Dallas Public Library

Sinking the Sultana, a Civil War story of imprisonment, greed, and a doomed journey home, Sally M. Walker

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 172-191) and index

illustrations

index present

10-14, Brodart

5-9, Brodart

non fiction

Sinking the Sultana

bibliography

969386295

Sally M. Walker

a Civil War story of imprisonment, greed, and a doomed journey home

Publisher Annotation: In 1865, the Civil War was winding down and the country was reeling from Lincoln?s assassination. Thousands of Union soldiers, released from Confederate POW camps, were to be transported home on the steamboat Sultana. With a profit to be made, the captain rushed repairs to the boat so the soldiers wouldn?t find transportation elsewhere. More than 2,000 passengers boarded in Vicksburg, Mississippi . . . on a boat with a capacity of 376. The journey was violently interrupted when the boat?s boilers exploded; passengers were bombarded with red-hot iron fragments, burned by scalding steam, and flung overboard into the churning Mississippi. Although rescue efforts were launched, the survival rate was dismal ? more than 1,500 lives were lost. In a compelling, exhaustively researched account, renowned author Sally M. Walker joins other historians who have been asking the same question for 150 years: who (or what) was responsible for the Sultana?s disastrous fate? 208pp

pre adolescent