Sultana Disaster Museum Explores Deadly Steamboat Fire

A state-of-the-art museum dedicated to the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history opens November 14 in Marion, Ark.

In the early morning hours of April 27, 1865, the boilers on the paddlewheel steamboat Sultana exploded as the boat was underway on the Mississippi River, seven miles north of Memphis, Tenn.

While the boat had a capacity of 376 people, more than 2,100 were on board, including almost 2,000 recently released Union soldiers who had been held as prisoners of war in Vicksburg, Miss., according to the museum’s website. Nearly 1,200 people were killed.

The Sultana Disaster Museum seeks to tell the stories of those on board through their images as well as their words, as read by voice actors from their diaries and letters, along with reproductions of period appropriate steamboat paraphernalia and some of the few relics that survived the blaze, which burned the boat to the waterline. The disaster was underreported in news accounts at the time, eclipsed by President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the approaching conclusion of the Civil War.

Owned and operated by the Sultana Historical Preservation Society, the 21,000-square-foot museum with 9,000 square feet of permanent exhibit space replaces an 800-square-foot building. The new museum also includes an education center, event space, a small library and a temporary exhibit gallery, along with offices, Sultana Disaster Museum Executive Director Jeff Kollath said.

“We’re putting the stories of the individuals at the forefront,” he said of how the space is organized.

What To See

Those entering the museum are greeted by the faces of soldiers on board the Sultana in the theater, where they watch a short introductory film, and meet other passengers as they walk through the galleries, learning what happened to them along the way.

“What we’ve done is we’ve created something that uses technology to create part of the environment and experience of being on the boat in 1865,” Kollath said.

That technology includes computerized avatars of crewmen and soldiers, with 98-inch screens that serve as a moving wall, showing visitors what was going on in various sections of the steamer. They show firemen tending the boilers as well as soldiers milling around on deck.

“We have a lot of movement, a lot of motion in the space,” Kollath said.

Visitors can see what the steamboat’s boilers looked like before and after the explosion, peer up the smokestacks, read letters sent home from POW camp prisoners, explore a 14-foot model of the boat and examine some of its splintered wooden hull.

“You can race a steamboat up the Mississippi River,” Kollath said. “We have a couple of stations where you can look at the schematics of the boat and zoom in on different parts and pieces and see where it was built.”

Some of the artifacts came from the Sultana Survivors Association and others from veterans’ groups that formed after the Civil War, Kollath said.

“We tried to identify what some of the iconic elements and pieces of the boat are that will help to tell our story,” he said.

As the 1865 river channel has shifted east over time, what remains of the Sultana is underneath about 20 feet of Mississippi River silt and a soybean field, Kollath said. The parts of it that could be reused were salvaged in the summer of 1865, including engines and various pieces of the iron work and drivetrain. Other pieces, including fire bricks and wood, continue to be churned up every spring during plowing, he said. Some of the wooden pieces have been carved into objects by skilled artisans and are also on display.

The museum itself is the former Marion High School and gymnasium, built in 1938-39 and used for 35 years by the high school and then by the elementary school across the street. The project to turn the building into a museum has been underway for more than a decade, although some of the first major fundraisers took place in 2021.

“It’s been five years of a lot of hard work by our board and community members, raising money and writing grants,” Kollath said.

More than 400 individual donors supported the capital campaign, raising the $11 million eventually needed to bring the museum to life.

A 100-seat auditorium is available for programs that will be offered to the public and can be rented for luncheons or professional gatherings. A lobby area with floor to ceiling windows is also available, meaning the museum will be able to comfortably host 200 people for special events.

Kollath envisions the museum offering lectures, movies and discussions about the Sultana along with Civil War history and Arkansas history, music and art.

The museum, now located at 114 Military Road, will be open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. General admission is $15 with discounts for seniors and for students. It is free for those age 6 and under. A membership program is also available through the museum’s website at www.sultanadisastermuseum.com.