HD
2026
More than 2,000 Union soldiers, along with passengers and crew, found themselves crammed into the Sultana, a steamboat designed to carry just 376 people. A perfect storm of corruption, overcrowding, and neglect, combined with the swollen Mississippi River from spring thaw, set the stage for tragedy. On April 27, 1865, the boat’s boilers erupted, leading to an unimaginable catastrophe that remains the deadliest maritime disaster in American history. The Sultana’s tragic fate serves as a somber reminder of the human cost of greed and mismanagement.