The Sultana: America’s Worst Maritime Disaster, and the Nation That Barely Noticed
In April 1865 a Mississippi steamboat built to carry 376 people set off with more than 2,100 aboard, most of them freed Union prisoners of war finally going home. When her patched boilers exploded in the dark, as many as 1,800 died — more than the Titanic. And America, numb from four years of war and the murder of its president, barely looked up.