both 82 – who have an amazing collection of unique antiques in their Alabama home:
The couple’s collections, housed in their sprawling white brick home on 2½ acres, include antique dresses, cars and dolls, and an eclectic assortment of just about everything else, including two theater seats from the old downtown Ritz Theater, a piece of copper wire from the USS Arizona, a 1912 brass cash register from a Sylacauga curb market, a metal Liberty Overalls sign found behind a wall at the old Liberty House factory on First Avenue North and a piece of boiler grate from the Sultana, a Mississippi river steamboat that exploded in 1865, killing some 1,700 Union troops.
If its real, wouldn’t this be not only a piece of the Sultana but possible evidence as to what really caused the boilers to explode? Maybe far fetched, but it does get the imagination going.
The second item could possibly part of the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington, Kentucky, which currently hosts an almost Ripley’s Believe It or Not type collection, although the museum’s broader concentration is on items of local historic interest.
An article from Wednesday’s Kentucky Post says the museum will close April 1st to undergo renovations in preperation for summer turnout, so you may want to head there sooner to check out, “the piece of wood that allegedly came from the Sultana, the steamship built in Cincinnati that exploded and sank in 1865, killing about 1,700 freed Union prisoners of war in the nation’s worst maritime disaster.”
If anyone is able to pay a visit to either museum and can take some photos of these possible relics, I’d love to share them on this blog!
by David Markland on July 10, 2006
Yesterday I attended a large gathering of reenactors in San Pedro, California known as Old Fort MacArthur Days. It was an amazing event, billed as the largest gathering of reenactors in Southern California (surprising considering the number of costumed extras that are used on film shoots). In addition to a large number of Civil War regiments, there were living historians from the Roman era all the way thru World Wars I and II.
The celebrity in attendance was R. Lee Ermey, possibly best known for his role as the Sargeant in “Full Metal Jacket”, but more recently as host of the History Channel’s “Mail Call”. (click here for his full list of film credits)
I introduced myself to him and immediately presented him with a Sultana Disaster coin. He and his producer indicated that they had heard of the Sultana, and then Mr. Ermey reached into his pocket and offered his own coin for trade (pictured – apparently Mr. Ermey is sponsored by handgun manufacturer Glock).
Bumping into celebrities is an everyday hazard of living in Los Angeles (I saw Al Pacino at my local Target a few weeks ago), but my encounter with former Marine R. Lee Ermey was a little intimidating – I think mostly because I was trying to represent the Sultana descendents, and knew I’d have to report the tale back here at this site.
(for my album of photos from Old Fort MacArthur Days click here)
