prisoners of war Archives

The Sultana: America’s Worst Maritime Disaster, and the Nation That Barely Noticed

Raymond on September 7, 2026

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.

The Cowra Breakout: The Night 1,100 Prisoners Charged the Wire

Raymond on August 13, 2026

In the freezing early hours of an Australian winter morning in 1944, more than a thousand Japanese prisoners rushed the fences of a POW camp armed with baseball bats and sharpened cutlery. It became the largest prison break of the Second World War.