Historedia
Episode 6 of 6

Sultana Disaster

When
April 27, 1865
Where
Mississippi River
Part of
Collapse of the Confederacy and end of the American Civil War, March–May 1865

The steamboat Sultana exploded and sank in the Mississippi River, killing 1,164 people.

Sultana was a commercial side-wheel steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865. It remains the worst maritime disaster in United States history. The disaster was a direct consequence of the war's end.

Sources

  1. Sultana (steamboat) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-15

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.