Arkansas museum expands to better tell the story of the Sultana shipwreck

An artist's depiction shows the Sultana steamboat engulfed in flames on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee, in 1865. (Photo Courtesy of the Sultana Disaster Museum)

The country’s biggest maritime disaster happened just a few miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, when a steamboat caught fire at the end of the Civil War and more than half of its 2,300 passengers drowned in the Mississippi River.

Now a museum dedicated to the disaster is being upgraded to better tell the story.

About 15 minutes away from downtown Memphis, a modest museum in downtown Marion, Arkansas, has been educating visitors about the Sultana since 2015, the 150th anniversary of the Civil War-era disaster.

After years of fundraising, the Sultana Historical Preservation Society — the nonprofit behind the museum — hired Memphis-based Zellner Construction to do a $7 million renovation of the old Marion High School, located just a few blocks away from the existing museum.

The nonprofit hit its $10 million fundraising goal through a million-dollar grant from the U.S. Economic Development Agency; a million-dollar grant from FedEx; a $500,000 grant from the Delta Regional Authority; and a $750,000 pledge of state funding from former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, among other donations.

The new 17,000 square-foot museum will feature a model of part of the steamboat, a theater, a research library and more. Its developers hope to open its doors to the public in 2025 — the 160th anniversary of the disaster.

“We hope to have a museum visitor taken back to 1865 and hear the individual stories in the words of those soldiers and eyewitnesses,” said John Fogleman, president of the Sultana Historical Preservation Society.

The upgraded Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Arkansas, seen here in an artist’s rendering, will feature a model of part of the Sultana, a theater, a research library and more. (Photo Courtesy of the Sultana Disaster Museum)

In 1976, Fogleman’s father handed him a pen and ink drawing of a burning boat and a copy of “Transport to Disaster.” The book, which tells “the forgotten story of the Sultana,” mentions his great-great-grandfather, also named John Fogleman. He lived a quarter mile from the riverbank where the burning boat drifted and was among the residents who helped with the rescue.

Even with a family connection to the disaster, Fogleman said he didn’t learn more until being tapped to join the board of the nonprofit behind the museum.

“The more I learned of the story, the more I believed that the men who had survived the Civil War, had survived the prisoner of war camps … and were finally going home had not been treated justly,” Fogleman said.

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Union prisoners were being shuttled back home from Confederate prison camps on boats like the Sultana at the end of the Civil War, but the number of passengers on board was nearly six times its capacity when its boilers caught fire near Memphis.

“Investigations revealed a litany of corrupt practices, including kickbacks and bribes paid to high-ranking Union officers, which caused the overcrowding of the boat and led to this deadly disaster,” according to the museum’s website.

But the sinking of the Sultana was overshadowed by other events: Robert E. Lee surrendered earlier that month; President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated just a couple weeks prior; and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was killed the day before the Sultana sank.

“It means a great deal to me to see us so close to having a museum that gives these soldiers their rightful place in history, and it is extremely gratifying to have descendants of men who were on board tell me how much they appreciate what we are trying to do,” Fogleman said.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. Sign up to republish stories like this one for free.

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