Shoes visiting station w you uom in michigan public libraries. On april the ninth, 1865, general robert e. Lee surrendered and the sultana sank in the Mississippi River. It remains the worst maritime disaster in American History. Alan huffman tells us overlooked story. Thank you so much for joining us. We will be opening a phones a later on in the program, and comments to alan at our email address. Rshow wmu. Org. Lets start by describing what you have on the front of your book, a picture of the sultana. Describe it to the audience. Alan the boat in the painting is in flames in the middle of the river, and you see a lot of rescue boats and it is night and you see people drifting down the river clinging to debris. Obviously it is that it was painting but it does obviously it is a stylized voteing but it does the evoke what was going on. The river was full of people. There were 2400 people aboard a boat that was supposed to carry 375, roughly. After it exploded and caught higher, you had