pocket watch

the over crowded Sultana taken the day before the disaster

April 27th is the 145th anniversary of the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. The steamship Sultana, a Mississippi River paddle wheeler, contracted by the U.S. War Department, was loaded with Union soldiers, just released from Confederate prison camps. The legal capacity for the ship was 376, but it was crowded with 2,400 soldiers, desperate to get home. One of the Sultana's four boilers, poorly repaired just days earlier, exploded, sinking the ship, several miles north of Memphis on April 27, 1865.

No exact death toll is known, but the official count by the United States Customs service was 1,547 and estimates range from 1,300 to 1,900, even more than perished on the Titanic. This disaster received somewhat diminished attention since it took place soon after the assassination of President Lincoln, during the closing weeks of the Civil War.

Peachy Bright's statement of Civil War service
from the National Archives (click to enlarge)

My two great-great uncles, Peachy (don't you love that name? it's from the French family surname, Pechin) and Isaac Bright, born 1841 and 1843, in Madison Township, Montgomery County, Ohio, enlisted into service from Howard County, Indiana, with the 24th Indiana Artillery Regiment, were on board the Sultana. They both had just been released from horrific conditions at Andersonville prison camp and were finally on their way home to loved ones. Sadly, before they could make it back to Indiana, they both perished in the tragedy.

I'm fortunate enough to have been given Peachy's pocket watch by my late grandfather. When he presented it to me, and I slipped it out of an old wine colored Wollensak lens sleeve, I felt some powerful energies. The following piece was inspired for this week's Magpie Tales.

Peachy Bright's pocket watch

Pocket Watch
for Peachy Bright



You slipped
from that Wollensak pocket,
and hit my hand full and hard,
like a splash of cold Mississippi.

The day they marched him
to Andersonville flashed before,
and nearly blinded me.

I saw you, his sole possession,
tick and tock,

tucked in a tattered Union sock.

Then a scribbled note
sent out post-haste,
There's a chance
we'll be home in just a few days.

He steals a glance at your gold face,
marking time 'til daddy greets
his kith and kin,
feels his daughter's pinkest kiss,
Estellina's lips again.

April hope

swarms the homebound boat,

but dashed dreams blaze

bitter-bright,
as Sultana sinks that night,
at Paddy's Hen.


willow, 2010



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