The young private — freshly raised from the ranks of the dead — was asleep when death unsuccessfully came for him a third time.

Pvt. Chester D. Berry, a mere 20 years old, had already cheated the Grim Reaper at Cold Harbor and in Andersonville Prison by the time he boarded the ill-fated Sultana.

The private from Michigan was captured just before the most vicious day of fighting at Cold Harbor and was initially listed as dead, only to be found starving to death in the horrid Georgia prison where guards could barely feed themselves.

For Berry, Vicksburg and the outlying Camp Fisk had a ray of hope. Lining up at the train depot and packing like sardines into the Sultana with an estimated 2,500 other men April, 24, 1865, finally meant Berry could go home to his parents who spent an hour in prayer every night asking for his safe return.

I’m sure he was dreaming of his family and a home untouched by the horrors of war when the Sultana’s boiler exploded killing at least 1,500 people aboard the boat. Berry was hit in the head with a piece of firewood. It broke his skull, and he lay and dazed under his blanket before a stream of boiling water soaked him and killed his uncovered bunkmate.

The boat was catching fire, and an unimaginable panic ensued. Nuns prayed for mercy. Men leapt into the water only to be drowned by others grasping at their clothes.

“The horrors of that night will never be effaced from my memory — such swearing, praying, shouting and crying I had never heard; and much of it from the same throat — imprecations followed by petitions to the Almighty, denunciations by bitter weeping,” Berry later wrote of his experience aboard the Sultana.

As Berry was preparing to make a break for the water, he found a fellow soldier weeping bitterly and wringing his hands in agony.

“O dear, O dear,” the soldier continued to cry as Berry approached to offer his help.

“I’m not hurt at all,” the man continued. “but I can’t swim, I’ve got to drown, O dear.”

Berry told the man to calm his nerves and find a piece of the broken deck to support him in the water. The man said he had, but it was snatched away by a member of the frenzied mob. Berry told him to simply grab another piece and jump into the river.

“Why?” the soldier asked he. “What would be the use? They would take it from me. O dear, I tell you there is no use; I’ve got to drown. I can’t swim.”

Disgusted, Berry snarled back “Drown then, you fool,” as he shoved the man out of the way.

Berry late said not helping the man was his biggest regret.

When the crowded water began to clear, Berry jumped in the water, thinking about his mother.

“Mother, by the help of God, your prayer shall be answered,” he later said he thought as he clutched a piece of broken deck board.

Berry and hundreds of other passengers were rescued and taken to hospitals in Memphis. After being treated, he made another trip by steamboat up the Mississippi River to Cairo, Ill. Eventually he made his way home to Jackson, Mich., where his mother had prayed so long for his return.

After cheating death three times and seeing horrors unrivaled by pits of hell, Berry became a minister.

Of course Berry’s story is just one of thousands of intriguing tales about the Sultana. At 7 p.m. Friday in the Vicksburg National Military Park Visitor Center, ranger Jake Koch will present a two-hour program on the boat whose story is filled with corruption and disaster.

I’ll see you there.

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Josh Edwards is a reporter and can be reached by email at josh.edwards@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545.