The sinking of this American vessel in the 1800s claimed more lives than the sinking of Titanic did:
In April 1865, the American Civil War was in its last days. Union inmates were being released from Confederate prisons in the Deep South and sent to Camp Fisk near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Civilian riverboats were hired to carry the former prisoners up the Mississippi River toward home. The Union army paid the boats? captains a fee for each soldier carried, so the captains overloaded their vessels to make profit. One such vessel was the sidewheel steamer Sultana. On April 26, Sultana was having boiler trouble, but she departed with about 2,000 people (and more than 100 animals) on board?about three times her safe limit. Just after midnight on the night of April 26-27, a short distance above Memphis, Tennessee, the ship?s boilers exploded. Sultana broke up, burned, and sank. Approximately 1,700 passengers died in the incident, about 200 more than would perish in the sinking of Titanic in 1912.
