The unfamous shipwreck

The Titanic disaster became world-famous, but unfortunately, this is not the only large-scale shipwreck, and sadly, there have been cases much worse than the tragedy of the Titanic. One of them occurred on April 27, 1865. The Sultana Steamboat carried passengers and cargo daily between St Louis and New Orleans it was a pretty large wooden boat with three decks and was 260 feet long and 70 feet wide almost twice the size of a basketball court the ship could carry about 350 passengers but on that unfortunate day, more than 2 000 people were on it on April 23rd she was making a routine Voyage from New Orleans when it broke down something was wrong with the boiler.

The vessel docked in Vicksburg for repairs at the Port the ship's Captain James Cass Mason found out about an excellent opportunity to earn a lot of money all he needed to do was to transfer a large group of former prisoners to the north. The captain agreed to do it but the problem was that the boiler required a lot of time to repair Mason was afraid that his competitors would take the job, so he decided to sail despite the malfunction of the ship. He patched up the holes in the boiler instead of doing a big repair and invited all the ex-prisoners on board, so there was a broken boiler, an excess number of passengers, a lack of lifeboats, and not the best river conditions. Also, the captain refused to send the ex-prisoners to the hold, so they were all ordinary passengers. There were strong chances for a shipwreck, but the greedy desire to earn more money was stronger. The Sultana went on a voyage and sailed up the river for two days. At this time, one of the biggest Mississippi floods in history began.

The river overflowed its shores because of the flood, with the water level rising several feet. all the trees on the shore disappeared and only the tops were sticking out of the water the ship sailed opposite this powerful current making the boiler work too hard on the evening of April 26th. The Sultana arrived in Memphis Tennessee and they loaded even more 120 tons of sugar and 200 passengers she got incredibly heavy around midnight. The ship continued its dangerous Journey the captain sailed to barges to load a shipment of coal at 1am the vessel left the barge at 2 am the broken boiler unable to withstand. The load suddenly exploded the Sultana was just seven miles north of Memphis few people survived that day. The problem was that passengers trying to escape from the fire jumped into a cold River with a strong current The Sultana disaster is considered the most tragic shipwreck in the history of the United States.

The exact number of those who didn't survive is still unknown, according to various sources. This number was from 961 to 1800. Don't be surprised that almost no one knows this story. There were many more survivors in the Titanic tragedy, and everybody heard about it, but when the Sultana sank during a high-profile event 12 days before the shipwreck, the country lost Abraham Lincoln people hadn't yet recovered from this news, so no one paid much attention to the tragedy of the Sultana. many catastrophes happened quite recently by historical standards one of them. Occurred in 2002 the fairy lejula was a Senegalese vessel, the ferry sailed twice a week mainly along the coast of Dakar carrying passengers who traded mango and palm oil. It made daily voyages and never faced severe problems, thanks to Modern rescue equipment and good repair service but one day, the ship's crew discovered a malfunction and sent the boat to port for almost a year.