The Time Capsule: America’s little-known maritime disaster

 Ask the next ten people you meet what the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history was, and I’d be surprised if you got a correct answer.  Everyone seems to know about the Titanic; few are aware of the Sultana.  Perhaps that’s at least partly because the tragedy followed a series of other major happenings—the Civil War ended, Lincoln was assassinated and the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth followed. The day after Booth was killed, the Sultana went down—and even at the time, many newspapers focused on other current events.          

Hugh Kinzer, who lived out his life in Red Oak, was there.  He survived the war, the deprivations and sickness in a prisoner of war camp and, by some miracle, lived to tell about the Sultana.  

Kinzer’s obituary appeared in this paper in February of 1919:

Another Civil War veteran has gone to the Great Beyond.  Hugh Lemon Kinzer, 83, died at the Red Oak hospital on Monday evening from apoplexy after an illness of seven weeks. The funeral was held yesterday and the remains taken to Oakland for burial. Rev. E.M. Evans preached the funeral sermon.

Hugh Kinzer was born at Leesburg, Ohio, Oct. 14, 1836, and was married to Barbara Huffman Oct. 15, 1856, and to them eight children were born, including Harvey of Red Oak and Mrs. Emma Humburt of Oakland.  Mr. Kinzer was a member of Co. E., 50th Ohio infantry, serving for three years. He was one of the released Union men who had been in Confederate prisons who were on the Mississippi river steamer, Sultana, when it sunk. Mr. Kinzer was one of the few survivors.  He was a member of Garfield Post, G.A.R.  Deceased had lived in Red Oak for many years. He was a good man and many friends extend sympathy to the sorrowing relatives.  

The reporter who wrote that the Sultana “sunk” was giving an inadequate description.  

Kinzer’s 50th Ohio Infantry arrived in Kentucky in the fall of 1862 and from then till the conclusion of the war, engaged Confederate forces in the Deep South. Casualty rates were high and many from the unit—including Kinzer—were taken prisoner.  

Thousands of Union soldiers starved or died of disease in POW camps run by Confederates who often didn’t have enough food for themselves.  When surviving prisoners were liberated at the war’s conclusion, many of them, too weak to walk and wanting only to find a way home, gathered in Vicksburg, Miss.. In late April of 1865, the Sultana, a side-wheel steamer, docked there. Union officers offered the ship’s captain $5 for each soldier he would take north. Swarms of pathetically gaunt former POWs filed aboard, Hugh Kinzer among them.  

The Sultana, with an authorized capacity of 376, had over 2,000 people on board. The Mississippi was at flood stage from heavy spring rains. Overworked boilers, facing a strong current, made slow progress. At about 2 a.m. on April 27, a boiler, too hot and low on water, exploded. Two more blew up seconds later. Hundreds of men who made it through war and imprisonment were killed outright.  Many more, some with no idea of how to swim, others too weak to do so, were pitched into the churning, swollen waters. Fire followed the explosion, and those remaining on what was left of the Sultana could only hang on as the wreckage began to drift downstream.  Smokestacks fell, killing several more, and others died when the deck collapsed and sent them into flames below. Exactly how many perished is unknown, but the number is believed to be about 1,800 (300 more than were lost on the Titanic).    

Hugh Kinzer of Red Oak lived through it, and we wish we knew more about him.     

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.