Sinking the Sultana by Sally M. Walker

Author:Sally M. Walker [Walker, Sally M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780763697631
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

AT FIRST, people who lived along the Arkansas and Tennessee shores and those traveling on other boats didn’t know what had occurred. If they were close to the river, they would have seen flames, but they had no way to judge the magnitude of the disaster. It was the victims’ screams that called them to action.

LOCAL HEROES

The flaming Sultana eventually ran aground on one of Paddy’s Hen and Chickens Islands. From his property on the Arkansas riverbank, John Fogleman saw the burning steamer. He and his sons Leroy and Dallas roped together two hewn logs, each about twelve feet long, to build a crude raft. Fogleman poled the raft into the river but stopped about one hundred feet from the boat. He feared that if he went too close, the twenty-five to thirty-five men on the Sultana’s bow could swarm onto the raft and capsize it in a mad scramble for safety. He shouted his concern to the men standing on the bow, and they agreed on a plan. Fogleman would take six men at a time. He promised he would return until all of the men had been carried to safety. Lying on their stomachs on the raft, the rescued men paddled with their hands and feet to make the craft move faster. For the men waiting anxiously on the burning boat, flames creeping closer by the minute, each trip lasted a lifetime. They protected their skin with wet blankets and clothing and covered their mouths and noses to avoid breathing smoke.

Finally, only a handful of men — the ones most severely burned — remained. They begged not to be left behind. John, Leroy, and Dallas did not fail them. From a nearby tree, Hugh Kinser watched them retrieve men from the burning bow “until the last man was rescued.” Just before the Foglemans’ last load of men reached shore, the “Sultana went down, its hot irons sending the hissing water and steam to an immense height.” Only the boat’s jack staff, the tall pole that pilot George Kayton used to sight the vessel’s course, remained above the water.

For hours more, the Foglemans searched for victims. They brought exhausted survivors to their home, which became a temporary hospital. Fogleman’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Frances, and twelve-year-old son, Gustav, provided first aid, hot drinks, and a wood fire for the near-frozen survivors. The Fogleman family is credited with saving about one hundred lives.

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