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Buried Under a Field: The Forgotten Sultana Massacre
Buried Under a Field: The Forgotten Sultana Massacre
A plow struck timber thirty-two feet below a soybean field and revealed the deadliest maritime disaster in American history buried four miles from downtown Memphis. The steamboat Sultana was carrying 2,127 people on a vessel built for 461, and 1,164 died after three boilers exploded-so how did this catastrophe happen, and why did the nation forget it so quickly?
In this episode, we follow the chain of decisions, economic pressures, and failed repairs that led the Sultana to be overloaded and to sail with compromised boilers, and we ask…
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