The Sinking of The Sultana | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror 

But you get your choice of toppings! That's good! The toppings contain potassium benzoate. That's bad.

@@emlix1 can I go now?

🤣🤣

@@emlix1 good ol homer..hilarious 😂

It's so interesting that it probably would have blown anyway, regardless of capacity. It's just that so many more people died than if he'd followed capacity limits.

" Due to a series of bad decisions and unfortunate circumstances" - story of my life.....

Sounds like an accurate description of my love life. lol

A series of unfortunate events

That phrase is now my excuse for everything. Love it.

@@lauramcquade924 0:30

This is good advice and I learned this lesson the hard way! At one time I was doing private scientific research on the variations in potency of any illegal narcotics I could find, methamphetamine psychosis and its effect on songwriting during prolonged sleep deprivation, and tried and almost succeeded in getting GPS coordinates on a series of hallucinations when I was chased by Greg Brady and the Pilsbury Dough Boy, and a huge crowd of three feet tall protesters wearing Conway Twitty outfits who set loose a vicious green and yellow cartoon tiger on my property. Being a Disco survivor I simply didn`t see rock bottom coming.... The police suddenly shut down the research lab in my 1975 RV van when I made a huge mistake in my miscalculations while in a complete state of stupor, and evidently, according to police officers and four drug screens in a mental health facility, somehow mixed magic mushrooms with whiskey, Budweiser, and several potent uppers, downers, and pain medications after overdosing on high grade medical marijuana thinking it was a hand rolled Bugler cigarette while drunk on vodka. I was told by some sort of government expert, who they sent all the way from Baton Rouge to gather important data about what happened to give to college researchers, that I tested positive for every known drug except PCP which was the very drug I was accused of taking! I don`t remember what happened that night but several angry witnesses claimed I set up all of my music equipment and PA system with 18 inch speakers,designed for very high volume concerts, in the front yard at 2am, then attempted to play guitar while giving an incoherent, profanity laced speech heard as far away as seven miles down the lake by campers at a marina. This effectively ended my career as a rogue scientist and my frequent chemically fueled virtual vacations in outer space. That`s not freedom!

@@baneverything5580 😳

Nah some people died from blasts and fires without even stepping one foot out of their rooms. It should’ve been ,,never leave your underground fireproof, waterproof, blastproof nuclear shelter”

@@baneverything5580 this is one well worded explanation to something which may seem inferior or mischievous to some. 😅

Unless that house is near an overstocked fireworks factory; then definitely, swiftly, permanently leave your house

Someone in Arkansaw obviously does.

It happened right between Lincoln's assassination and Booths capture. Those were much larger stories.

Well, now we can remember them and honor them.

It is sad it got shadowed by other things plus news doesn't spread like nowadays. I feel so bad for their families

I don't hear too many people, including our government who talk about the soldiers who died in Afghanistan back in August!!! Or the civiliansears ago, US Citizens and our Allies who were left. But you feel bad about soldiers who died over 100 years ago? That's typical.

That got me too ! 😂👖

Today it'd be 2000 pairs of used gamer girl pants or some crazy shit.

Confederate Pants is probably an available band name.

@@orangeapples 🤣🤣🤣

@@AleBober Do you need a business partner? Asking for a friend.

Gotta look for the bright side

🎵Always look on the bright side of life ...🎵

Silver lining

They were probably the last thing that went through his mind...except for a piece of twisted metal from one of the boilers.

This is the price you pay for being greedy. Fuckign exploded.

Yeah that was masterful.

And looking at his picture, the captain looks 17.

LOL!!!

My great great grandpa was released from a pow camp, and died in the explosion. My grandma told me the story as a kid. I always felt it was a double travesty. God bless.

@@died4us590 that's a tragic and fascinating piece of history right there. god bless you and your family

+Super Saiya-jin Vegeta One of my ancestor's brothers suffered similar. He was captured and sent to a Union POW camp, possibly Point Lookout but I really don't know where exactly. Wherever he was, they weren't being fed. They starved in what were basically concentration camps for years until the war's end. Keep in mind that he'd also lost his leg in the war, so crippled, starving, and sometimes beaten. He was a picky eater before the war, but there he prayed that if he ever got out alive, he'd never waste a speck of food again. He never actually made it back home, my family lived around Mississippi at the time and assumed he had died, and wouldn't have been able to contact him as they had to abandon their property and move further west for opportunities in Texas. He survived, but was more or less confined to Virginia because he had been permanently crippled. He had a family there, and it's through their records and some luck in finding them that we know now that he lived. We also know he kept true to his promise, he never wasted any food for the rest of his life, wiped his plate clean with the rolls before eating them. He was grateful to be alive, but he still missed his family, as he told his new family all about them.

And they were so young!

same here, almost. my third great grandfather survived Cahaba/ Castle Morgan and the explosion and sinking. He was deformed by it though and lived just 16 yrs after returning home. Pvt John Wood Tn 3rd Calvary, Co C Toe to Toe Cahaba was less lethal than Andersonville by the grace of God alone. 30,000 men were crammed into Andersonville's 42 acre encampment but at Cahaba 3000 men were held in a converted cotton warehouse that measured out to just about a half acre of sq footage.

Horrible

That’s a really horrific detail …. Cheers sedd 👍🏽

awful but fascinating. where did you learn this?

@@kevinmathewson4272 I took quite a few military/wartime history courses in college. I focused all my projects on forgotten but significant disasters including train collisions, plane crashes and shipwrecks such as this and the Wilhelm Gustoff. Also here’s a link to a more descriptive video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZypDpYQC5Rk.html

@@SeddieWeddie this is awesome, thank you for sharing

My wife’s great uncle was riding in the back of a transport when they hit a pot hole and he fell out. He was ran over by a willies jeep and killed. The transport was on the way to the harbor to send them home.

@@Ethan1123Ac yeah, my uncle told me it was the cobblestone street that shook the turret loose. The war may have been over, but it was still plenty dangerous.

Jesus. 😳 I gasped aloud when I read that and it scared my 2 and 3 year old lol. How terrifying… 😢

I'm quite late to the party and your post caught my eye. My son was serving in the war in Iraq. While traveling in a convoy my sons first lieutenant was standing up while riding in a Bradley. That was a big no no. Insurgents would string wire across roads in the hopes of killing service members. Sure enough he was promptly decapitated while being warned to get down. My son was running towards him and witnessed it.

War is never pretty, that's exactly why we should avoid it at all cost!

That's certainly true, including today. Despite all the lying platitudes most politicians give about "caring for soldiers/vets".

$8 a head in 1865 comes out to $144.14 in 2022. Still incredibly cheap accordingly, but dude stood to make a pretty penny. Even just a couple hundred soldiers onboard might have solved his money woes but he got greedy.

Same

I swear there are like 8 worst disasters in US maritime history

@@cdeye7032 in america we fuck up big or we go home

@@cdeye7032 such as?

I didn't know about it either, and that's probably because it happened in the United States itself. Usually, when you hear about maritime disasters they're happening at sea.

What?! but americans dont commit atrocities let alone agaisnt it's own people, history books written by americans say so.

@@Canadianvoice what history books are you reading? We learned about andersonville in HS. Also Japanese internment camps during WW2

@@veronicavatter6436 that person is being sarcastic.

@@basiliska Veronica was pointing out that Canadianvoices comment was wrong.

@@Canadianvoice You're Canadian. How the hell do you know? Stop generalizing our entire country. DAB

Yep, me too

I'm sure Lemony Snicket poached this from somewhere.

Same....same

Each year for me is just one Sultana after another.

Same here.

It's even worse that many had to relive the horrifying memories of the war as a result. They were suffering mentally and physically

War's never really over until you're safe back at home. And for many with trauma, not even after that.

Worse: Many of them had been released from *Andersonville* ... which was a POW-camp horror story.

@@Tindometari Exactly.... Horrible place.

Goes to show that there's no God caring for us.

💔🙏

respect to him❤

Crywolf854... One of my 3x great grandfathers was on board and managed to survive despite not being a good swimmer. Have you ever been to a descendants and friends reunion?

@@deecody5427 No I haven’t.

His story must have been told by some other surviving victim then probably somone that helped him throw those improvised flotation devices overboard.

I have a cemetery behind my house in Ohio with many Civil War soldiers buried there. The saddest one is the soldier who died at Appomattox on the day Lee Surrendered to Grant.

@@katieandkevinsears7724 Wonder how many battles were fought before news got to those people that the war had ended. How many died fighting in a war that was over. Sad really.

It should've been "every person brought home alive"

Filling it to capacity would have earned around $90,000, allowed for a safer and ergo faster trip meaning he might have been able to go back for more, and he would have actually been alive to receive the money. This is what greed earns

@@marclytle644 Well they fought on in Texas. Word did not reach Texas that the war was over and the slaves were freed until June 19th, which is now celebrated as Juneteenth. My birthday happens to be June 19th but I did not learn about the history of June 19th until my family moved from Oklahoma to Texas just before my 10th birthday and threw a birthday party for me inviting all the kids on our street. The other kids told us about the history of June 19th. That was in 1966. Later the holiday spread to other states and became Juneteenth as we know it now. In recent years I’ve met many people who celebrate Juneteenth and don’t know what they are celebrating, even black adults in Texas, and I have told them why it is a holiday. The end of slavery in Texas!

Safety standards are almost always out of hindsight, aren’t they?

Wasn't just steamboat boilers- it was all boilers including industrial and heating. It was a huge problem back then.

@@drockman92 Unfortunately, these types of regulations are always written in blood.

I saw this and my first thought was, "Oh, maybe that inspired the ACME company!"(from Wile E. Coyote and the roadrunner cartoons) Probably not, but their names are similar enough that it made me think of that lol

@@P_RO_ And locomotives. When steam locomotive boilers blew, the results were not pretty.

Nice one for the recommendation. *🙋

Oh thank you for the recommendation! I’m always looking forward books about disasters. Do you have any other suggestions? The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough (about the 1889 Johnstown flood) and A Weekend in September by John Edward Weems (the 1900 Galveston Hurricane) are two disaster books that I rate among my general list of favorite books. For maritime disasters, I liked Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle, and Dead Wake about the Lusitania.

Subbed to your channel my guy. Looking forward to the content

“Oh look Beauregard, there’s a man floating in the river.” “THE SULTANA EXPLODED! PEOPLE ARE DYING!” “Fascinating. Thank you for the news update old chap!”

today, we have Twitter

It's truly a fuqin fantastic channel isn't it my friend* 🙋

Wow! That's really cool. I have family in West TN and my next trip there I'm gonna make a point to go to the museum.

@@earnedmystripes2382 it's not very big, but its interesting. There is a historical marker on the Tennessee side of the river. It's down by the Memphis visitor center.

I believe that Mark Twain refers to the ship in one of his articles, and predicted it would be found in a farmer's field!

Yeah I felt bad for laughing, the phrasing was funny

The fact that it was found under a soybean field says a lot about how much the Mississippi changes course over time. I think a similar shipwreck originally on the Missouri River near Kansas City was also found under farm fields miles away from the present-day river.

My surname is Sultana and I was born in 1982 , I wonder what month they found it

@@andyjay729 You're correct, it's the steamboat Arabia and it was a supply ship that sank in 1856 fully loaded so the recovery included a trove of artifacts. There is a museum dedicated to it in Kansas City Missouri.

Not shocked about the fact that he was aiding the enemy huh?

@@pvtread5207 That happens all the time. Pants being considered contraband is funny.

I guess carrying ANYTHING that would help the Confederacy in any way was considered contraband. But still...pants? 😂

In wartime, what *can't* acquire black-market value?

@@OpalBLeigh We're talking about Confederate soldiers who've been out fighting for a long while. Exposing the enemy to their underwear might well constitute an atrocity.

#facts

True. But it’s not always the LOVE of money. It’s also the NEED of money. Like it or not, everyone needs money to survive in our modern day society. In this case, the boat captain’s pay was CUT, prompting him to look for other, more lucrative jobs.

I hadn't heard a thing about it so once again I'm grateful to this and all of the channels which share crucial history with us ,if we don't know our history then our lives are a mystery* 🙋

Don't leave your house, either...

“I picked a bad day to give up amphetamines”

I thought the Civil War prisoners would have it easy, since both sides were American, but it seem that no matter the country, there's more hatred during a civil war than during a "normal" war.

+Anonymous McAnonymous I remember hearing that early in the war, due to what's basically just extreme laziness, each side made any enemy soldiers they had captured sign a form agreeing that they wouldn't re-enlist and just go home, then released them. To nobody's surprise, few actually followed these directions, so both sides ended up sticking their enemies in prison camps and treating them like garbage instead.

Yeah

I remember watching a video on this. I thought it was by Fascinating Horror but I guess not. I had forgotten the insane number of victims and when I read that number I thought surely you mistyped but looked it up and nope. 😱

Jesus

*General Slocum

God almighty what a nightmare. Thank you for the education just now I will read up on that. And right in the harbor? Incredibly tragic. Again thank you.

MAJORJ As long as they don't romanticise it like the truly awful Titanic movie.

@@ticketyboo2456 maby from a soldiers view of it all,from the battle,to getting wounded to boarding the boat and surviving. I’d watch it.

@@majorj3896 That sounds like a movie I'd watch too, gripping and profound and nobody dropping a stupid necklace into the sea.

@@majorj3896 there is a very well done documentary about it out called Remember the Sultana narrated by actor Sean Astin. And if you're wanting to read first hang accounts from survivors check out the book by Chester D Berry called Loss of the Sultana and reminiscences of survivors that was first published in 1892. The university of Tennessee press has republished it. One of my 3x great grandfather's was a survivor

@@deecody5427 thanks will definitely look in to this.

A fool and his boat are soon parted ...

Some people were just born stupid.

BOAT= Break.Out.Another.Thousand. Very expensive toys.

He removed filters?!? I... Have no idea how bad that really is, but it strikes me as a bad idea so much that I'm livid reading this.

Thank you for your positivity

Yes ma'am, the man has a superior narrative voice and like you say, seamlessly emphasizes. I love his work, and bless you for such a positive compliment to our man here.

I think the hope is the museum opens sometime in 2023. I'm a descendant of a survivor and have attended several of the annual reunions

It's a hard burden having a good heart and truly care for other folks and their wellbeing. It takes a big, strong person to handle it God bless you. Nothing in this world better than folks that love you.

Agreed. Content is excellent! However attractive I find freak accidents for some weird reason, I have to limit my watching to maintain positivity. I never knew this story. Glad I caught it.

I feel the same way. Especially when I hear of ones that happened near where I live such as this and/or that happened during my lifetime. 😞

Confederate "descendent"? Jeez, how old r u? ;-)

@@nikobellic570 sorry that throws anything into question, was meant to be a complement and comparison, not English class.

It says a great deal about the character of the Southern people that the survivors of this horrible tragedy were treated, not as "former Yankees" but as men who needed help by folks that, only months before, they were at war with.

he could, but, "would" he?

I want the same thing and have asked this before. Video, please? :3

I was about to tweet him about it today. There was a press conference on the latest inquest to the sinking today but I didn't get a chance to watch it fully yet as I was at work. They were discussing the holes on Estonia's side but I didn't catch the conclusions. Anyway, there's some brand new information potentially available

That'd at least be quick. Given the choice, I'd pick that over being thrown, severely burned, into cold Muddy Miss water in the middle of the night to suffer and drown at leisure.

I was just about to comment something similar. I think he might have mixed up the fact that Sultana's boilers were a new, temperamental design (and that the physics behind boiler operation weren't particularly well understood at the time) with the idea that fire tube boilers were unconventional. They were anything but, for all applications on both sea and land. 50 years later, Titanic was still equipped with a fire tube boiler design, the Scotch marine boiler, so they were still pretty common, if perhaps just starting to fall out of favor, in 1912. Brick Immorter also made a video on the Sultana, and I think he does a much better job going over the technical details.

Dammit. LOL

Dad? Is that you?

Oooh, very witty! I like it! 😆

In brutal older times, people were desperate to become rich and obtain some comfort and power. Taking risks was considered manly. His family probably mourned him as much as the $18000 dollars they lost with him or even much, much less.

@jetblackjoy What is witht he past tense there? All of that is STILL that way and it causes tragedies to this VERY DAY.

9:03 for those wondering

why is not Ar-Kansas? America, explain!

@@earnedmystripes2382 when the French encountered the Quapaw tribe here, they named the area based on a pluralization of the Quapaw tribes because they couldn't be bothered to learn the names of the other native tribes here.

@@IrishMorgenstern Leave it to the French to name places that sound nothing like they are spelled. See also: Sault Saint Marie.

There are some great books about the Sultana out there by Jerry O Potter and Gene Eric Salecker. Both of their books came out in the 90s, but are excellent. As it happens, Gene has a new book about the Sultana coming out next month

Oooh yes. Very interesting case, would love to see it covered here.

Me too. Huge tragedy

Where was that mate?

@@MrAshyb87 The Children's Blizzard of 1888 (also called the Schoolhouse Blizzard) was in the U.S. Great Plains area, covering several states, including Nebraska, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The day had started off unseasonably warm, so a lot of children went to school without their coats. Then when they tried to walk home, they got lost in the zero-visibility conditions and froze to death. Even children who tried to shelter in the schools with their teachers were not always safe, if they ran out of fuel for the stove. The part that makes this a preventable tragedy is that the Weather Bureau had predicted the blizzard, but people in those regions didn't get the message in time, so most people were not prepared. 235 people died. Obviously, people other than school children got caught in this--adults out working their farms or moving around town--but it was called the children's blizzard because basically it hit just as school was letting out. I would love to see Fascinating Horror cover this tragedy.

@@LunaMurphy What an absolute tragedy. I agree; I think Fascinating Horror could make a very interesting episode out of this event. Thanks for your info, I'd never heard of this before.

@@MrAshyb87 It covered several states. Miss Angela here has made a good synopsis. Cheers!

Yes, that's true. But there were also soldiers on board from Cahaba prison in Alabama, which is where a great great great grandfather of mine was.

Yes, my gg-granduncle survived Andersonville, and was lucky enough to avoid the Sultana. He fought for the Union even though he had just arrived from Germany.

Of course not. Thats how companies stay so wealthy.

Probably because its something original, not a reboot pre-quel or superhero movie. This is why i haven't gone to the movies in years.

Different situations, same reason: money. This wouldn’t be as remarkably profitable as a feel-good film or a power fantasy. That’s where the money is for Hollywood. If a movie about the Sultana ever gets made, it will probably be made by an indie studio or director, since they still have the heart to cover art and tragedy.

Modern movies would definitely inject bias into the accounts, or possibly even straight-up lie at the point that the people of Memphis, many of whom likely fought for the South, rowed out to rescue the Union soldiers. Titanic totally lied about officer William Murdoch killing passengers and then himself, when the reality was that Murdoch died getting as many people as he could to safety (he is honored in his hometown in Scotland as a hero, and they were pissed about the movie), so I wouldn't put it past modern Hollywood to get in that "all southern people are evil racists" agenda and have them deny help to the victims instead. Especially these days, given that it seems they want to stir up as much tension as they can.

Jordan, there was a full length documentary released a few years ago narrated by Sean Astin that's amazing. I had an ancestor on board who survived. While I think a Hollywood movie would be interesting, I'm so afraid they would mess up the story completely and not give correct information.

the problem was the they were very hard to clean all the silt out of. the Mississippi River is a very silty waterway.

@@hirisk761 Cannot disagree. Same problem existed for locomotives, especially in hard water territory.

The demon core was already covered by another channel, one that focuses on nuclear accidents.

@@anonymousmcanonymous3055 Yep. It's a meme on that channel now. I know just the one.

Or a raisin dropped in a glass of water. lol

🤣 🏊‍♂️🤽‍♂️🍇🏊‍♀️🏄‍♀️

Or me trying to make a fruit cake.

The boilers must've been made out of saltine crackers. 🤔

@@pheart2381 You’re the ones who sent me that fruitcake for Christmas! (pause) It made me so sick. 🤮

Well, "just" depends on when they made the rationalization of war, but such things are the faults of the powerful who boss around the people they see as below them. Regardless of why they fought, be they unwilling conscripts fresh off the immigrant's boat or willing idealists, they deserved to be at home.

Or "the Titanic of the Mississippi".