Sultana Disaster Museum Gets $1 Million
A museum in Marion, Ark., commemorating the worst maritime disaster in United States history—the burning and sinking of the steamboat Sultana—received $1 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan. The latest funding announcement was made July 19. For the museum to be eligible for the American Rescue grant, local authorities had to raise a $250,000 match.
The Sultana Disaster Museum has been housed in a small building since 2015, but there are plans to build a larger one in downtown Marion. Last year, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson dedicated $750,000 toward building the museum, which will cost an estimated $7.5 million to complete. A financing campaign has so far raised a $1 million pledge from Hartford Steam Boiler; a $1 million challenge grant from FedEx; a $1 million federal Economic Development Administration grant and a $250,000 contribution from Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge.
On April 27, 1865, the Sultana, a 260-foot-long wooden steamboat built in Cincinnati in 1863, exploded, burned and sank on the Mississippi River about 7 miles from Memphis, Tenn. Rated to carry 376 passengers, the boat was overloaded with more than 2,000 recently released Union prisoners of war—well past its load limit. Its boiler, which had been under repair in Vicksburg, Miss., was hastily patched to take advantage of the lucrative federal contract.
The overstrained boilers exploded shortly after the vessel left Memphis. About 1,195 of the 2,200 passengers and crew died. By comparison, about 1,500 people died in the sinking of the Titanic, while 750 survived.
One reason the Sultana disaster is less remembered today is that it occurred shortly after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, which plunged the nation into mourning and overshadowed the disaster.
In 1982, an archaeological expedition led by Memphis attorney Jerry O. Potter uncovered what was believed to be the remains of Sultana under a soybean field on the Arkansas side, about four miles from Memphis.
