On a spring night in April 1865, the overcrowded steamboat SS Sultana churned up the Mississippi River carrying thousands of Union soldiers newly freed from Confederate prisons. Below deck, the ship’s aging boilers strained under immense pressure; engineers, eager to keep speed, had tied down the safety valve lids that should have released steam. Just after midnight near Memphis, the boilers gave way in a deafening blast that split the vessel apart. Fire roared through the decks as men were hurled into the cold river, many too weak from captivity to swim. By dawn, more than a thousand lives were lost in what became the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history.
On a spring night in April 1865, the overcrowded steamboat SS Sultana churned up the Mississippi River carrying thousands of Union soldiers newly freed from Confederate prisons. Below deck, the ship’s aging boilers strained under immense pressure; engineers, eager to keep speed, had tied down the safety valve lids that should have released steam. Just after midnight near Memphis, the boilers gave way in a deafening blast that split the vessel apart. Fire roared through the decks as men were hurled into the cold river, many too weak from captivity to swim. By dawn, more than a thousand lives were lost in what became the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history.
This is a story about the importance of lids.