Tragic End of Sultana’s Mascot Alligator

The steamboat Sultana tragically exploded on April 27, 1865, 160 years ago today. The steamer had 2,127 people aboard, most being recently released U.S. prisoners of war being transported up the Mississippi River to return home. This was well past its passenger capacity of 376. The explosion of one boiler, followed almost immediately by two more, happened at 2:00 am, several miles upriver from Memphis. Somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 passengers and crew perished in the explosion or drowned trying to escape.

Emerging Civil War has previously written about Sultana’s explosion, including articles from Chris Mackowski and Curt Fields about remembering the disaster, from Sarah Kay Bierle about the Sultana Museum, and even a review of the latest book about the ship. Something that has been left out of our coverage to date has been another casualty that night, that of Sultana’s mascot alligator.

The fact that there was an animal mascot for the steamboat is not very surprising. Such was a custom for ships worldwide throughout the nineteenth century (end even through World War Two). Civil War era warships often had dogs, cats, and birds kept as pets or mascots. A few ships even had penguins, pigs, monkeys, and even bears as mascots.[1] That is on top of the host of animal mascots kept by army units as well.[2] Sultana keeping an alligator is novel, but not unheard of, and the crew likely took it aboard on one of its many journeys downriver.

Not much is known of the alligator before Sultana’s final trip except that it was often “kept in the wheel-house” and that there was a large box on the steamboat where it was kept when it was needed to be confined during ship maneuvering or loading and unloading of passengers and cargo.[3] Eyewitnesses noted the creature was somewhere between seven-and-a-half and nine-and-a-half feet long.

Sultana’s alligator soon became a spectacle that many soldiers made note of. “Everyone that was on the ‘Sultana,’” Pvt. Ben C. Davis of the 7th Kentucky Cavalry recalled, “knew something about the monstrous alligator.”[4] “It was a curiosity for us,” Pvt. William Lugenbeal of the 135th Ohio remembered, but not everyone left it alone.[5] “We would punch him with sticks to see him open his mouth,” Lugenbeal remembered, which angered Sultana’s crew so much that they moved the alligator’s box into a closet and locked it in there for the duration of the journey upriver.[6]

The alligator was initially on no one’s mind as Sultana’s boilers exploded, though that quickly changed. As Sultana burned and survivors jumped into the Mississippi to escape, a couple of soldiers remembered the large box that housed the alligator. Before jumping overboard, Sergeant William Feis of the 64th Ohio desperately looked for “something that would keep my head above water,” but found nothing as everything “had been taken even to a box which had contained a live alligator.”[7]

Pvt. William Ligenbeal, also desperate for something to float on, got to the box first. Opening the closet, he dragged the box out and opened it. When the alligator did not immediately leave, Ligenbeal grabbed a bayonet and “ran the bayonet through him three times”[8] He then dragged the box to the edge of the deck, threw it overboard, and used it to float downriver to safety. He was eventually picked up three miles downriver from Memphis by the ironclad Essex.

Lugenbeal left the alligator on deck with its wounds, supposing he killed it. In fact, most examinations of Sultana claimed such.[9] However, it survived the wounds for a time, crawling to the deck. Private John J. Zaiser and a handful of other soldiers saw the alligator “lying on the coal at liberty” in the vessel’s coal pit, but after “he turned toward us” Zaiser and his party “decided that we had better not stay there any longer” and fled.[10] It likely died on that coal pile of the stabbing wounds.

Though Sultana’s alligator died on the sinking ship, many soldiers trying to survive in the Mississippi that night worried it was prowling the waters looking for prey. “While the boat was burning the alligator troubled me almost as much as the fire,” Pvt. Davis wrote after the fact.[11] Ohio Corporal Ira Horner sympathized, admitting he “did not feel comfortable from the fact that there was an alligator seven and one-half feet long keeping me company.”[12] So did J.H. Simpson of the 3rd Tennessee (Union) cavalry, who “kept thinking about that alligator as I was in the water. I wondered if it would grab my leg.”[13] One group of soldiers, clinging to a log to avoid drowning, were surprised when a horse approached them, as they “took it to be an alligator.” They “let loose and gave him full possession” of the log, risking drowning instead of potentially being killed by the steamboat’s alligator.[14]

Like many other mascots from the Civil War, Sultana’s alligator did not survive the conflict. Instead, it became one more life lost among the thousands of people killed in what became the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history.

Endnotes:

[1] Ron Field, “From the Naval Archives: Navy Mascots and Pets,” Civil War Navy – The Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 3, Winter 2023, 53-58.

[2] The biggest modern treatment on animals in the war is Earl J. Hess, ed. Animal Histories of the Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2022).

[3] William Lugenbeal Recollection, Chester C. Berry, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors (Lansing, MI: Darius D. Thorp, 1892), 225.

[4] Ben C. David Recollection, Berry, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors, 104.

[5] William Lugenbeal Recollection, Berry, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors, 225.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Sergeant William Fies Recollection, Berry, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors, 128.

[8] William Lugenbeal Recollection, Berry, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors, 225.

[9] Modern newspapers still claim this: John Deppen, “Passengers struggle to survive when steamboat sinks,” The Daily Item, Sunbury, PA, May 20, 2001; “Two TV Series will tell Sultana’s story,” The Daily World, Helena, AR, June 28, 2013. The most recent book on Sultana included Zaiser’s story to show how the alligator initially survived the stabbing wounds. See Gene Eric Salecker, Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana: The Worst Maritime Disaster in American History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. 2022), 194.

[10] “Sultana Wreck: A Canton Survivor Tells the Story of His Escape,” Repository, Canton, OH, October 17, 1897.

[11] Ben C. David Recollection, Berry, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors, 105.

[12] Ira B. Corner Recollection, Berry, Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors, 179-180.

[13] Warner Ogden, “1700 Died When Sultana Sank 64 Years Ago,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, April 28, 1929.

[14] Joseph Taylor Elliott, The Sultana Disaster, (Indianapolis, IN: Edward J. Hecker, 1913), Indiana Historical Society Publications, Vol. 5, No. 3, 178-179.