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History of the Seventh Indiana
Cavalry Volunteers, and of…;Thomas
S. Cogley; 1876; Herald Company, Steam Printers; LaPorte Indiana
 The
burning of the splendid steamer, Sultana, is connected with the
history of the Seventh Indiana Cavalry, because at the time of
that terrible disaster, there were aboard of her, and lost in
the calamity with hundreds of other soldiers, from thirty to
forty of the members of the regiment.
The Sultana was one of the largest size steamboats. She bad been
running but three years, and was valued at eighty thousand
dollars.
The quartermaster, at Vicksburg, was guilty of criminal
carelessness in overloading the boat. About two thousand
soldiers were on board, most of whom had but recently been
released from Andersonville and other prisons, where they had
been imprisoned for months, and suffered the tortures devised by
the rebel government, and were at the time of the disaster, on
their way to their homes in the North. Besides these, there were
a large number of passengers consisting of men, women and
children, and the boats crew, and a large quantity of freight,
principally sugar.
With her freight of precious souls, the Sultana, on the 6th of
April, 1865, arrived at Memphis, where she lay till midnight, to
unload one hundred hogsheads of sugar. Having discharged her
freight, the bell summoned passengers "on board," and warned
visitors to go ashore. Parting friends shook each other by the
hand, and said "goodbye," little dreaming that that was the last
time they would ever clasp hands, or exchange words of
friendship this side of the grave. The gang-plank was drawn in;
the engines of the boat put the ponderous wheels in motion; and
the proud Sultana swung out into the current of the Mississippi,
and was soon hurrying on to her terrible doom. The passengers
retired to their berths :
"To sleep, perchance to dream,"
of home, friends and loved ones, thinking that when they
awoke in the morning they would be many miles nearer their
destination. Sixteen hundred of them were destined to awaken
soon after, to find themselves, not only nearer, but at their
great final destination. Before the sun, on the morrow,
illumined the east with its golden flood of light, sixteen
hundred human beings, who left Memphis a short hour before,
bouyant with hope, were doomed to enter upon –
"That bourne whence no traveler ere returns."
When about seven miles above Memphis, the boilers of the Sultana
exploded, hurling the pilot-house and a portion of the cabin
high into the air. They came down on the deck a complete wreck,
and buried many of the passengers in the debris, who, being
unable to extricate themselves, were burned to death. Men, women
and children, rushed from their berths in their night attire,
and with the most heart-rending screams, plunged into the river,
preferring death by drowning, to the more horrid one of burning.
Mothers, with their babes pressed to their bosoms, jumped into
the water and sank to rise no more. One heroic mother cast
herself and babe into the river, and by means of a mattrass,
managed to keep afloat till both were rescued by a boat, several
miles from the scene of the disaster. Husbands threw their wives
into the water and plunged in after them, and after a brief
struggle, found their last resting place beneath the waves.
The explosion occurred in the widest pat t of the river, where
none but the most expert swimmers could reach the shore. Some
sank never to rise when they had almost reached the banks. Some
who had reached them, and succeeded in catching hold of the
limbs of the bushes, unable longer to sustain themselves above
water, relaxed their grip, sank out of sight, and were never
seen again. Some floated down past Memphis, and by their cries,
attracting the attention of the boats at the wharf, were saved.
Immediately after the explosion, the flames, spreading rapidly,
enveloped the Sultana in a sheet of fire. The scene presented by
the light of the burning vessel was horrid beyond the power of
language to describe. Two thousand persons were in the water
engaged in a desperate struggle for life. The screams and cries
for help, when there was no arm to save, was enough to curdle
the blood with horror. Amid the babble of screams and shouts,
were distinguished the cries of children and babes. In that sea
of drowning humanity, were bride and groom on their wedding
tour; families consisting of fathers, mothers and children,
returning from or making visits to friends; and soldiers who had
fought gallantly on many a hard contested field of battle , and
had suffered the tortures of the damned in rebel prison pens in
the south.
Such disasters bring out prominently the strongest. and weakest
traits of character. With the women and children the conflict
was soon over. The most of them immediately sank on reaching the
water and never again came to the surface. But hundreds of the
men kept up for hours a gallant battle for life. Soldiers who
had often defied death on the field, were not to be vanquished
in a moment—not even by the great Mississippi. Such as managed
to keep afloat, were picked up by boats hastening to the rescue.
The steamer Bostona, on her way down the river, and about a mile
distant at the time of the explosion, hurried to the scene, and
succeeded in saving many who otherwise would have perished.
The iron-clad gun boat, Essex, left the wharf at Memphis, on
hearing of the catastrophe, and steamed rapidly toward the
wreck. The morning was so dark that it was possible to see but a
few feet ahead. The gun-boat was guided to the spot by the cries
of those struggling in the water. She saved sixty persons from a
watery grave.
The Sultana burned to the water's edge, and sank on the Arkansas
side of the river.
All of the twenty-two hundred persons, except six hundred, who
thronged the decks of the Sultana the day before, with visions
of a happy and prosperous future of life before them, slept at
the bottom of the great Mississippi, while over their quiet
bodies, its floods rolled, on their ceaseless journey to the
sea.
The following are the names of the members of the Seventh
Indiana Cavalry, lost with the Sultana, that we have been able
to get.
Daniel W. Doner, John Q. Paxton, and Costan Porter, of company
E; William S. Corbin, of company G; William Barrick and Elisha
Swords, of company I; Augustus Barrett and Francis M. Elkins, of
company K; William M. Thomson, of company M.
Robert B. Armstrong, of company I, was the only member of the
regiment who escaped.
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