Lost to Time by Martin W. Sandler

Author:Martin W. Sandler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781402781520
Publisher: Sterling
Published: 2010-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

IMAGES OF PRIVATION At Andersonville prison, drawn from memory by one of the inmates, Maine infantryman Private Thomas O’Dea.

OF ALL THE STEAMBOATS waiting at the Vicksburg dock, none was more impressive than the 260-foot, 1,719-ton Sultana, a ship that the Cincinnati Daily Commercial had described as one of the best steam vessels ever constructed. Built in Cincinnati in 1863, the Sultana was designed to carry cotton along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers from St. Louis to New Orleans, and it had been doing so for two years. Her owners were particularly proud of the latest safety features that had been installed on the vessel, including state-of-the-art safety gauges, designed to detect flaws in the operation of any of the boat’s four boilers that supplied the steam to propel the vessel. No one, however, seemed concerned about the fact that the Sultana carried only one lifeboat and only seventy-six life belts, or that the army had not provided the ship with a single doctor to give medical help to the troops should the need arise.

The part owner and captain of the Sultana was thirty-four-year-old J. Cass Mason, one of the most experienced and skillful navigators of the often treacherous Mississippi. By 1865 he had owned and operated a number of steamboats and was regarded as the perfect mariner to captain so large a vessel as the Sultana. But in April 1865, Mason was also a man with a problem. Due to a series of setbacks, he was in dire financial straits. Perhaps more than any of the other owners of the steamboats waiting to make the voyage to Cairo, he was eager to pack his vessel with as many passengers as he could.

Acting with the cooperation of Union boarding officials, Mason managed to have soldier after soldier assigned to the Sultana. Soon, the ex-prisoners were jammed aboard both decks of the ship and were sandwiched into what seemed like every available space below. At the same time as this loading was taking place, some one hundred civilians asked Mason if they could book passage on his ship. Mason not only took them aboard, but as if his ever-growing human cargo was not enough, he arranged to make the voyage even more profitable by filling the Sultana’s hold with 250 barrels of sugar and ninety-seven cases of wine, to be delivered to Memphis. Mason also loaded some one hundred mules and horses and an equal number of hogs onto the main deck at the very rear of the ship.

Later, William Butler, a cotton merchant standing on the Pauline Carroll, a steamboat docked next to the Sultana, described the scene aboard Mason’s vessel:

On every part of her the men seemed to be packed as thick as they could well stand. They were on the hurricane deck, on her wheelhouse, forward deck . . . and a person could go from one part of the boat to another only with much difficulty. A gentleman who was standing by me . . . said it

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