The Daily News-Journal from Murfreesboro, Tennessee • 7

7A Mystery of Sultana steamboat lives on History," said he found Potter's analysis sound. "They overloaded it, knowing it was well beyond the capacity," Hubbell said. 'The ship itself probably shouldn't have been out on the water, but those poor devils wanted to get home." The Army's chief investigator at the time, Brig. Gen. William Hoffman, estimated the death toll at 1,238.

The U.S. Customs office in Memphis put it at 1,547. Blast killed 1,800 people CINCINNATI (AP) An 1865 steamboat explosion that killed as many as 1,800 people still stands as the nation's worst marine disaster and one of its greatest maritime mysteries. The sinking of the Sultana killed at least 1,200 Union soldiers returning home from the Civil War and shattered the lives of those who survived. soldiers aboard.

But only one officer, Capt. Frederic Speed, was court-martialed. The Army's top legal officer later reversed Speed's conviction. Nathan Wintringer, the Sultana's chief engineer, knew a leak in one of the ship's boilers was not repaired properly but said nothing for fear it would keep the ship from sailing, Potter wrote. Wintringer was never charged, even though he was required by law to ensure the steamboat's safe operation.

The Sultana's captain, J. Cass Mason, pressured Army officers to give him as many passengers as possible and stood to be paid $10,000 by the government for his standing-room -only haul, according to records. Mason died in the explosion1. Historians said the Army never investigated the bribe allegations. Lt.

Col. James Sullivan, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the modern-day Army has no comment on the Sultana disaster. John T. Hubbell, editor of the quarterly journal "Civil War MmUc'a Window A. Sxxeem Residential-Window Screen Repair Glass Plate or Plexi Glass Licensed Insured 7:00 a.m.

to 7:00 m. 209 N. Maple Penny Plaza 849-9322 DISASTER AP photo Sultana in port This photo taken on April 26, 1865, shows the steamboat Sultana it's boiler exploded north of Memphis on the Mississippi River, killing as By most accounts, more people died in the boiler explosion that destroyed the Cincinnati-built steamboat on April 27, 1865, in the Mississippi River north of Memphis, than were killed when the Titanic sank in 1912. But the Sultana's destruction overshadowed by the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln received scant coverage in the newspapers of 1865, particularly in the prominent East Coast papers. There has beer, little mention since then in the nation's history books.

That in itself is a tragedy, said author Jerry Potter, who spent 13 years researching the disaster for his 1992 book "The Sultana Tragedy." "Not only has very little been written about it, but today, almost nothing is known about it," said Potter, who became infatuated with the story in the 1970s after seeing a painting depicting the Sultana's destruction. "Nobody knew about it. That's what compelled me to write the book," the Memphis lawyer, 43, said in a telephone interview. "These were young men who survived horrible situations during the war, then, to be killed on the way home and for the nation not to know about it, it was appalling to me. in Helena, one day before many as 1,800 people.

Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky were bound for Camp Chase near Columbus, Ohio, to reunite with families and resume their lives. During the inquisitions, Union Army officers accused colleagues of accepting bribes from steamboat captains to transport as many soldiers as possible upriver. But investigators ignored the charges and shifted the blame elsewhere, Potter and Elliott wrote. Potter found evidence that showed Army officers allowed two other steamers to leave Vicksburg hours before the Sultana, with no 'The government more or less swept the disaster under the rug." Potter is working with Memphis television station WKNO to produce a Public Broadcasting Service documentary next year on the Sultana, launched from Cincinnati in January 1863. Potter went to the National Archives and obtained records of the two military inquisitions convened to investigate the disaster.

He reviewed newspaper accounts and Army correspondence. He has obtained diaries of some of the Sultana's victims and interviewed descendants of survivors. Most of those who died were paroled Union prisoners. They were being transported home to resume their lives after enduring disease and malnutrition in the Confederacy's most brutal prison camps, Andersonville and Cahaba. Union Army officers loading the men onto the Sultana in Vicksburg, jammed at least 1,800 people onto a boat designed to carry only 376, according to Potter's book and Transport to Disaster," a 1962 book by James W.

Elliott, grandson of Sultana survivor J. Walter Elliott. The men mostly from Ohio, oaooaoBGOocc DALE CARNEGIE Effective Communications Human Relations Self Confidence Better Memory -Controlling Worry MURFREESBORO CLASSES NOW FORMING! CALL 383-7974 Ask for David Eubank) Presented in This Area Exclusively by Crawford Assoc. 2000 Richard Jones Suite 154, NashviHe, TN 37215 383-7974. Noise leading cause of hearing loss PAGERS $1 A only I month cles contract, perspiration appears, and hormones are released into the bloodstream.

An adrenaline-like compound called norepinephrine causes blood vessels to narrow, and blood pressure, heart rate and breathing speed begin to rise all of which can affect bodily functions. Intense sounds also can cause structural changes in the ear. UNLIMITED PAGES! Call For Information 890-1992 7 inrinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrf Nate Schott centers around prevention by limiting the duration or intensity of noise exposure. In addition, a few environmental agents, including some antibiotics and some common workplace chemicals, may contribute to the damage by aggravating the harmful potential of excessive noise. Three aspects of sound determine whether or not it is considered noise and whether it is harmful: its pressure, or loudness, which is measured in decibels (dB); its frequency, or pitch, measured in hertz (Hz); and its duration.

Sounds of about 125 decibels are painful to most people, and hearing loss typically results from prolonged duration of exposure to noise at this level. The noise of a jet engine emits about 140 decibels, an automobile horn 120, and the noise level in the average factory is about 85. In a quiet office, the decibel level is around 40. In addition to hearing loss, noise is increasingly implicated in a variety of other physical and psychological disorders. When intense sounds strike the ear, they prompt the whole body to mobilize for action.

The mus AP Special Features Noise "pollution" generally does not attract as much public attention as other environmental problems, but its effects are extremely widespread. At least 10 million Americans are affected by the most obvious noise-related ailment: irreversible hearing loss, which is one of the top hazards of the workplace itself. But even outside the workplace, modern life is rife with the noises that can damage human hearing and from which few of us can escape. Trucks on the road, loud rock 'n' roll, construction jackham-mers, jet engines at airports, leisure-time pursuits with power tools, motorcycles, snowmobiles, boats, lawn mowers, firearms even listening to music through headsets can bring us into contact with potentially harmful sounds, even those not perceived as uncomfortable by the listener. Exposure to excessive noise not only can destroy our hearing, but impair our sense of psychological well-being.

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