Edward Dudley Tarpley wrote of his arrival in Memphis, Tennessee, two days after the Sultana disaster in April 1865: “The Steamer Sultaner exploded just above the city on the 27th. Thare was 22 hundred passengers aboard mostly paroled federal soldiers, 14 hundred lives lost the boat caught on fire and floated just passed the city and sunk, the stream was gorged with dead bodies.”
