The Wreck of the Sultana

Lyrics

Just after Appomattox, two last bullets and a bell For the honest and the actor, that the tragic curtain fell There beneath the flood of headlights in the Mississippi spray The wreck of the Sultana lies, buried to this day Buried to this day, boys The Sultana was a steamboat, she made a New Orleans-Cairo run When a greedy Captain Mason heard that since the war is done And the Union POWs are free now, Uncle Sam Is paying for their passage home, five dollars every man "Well, that's four a head," the captain said, calculating, calm A dollar per to the officer should grease the Judas palm So on a steamboat meant to carry 350 with crew 2300 herded, a huddled multitude Of purple scars and leather shadows, mid-tattered, stitched, and torn What little's always left of glory's human uniform A human uniform, boys And when you figure in civilian men, women, children too That's 500 more, plus the horses, cargo, coal, and crew And so it was and it wasn't the numbers that night You see, the boiler needed grave repairs But the captain had rushed a patch job As not to lose one precious fare And so, asleep, afloat beneath a sleepy Memphis sky It came to pass, a flame, a flash And Death, she opened wide And the force of the blast took the fortunate Fast asleep, dreams to dust But the rest awoke, chest to boat With the thunder and the thrust As the smokestack smashed through the upper decks, a screaming axehead fell And a splintered rain of men and flames, pinned in a crush of hell And diving in, the drowning men and tangled acres roar Their frantic limbs heavy in the anesthetic cold And it was swollen, that's a solace The river reaped her spoils As a stony moon stared on and on Where the general eye recoils Until the morning sun rose warm upon the lucky, living through The hell and the high water Mason steered them straight into Now I ain't sayin' the captain's evil. I ain't sayin' he's any good Just wherever he stood to profit, that's where he stood He may have stood 'til the flames forked over Paid dearly what the river pulls down But all accounts'll tell you How his body was never found It was the end of the Sultana, the end of many good men as well So for now I'll end the story they couldn't count on time to tell Though deadlier than the Titanic's legendary fall I guess it's less romantic; mostly soldiers after all More dead than Shiloh, Chickamauga, and others lesser known More anthems send a soldier off than ever sing him home Than ever sing him home, boys