Sultana (steamboat)
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Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865, killing 1,164 people in what remains the worst maritime disaster in United States hist
Sultana at Helena, Arkansas, on April 26, 1865, the day before her destruction. A crowd of paroled prisoners covers her decks.
POW Camp Fisk, Four Mile Bridge, Vicksburg, Mississippi April 1865.
Sultana on fire, from Harper's Weekly.
An artist's impression of the fire (2015)
USS Essex (1856)
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USS Essex was a 1000-ton ironclad river gunboat of the United States Army and later United States Navy during the American Civil War. It was named by her captain, William Porter, for his father's old
Sultana (steamboat)
…five hours after the explosion. Other vessels joined the rescue, including the steamers Silver Spray, Jenny Lind, and Pocahontas, the navy ironclad USS Essex and the sidewheel gunboat USS Tyler. Passengers who survived the initial explosion had to risk their lives in the icy spring runoff of the Mississippi…
Essex at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, July 1862
A contemporary illustration of the 1861 conversion of the steamer New Era into the gunboat USS Essex.
CSS Arkansas running through the Union fleet above Vicksburg, Mississippi, 15 July 1862