Civil War Coda: The Sultana

The photograph above, taken on April 25, 1865, is believed to be the last picture of the Sultana, a coal-powered steamer that carried cargo and passengers up and down the Mississippi River.  Two days later, in the pre-dawn hours of April 27,  one and then two more of the Sultana's four boilers exploded, lighting flames all through the ship, which ultimately sank.  

As the photo suggests, the ship was very crowded.  It was designed to hold 376 passengers but at the time carried as many as 2,400.  By sunrise, about 1,800 passengers and crew members had drowned or died of burns. 

The Sultana incident is the most deadly in American maritime history, eclipsing the more often discussed loss of 1,500 lives when the Titanic plowed into an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage from England to the United States in 1912.

Maybe it's proportion.  The Titanic sinking occurred in peacetime, when large-scale deaths were rare.  The Sultana incident followed the Civil War, when the country was reeling from the loss of 620,000 combatants who had died of wounds and disease.  Another couple thousand lost lives may not have seemed to matter so much.

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The war had ended earlier that same April.  After several days of useless skirmishes in Virginia, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee answered a message from Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, saying, "I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood."  Two days later, on April 9, Lee signed surrender documents at Appomattox Courthouse. 

Less than a week after that, on April 15, Pres. Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.  Booth was hunted down and shot dead on April 26.

In the south, Union prisoners were released from Cahaba Prison in Alabama and the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia.  Many made their way by train or on foot to Vicksburg, where they were to be transported up the Mississippi to their northern homes. 

One Union officer agreed that all 2,100 of the camp's remaining residents would be sent north on the Sultana, which already had booked a couple hundred other passengers, overloading it to many times its capacity.  The soldiers, accustomed to crowded prison life and very eager to go home, no doubt  boarded without complaint. 

In exchange for premium pricing from the US Army, the ship's captain agreed to pay a bribe to a Union quartermaster.  All wars attract profiteers, alas.

On April 26, the Sultana docked at Memphis and took on a new load of coal for fuel.  It left that evening and exploded around 2 a.m. after traveling about seven miles north.

Several reasons have been advanced for the explosion, starting with crowding on the passenger decks.  On the other hand, it has been noted that the steamer's cargo hold was largely empty and the overall weight of the ship was not extreme.

In addition, the first boiler to blow had been repaired with a metal patch on its side in its most recent stop at Vicksburg.  The repair may have been done badly.

And finally, the winter of 1864-5 had been an unusually rainy one.   The runoff in the river was much heavier than usual, creating a stronger southbound current against which the Sultana made its way north. 

The current, fed by ice-cold runoff from distant mountains, made survival particularly difficult for the former war prisoners who went into the water.  Most were malnourished and  emaciated, and many were suffering from diseases contracted in prison camps.   And, in that day, few people knew how to swim.  

Boats from shore rescued some people, and another steamer heading south stopped and pulled as many as 150 passengers out of the river.  But most of the passengers and all of the ship's crew died.

Books

The Civil War has been a preoccupation of American historians, professional and amateur, for150 years.  I spent an afternoon recently at the downtown Nashville library, reading from books about the Sultana and its sad end.

From "Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors," (edited by Chester D. Berry, published by the University of Tennessee Press, 2005), comes one many soldiers' stories:

"My first recollection was that I was on my feet and enveloped in a cloud of hot steam, and was considerably scalded in the face.  After the steam had risen I said to Corporal Irons what is the matter.  He said the boat had blown up.  He seemed to be very much excited, and told me they thought they could make it to shore.  These were the last words he said to me, but as the boys kept jumping off from the boat into the river he kept calling for them not to for they would all be saved.

      "I then began to look around to devise some means of escape.  I stepped back to where some of my company's boys were untying a yawl; I thought that I would help them get it down, and then I thought if I did they would all jump for it and perhaps be lost, which I learned afterward was the case.  I then got a shutter and board from off the pilot house and tied them together with a pair of drawers.  By that time the flames had come through.  I then got over the railing behind the wheel house and climbed down to the lower deck.  By this time all was confusion and men were jumping into the river to get away from the flames.  I looked around for a clear space to jump, for I knew that if I jumped in where men were struggling they would seize my board and I would be lost, for I could swim but little.

      "I waited a short time and when there was an opening large enough I threw my board in, jumped on and went down under quite a way, but came up all right and floated away from the boat.  After I had gone four or five rods a bundle of clothing came floating along and I took it in with my right hand and held on to the board with my left.  I then floated with the current. . . .

       "I was picked up four miles below Memphis by two men in a yawl and rowed to a gunboat . . . where I was taken in . . . eleven miles from the disaster.   I wish to state here that there were thirteen of my company on board the Sultana, and but two besides myself were saved."

Daniel Carber

Passengers threw boards, hay bales, doors and shutters into the river, then held onto them to float.  There were fights in the water for these handholds, and the losers drowned.  As people on the Sultana prepared to jump, they found the water crowded with other people, some drowning, and so had to spend time looking for clear spots of into which to leap.

Others were not so fortunate.  The boilers' explosion dislodged large pieces of the cabin walls, which pinned down some passengers who, their colleagues observed, "roasted to death."  Many of the burn victims begged to be thrown into the water to die there rather than endure the pain of the flames.

Some other Sultana titles:

Jerry O. Potter, "The Sultana Tragedy:  American's Greatest Maritime Disaster," Pelican Publishing Company, 1992.   

Alan Huffman, "Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, Harper Collins, 2009.

Gene Eric Salecker, "Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865," Naval Institute Press, 1996.

Notes

--Like D-Day veterans or relatives of those who died on 9/11, the Sultana survivors gathered in various cities regularly on the anniversary of its occasion.  The last known survivor, a Midwestern man, died in 1935.

--The remains of the Sultana were located in 1982, under an Arkansas soybean field.  (The river, appropriately called Big Muddy, had changed course over intervening years and deposited so much silt that the Sultana's final resting stop was two miles inland.)  

         The nearby city of Marion, Ark., opened a small museum commemorating the Sultana last year and plans to increase the range and size of its exhibit over time. 

The Lonely Pyramid

An early view of the Memphis Pyramid

Memphis, like many post-industrial cities, has faced the challenges of emptied-out inner-city neighborhoods and business districts. 

This happened in a Memphis area called the Pinch, north of downtown and near the Mississippi River. Local lore says the name described the pinched guts of malnourished Irish immigrants who fled the potato famine of the mid 19th century.  The Irish were joined by Jews, Italians, Russians and Greeks.

In the 20th century, many of the immigrants and their children moved farther east, and the small stores and businesses that served them closed or followed along.  A new population, African American and mostly poor, settled in the Pinch.  The formerly busy commercial district never recovered, and Memphis was left with a bald spot that needed more redevelopment than just housing projects.  

This is the story of how city tried to revitalize the area.

The Pyramid

In 1989, ground was broken on what was called the Memphis Pyramid.  The event was celebrated with a great big outdoor party.  City leaders had approved a plan to build a civic icon that would attract tourists and herald the turnaround of forward-looking Memphis.

It is easy to see why the pyramid shape was chosen.  It drew on historic themes, including pyramid-shaped Chickasaw burial mounds and the pyramids of Giza, located near the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, from which Memphis, Tenn., took its name. 

Earlier that same year, a smaller glass pyramid designed by I.M. Pei had opened in the central courtyard of the Louvre in Paris and was widely hailed as a brilliant contemporary bit of work.

And, too, Memphians may have noticed that the St. Louis Gateway Arch, 300 miles north along the Mississippi River, had become a prominent local symbol recognized well beyond the boundaries of Missouri.

The construction cost of the Pyramid, $65 million, was shared by the city and Shelby County, which sold bonds to be paid off over 30 years by tax revenues generated by the Pyramid and related developments.

Inside the Pyramid was a 20,000-seat arena, perfect for college basketball games and tournaments, as well as other major sports events and big musical concerts.

During the construction period, a Pyramid operator was hired by the city and tasked with developing other projects in the empty commercial area.  He promised to bring in restaurants, museums and various activities.  The Pyramid was to anchor a destination entertainment area that would attract tourists from around the country and perhaps even the world.  

After setting the man to work, the city and county expanded his mandate and asked him to establish additional entertainment venues on nearby Mud Island, not far from Memphis' Mississippi shore.

In 1991, the Pyramid opened in an inauspicious way.  During its debut event, a concert, its bathrooms flooded and the water spread far enough to force the musicians off the stage.

Worse, the promised ancillary developments had not been built.  There was no music museum located under the stadium bleachers.  There was no Hard Rock Cafe.  All there was was the Pyramid surrounded by empty land and parking lots.  

The operator, once named Memphis' Man of the Year, was fired, and his company declared bankruptcy.  People still argue about whether he was a charlatan or whether he had been given an unrealistically ambitious assignment.  

Through the 1990s, the pyramid was used for college basketball games and concerts, but it sat by itself in the middle of an undeveloped area.

Hope was rekindled in 2001 when a National Basketball Association team, the Vancouver Grizzlies, relocated to Memphis and the Pyramid.

Unfortunately, the Pyramid's arena did not meet NBA venue requirements, and so the city sold $250 million in bonds and built the Fed Ex Forum about a half mile away. (Federal Express, which is based in Memphis, paid a generous $92 million for the naming rights.)

In 2004, the Grizzlies and the college teams moved to the Forum, and except for occasional concerts and church convocations, the Pyramid was abandoned.  Even as it sat empty, annual maintenance expenses ran to $700,000.

City leaders cast around for new uses for the Pyramid. A local congressman proposed a Mid-South satellite of the Smithsonian Museum.  There was talk of an indoor theme park, of a science center, of other projects.  Nothing proved out.

By 2005, it was revealed that Memphis was in talks to lease the Pyramid to Bass Pro Shops, the operator of oversized stores selling outdoor gear.  Negotiations proceeded in fits and starts for years.

A general outline of terms was reached in 2010.  Bass Pro and the city (the county had dropped out of Pyramid participation) agreed to a 55-year lease, which sounds a little optimistic. How many stores that opened 55 years ago are still operating today?

For its part, the city agreed to fix up the arena interior.  It carted 900 truckloads of bleacher seats and other irrelevant fixtures to the dump.   It corrected mechanical problems and paid for a major seismic upgrade.  It built the tallest free-standing elevator in the country to the top of the Pyramid, 300 feet up, and then added a viewing platform and indoor space for a bar and restaurant.

At the time of the lease signing, the city pledged to spend $30 million on the upgrades, but a local man told me the spending was understood to be $105 million.  It appears that federal grants for improvements to blighted areas may have made up the difference.

For its part, Bass Pro was reported to have spent $113 million to set up its shop.  Some of the money went to rustic-looking indoor displays and company signage on the Pyramid's sides.  More was spent on restaurants and a $300-a-night hotel, also housed inside the Pyramid.

The whole process took years.  At first Bass Pro aimed to open 2013.  Then the date was pushed back to 2014, then late 2014.  Finally the thing opened in May 2015.


The Bass Pro Shop

I never visited the old Pyramid, but I did go to the Bass Pro Shop last month.  It is remarkable for the range of amusements it offers in addition to outdoor gear.  There were families studying tanks of fish (many, many catfish) and juvenile alligators, as well as stuffed bears and deer.  Fathers and children were practicing shooting with replica long guns at a small diorama-type range.  People were standing in lines to take the $10 (round-trip!) elevator ride up to look at the view.

The merchandise included thousands of fishing reels, hundreds of Bass Pro-themed tee shirts, several displays of camouflage-colored Crocs, and paddleboards, scuba gear, fishing boats and off-road vehicles.

The restaurants seemed to be doing a nice business.   I didn't visit the hotel, but Memphians say its rooms are overpriced and mostly empty.

Worth It?

I am not a big outdoorsperson (although I did catch a fish once.)  I picked out a tchotchke for a friend, and stood in line at the cash register as a couple from Australia paid for several groaning shopping bags full of purchases.

So maybe the Pyramid Pro Shop is a destination, just as the Pyramid was intended to be.  Still, its rent, based on sales, apparently was far less than expected in its first year of operation.

As I walked out to find my car in the parking lot, I noticed that most of the land surrounding the Pyramid still was empty.

On one end, the city has put up more affordable housing, likely to replace older housing projects that have been demolished.  On the downtown side, there is a new light-rail station.

There is nothing much between either of these and the Pyramid.

I can imagine the enthusiasm city leaders had when they planned and built the Pyramid.

What they wanted was a lively entertainment neighborhood surrounding the building.

What they ended up with, unfortunately, is a smaller entertainment center totally enclosed within the building itself.

An Icon Repurposed

"(T)his should serve as a cautionary tale for what strange things can happen when political expediency and civic boosterism converge and give birth to promises that outstrip common sense. 
       "It is in such a cauldron that promoters of implausible ideas are treated as saviors of the city by politicians reluctant to conduct basic due diligence for fear of having to abandon the latest magic answer to the problems of Memphis."

smartcitymemphis.blogspot.com

July 19, 2007