The Sultana

[05/08/01] Vicksburg officials accepted a recommendation Monday to erect a marker to the ill-fated steamship Sultana and to place four other plaques along Vicksburg’s river frontage.

The 260-foot Sultana left the port at Vicksburg April 24, 1865, loaded with Union soldiers headed home after the Civil War. Three days later, three of the ship’s four boilers exploded, sinking the Sultana and killing an estimated 1,700 passengers.

Lamar Roberts of the Gray and Blue Naval Museum has spearheaded local efforts, starting with the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends, to get a monument to those who died in the disaster in Vicksburg where their journey began. Roberts asked the Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen to fund the $1,470 cost of a marker for the Sultana and four others.

“If we can get this done, there is talk of moving their annual convention to Vicksburg,” Roberts said.

The recommended site for the markers is between Grove and China streets on a landscaped strip along Levee Street. The markers will be bronze with a green background.

Mayor Robert Walker also suggested that funding might be found in next year’s city budget for an interpretive recording at that site. Though largely forgotten, the number killed in the Sultana explosion was more than the number who died when the Titanic went down in the Atlantic.

“We have to cut the distance between the water and downtown and we can do that by creating various spaces, monuments and activities,” Walker said.

The board voted to “accept and support” the recommendation, but could not allocate funding because of a state law that prohibits the city from spending more than 25 percent of the year’s total budget during the last quarter before municipal elections. Officials indicated that up to $7,350 would be made available for the five plaques after July 1.

“I think this is a great idea,” Walker said.

The marker for the Sultana has been approved by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and Roberts is seeking approval to place four other plaques along the river front. The other markers would also identify historical events on the Mississippi in Vicksburg:

On Jan. 18, 1832, Choctaw Indians were loaded on the steamers Talma and Cleopatra in Vicksburg as part of the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.

The first shots of the Civil War fired in Mississippi were fired at the steamer A.M. Tyler from the bluffs overlooking Vicksburg on Jan. 13, 1861, as the ship moved south along the Mississippi River.

The Arkansas, a Confederate gunboat, left the Port of Yazoo City in July 1862 and fought through an estimated 39 Union vessels in the Mississippi River to make its way to Vicksburg helping to end a 72-day naval blockade of the city a year before the city’s surrender.

On Feb. 2, 1863, the USS Queen of the West rammed the CSS Vicksburg, damaging the ship beyond repair.