SS Sultana explosion - April 27, 1865 - loss of 1,192 souls #maritimehistory

Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat.

On April 27, 1865, the boat exploded in the worst maritime disaster in United States history.

She was designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, but she was carrying 2,155 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee, killing 1,192 passengers.

This disaster was overshadowed in the press by other events surrounding the end of the American Civil War, most particularly the killing on the previous day of President Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Wikipedia