Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History - Hardcover

Huffman, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061470546 ISBN 13: 9780061470547

Publisher: Collins, 2009

Synopsis

An account of the tragic sinking of the Civil War steamboat describes how it was carrying an overload of paroled Union soldiers, the boiler explosions that ended the lives of more than 1,700 passengers, and the experiences of its survivors.

About this title

Review:

"Huffman succeeds in establishing the Sultana's rightful place in Civil War historiography. Recommended."--Library Journal

Huffman succeeds in establishing the Sultana s rightful place in Civil War historiography. Recommended. --Library Journal"

Huffman rescues the Sultana tragedy from obscurity and brings the people and events surrounding it to vibrant life...[and] chronicles the explosion and its aftermath in startling detail with a wealth of striking images...A short but moving history that effectively captures both the disaster and the soldiers' ordeal.--Kirkus Reviews

From the Back Cover:

A powerful account of a surprisingly forgotten tragedy of the Civil War

A stunning wartime account of human endurance and adventure, and an exploration of just how much the human body and mind can take,Sultana follows several young Union soldiers through the Civil War and what was, for them, its unimaginably disastrous aftermath. We see them enlist and then almost immediately be plunged into a cascading series of wartime horrors: Battle, trauma, prison camp, and, finally, the sinking of the Sultana, the steamboat that was taking them back home.

On an April night in 1865, the Sultana slowly moved up the dark Mississippi, its overtaxed engines straining under the weight of a human cargo that included an estimated twenty-four hundred passengers—more than six times the number it was designed to carry. Most were weak, emaciated Union soldiers, recently paroled from Confederate prison camps, on their way home after enduring the violence of war. At two a.m., three ofSultana's four boilers exploded. Within twenty minutes, it went down in fire and water, taking an estimated seventeen hundred lives.

The sinking of the Sultana remains the worst maritime disaster in American history, yet due to a confluence of contemporary events (Lincoln had recently been assassinated and the war had ended), it soon faded into relative obscurity. Now Alan Huffman presents this harrowing story against the backdrop of the endless suffering already endured by its survivors. Using contemporary research as well as digging deep into archives and family keepsakes, Huffman paints a gripping portrait of the young men who made it home alive.

About this edition

• Publisher: Collins
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0061470546
• ISBN 13: 9780061470547
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300