Spreading the Word about the Sultana

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.

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