Maritime
Sultana Disaster
Excerpt of a letter from Pvt. Morris Allen to his father, Noah Allen of Clay Lick, April 5, 1865: “Dear Father, I have once more seated myself with pen in hand to write a few lines to you to let you know that I am well and all of the boys that is with me as you might expect after laying in prison 10 months. Joseph Lease (Leese), R. Wilson, John Litle (Little), M. Wilcox, B. Vanhorn and myself have went through the Confederacy safe…We left Andersonville the 25th of March and was passed through our lines the 1st of April…We have just drew some clothing today and got cleaned up again…I tell you what we have seen hard times since the 10th of June…We are in camp four miles from Vicksburg. There is talk of us leaving here soon and it is supposed that we will be sent to Camp Chase, Ohio.”
Pvt. Allen was writing from Camp Fisk, a Union camp set up for the exchange of prisoners. He had recently left Andersonville Prison in Georgia. Nineteen days later, he and some 1,800-2,000 other released POW’s boarded the steamship, Sultana, along with other soldiers, civilians and crew to an unconfirmed total of about 2,400. The ship was built for a capacity of 376 people, although it could normally handle the load. They were finally returning home up the Mississippi River, over a third of them to Ohio.
Just north of Memphis in the early morning of April 27, a boiler exploded, resulting in the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. The explosion and sinking of the boat resulted in the deaths of about 1,900 of the passengers, even more people than were lost on the Titanic. There was little news coverage, because the newspapers were preoccupied with the end of the war and Lincoln’s assassination on April 14.
Morris Allen, Joseph Leese, John Little and Marvin Wilcox, all mentioned above, were killed that night, so close to going home after enduring the horrors of war and Andersonville Prison. They had all served in the 95th OVI, Company F. Two others from Licking County who died that night were Charles Roberts of the 12th OVI, Company E, and Thomas Thomas of the 76th, Company H.
As bodies were gathered from the cold waters of the Mississippi, they were taken to Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis for burial. At a later date, they were moved to the Memphis National Cemetery. Local lore in Memphis relates that as they brought out each coffin to move it, the soldier’s name was printed on top in chalk. Then, before they could be reinterred, a rain storm washed away all the names—a third disaster for those hapless POW’s. This cemetery has the second largest number of unknown graves of any national cemetery.
