Unearthed: Memphis

By: Alan Compton & Tara Ingram
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  • Summary

  • We’re a Memphis history podcast here to unearth the lesser-known stories of our city!
    © 2020- Unearthed: Memphis- Alan Compton & Tara Ingram
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Episodes
  • Season 2: Halloween Mini Episode: The Memphis U.S. Marine Hospital

    Season 2: Halloween Mini Episode: The Memphis U.S. Marine Hospital
    Nov 1 2022
    Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story, the Tale of the Memphis U.S. Marine Hospital.  The year was 1798 and President Adams decreed there needed to be a hospital for the sick, injured, and disabled maritime men. This Marine Hospital cared for the seamen who worked on the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, the original plot of land, in Napoleon Arkansas, washed away when the river changed course and the new hospital was built in Fort Pickering, south of Memphis in 1884.It consisted of a stable, two wards, the surgeon’s house, nurses’ quarters, and an executive building. This hospital was the city’s first federally-funded public health facility and the only government hospital in the area at that time. It remained so until after WWI. Not only did the hospital treat those who worked the river, it also served Civil War Veterans and Yellow Fever victims. The hospital played a vital role in trying to find a cure for Yellow Fever.  Be sure to come back for season three which is all about Yellow Fever and learn why this sickness had such an impact on our city and why we wanted to find a cure.  In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration built a new hospital building on the site, moving the remaining original buildings 300 feet to the west. Over the years, the facility was used by the Coast Guard, active military, public health officials, cadets from state maritime activities, Army Corps of Engineers, and government employees injured in the line of duty.  The hospital closed in the 1960s and part of the grounds were leased to the Metal Museum in 1979. As recently as the 1990s, the grounds were used to house Desert Storm soldiers. Sadly, the hospital sat derelict until a developer decided to purchase the buildings and land in 2003. It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that anything was done with it after that.  So what about the spooky parts? So a little history as to what happened in the area now known as French Fort.  Battles of the Civil War raged along the Mississippi River in the area around where the Marine Hospital was to sit. The Confederate army set up camp in the area and turned one of the ceremonial mounds into an artillery bunker. The Union army then quickly overtook the area and turned it into a camp.Battles mean tragic death and tragic death generally means restless spirits.  Since its inception, over 100,000 soldiers were treated at the hospital and 40,000 died there. There were also over 10,000 deaths from Yellow Fever.  So it’s fair to say, from all the death that occured on the land as well as in the hospital itself, there is bound to be some paranormal activity.  We watched an episode of Ghost Asylum for research and while it was a little campy, what ghost hunting show isn’t, they seemed to get a lot of evidence of spirit activity.  Supposedly, a civil war soldier by the name of Henry Wood haunts the second floor of the hospital, wandering the hallways.Maybe he was a soldier killed in battle and couldn’t find his way home. Or maybe he was a former soldier that was treated at the hospital but succumbed to an illness and since he was well cared for at the hospital, he just stuck around.  There was also a presence felt in the basement. One of the investigators was talking to the spirits and he felt something pass behind him. The basement housed the morgue, which assuredly is haunted. Or at least I think it would be. All of the lives that were lost passed through that room. But there was also something more strange down there, cages. The cages were apparently used for keeping the yellow fever victims separated.  They cleaned up the recordings from the basement investigations and when one of the guys asked, “did they keep you in here to die”, they heard a response saying something along the lines of “kept us caged”, indicating that they did cage them in to die.  I’m not really sure what they thought a cage would do,
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    17 mins
  • Season 2: Episode Ten: The Sultana Disaster: Part 2

    Season 2: Episode Ten: The Sultana Disaster: Part 2
    Oct 1 2022
    It’s April, 1865… The Sultana has been docked in Vicksburg, MS, preparing to load far more passengers than the steamer is equipped to hold. The passengers are almost entirely Union soldiers who are being paroled from the Cahaba or Andersonville Confederate prison camps, in which they have experienced hellish living conditions - not to mention already having experienced the unimaginable horrors of battle.  The Sultana’s chief engineer, Nathan Wintringer, has learned from a local boilermaker R.G. Taylor that substantial repair needs to happen to one of the steamer’s boilers, and Taylor refuses to sign off on its departure from Vicksburg until the necessary repairs have been made. Wintringer finally convinces Taylor to only patch the boiler, with the promise that the full repair will be done when the steamer is finally docked in St. Louis.  The steamer is hastily being prepped for its journey north, skipping over pretty much anything that might make the journey comfortable for its passengers, and orders are being delivered to load all of the 1,400 passengers presumed to be awaiting transport, which will severely overload the steamer. This order comes, in part, from an attempt at personal monetary gain, and part from misinformation passed along about the actual number of potential passengers present at that time in Vicksburg. The federal government was offering to pay $5 per enlisted man and $10 per officer for any vessel willing to transport the parolees up the Mississippi on their way back home. Colonel Ruben Hatch - Chief Quartermaster of the Union Army in Vicksburg, promised J. Cass Mason - Captain of the Sultana, as many paroled prisoners as he could supply, presumably in exchange for a cut of the profits. Hatch already had a sordid history in regards to accepting kickbacks and bribes during his time in service, and would eventually be relieved of his duties for that exact thing.  Captains George Williams and Frederic Speed seemed to be determined to expedite the Sultana’s passenger loading by whatever means necessary, but their haste had a cost. Bedrolls, wrapped together with personal care items, were meant to be distributed to each paroled prisoner loaded onto the Sultana. This process was started, but quickly seen as something that might delay the steamer’s loading and departure, risking their personal monetary gain. Since the bedrolls were not prepared ahead of time, they were not able to use the distribution of those items as a gauge of how many people had been loaded onto the steamer. This is not the sole reason for the overloading of the Sultana - no, THAT was a volatile mixture of greed, incompetence, and negligence - but this certainly contributed. So, finally the Sultana is fully loaded, or rather - OVERloaded, and powered by compromised boilers, prepared to depart from Vicksburg. This steamer, with its maximum passenger capacity of fewer than 400, was now carrying around 2,500 passengers - most of them paroled prisoners of war. More than a few times, opportunities arose for them to pass off some of their passengers to other steamers that left the Vicksburg docks at less than capacity - opportunities which were tragically passed up for personal gain.  The prisoners aboard the Sultana were in great spirits upon departing Vicksburg, thinking they were out of harm’s way - many of them singing songs, dancing, laughing, and sharing with each other the many things that they were going to do upon their arrival at their homes. Their spirits were not dampened, even by the limited rations of hard bread and salted meat they were given to eat aboard the vessel. When Captain Mason ordered a stop at Helena, Arkansas to bring on more supplies, a photographer who was stunned by the massive number of people aboard the Sultana, took a very famous photograph of the steamer. When the passengers noticed their picture being taken, many of them rushed to the side of the vessel in an attempt to participate in the photo.
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    37 mins
  • Season 2: Episode Nine: The Sultana Disaster: Part 1

    Season 2: Episode Nine: The Sultana Disaster: Part 1
    Dec 17 2021
    If you were to mention the word “Titanic” to a random stranger today, and asked them to tell you what that word means to them, there’s a very high chance that you would get one of the following responses from them…  That Celine Dion song that was overplayed to death...“I’m the king of the world”“Paint me like one of your French girls”There was totally room for Jack on that plank of wood, and Rose basically caused his death...Ooooorrrr, big boat that hit an iceberg, and due to arrogance and poor planning, lots of dead folks  The point is, people would know that it had something to do with the deadliest maritime disaster that they are probably aware of. Well, little do they know that there was another water vessel tragedy that was even more deadly than the Titanic.  On April 27th, 1865, the SS Sultana floated north on the Mississippi River loaded with almost 2300 passengers, many of which were Union soldiers that were recently liberated from Confederate prison camps. At approximately 2:00 in the morning, the recklessly overloaded SS Sultana exploded just north of Memphis, Tennessee, becoming the worst maritime disaster in US history. Side note, since I was curious and looked it up… the deadliest maritime disaster in world history was the wartime sinking of the German military transport ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff during WWII, by a Soviet sub. This disaster had an estimated loss of around 9,400 people. Jeez… Nine thousand four hundred people…  Anyway, I thought that was interesting…  and really SAD.  So…  on with the story. The SS Sultana was a paddle steamer, built in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was built originally for Captain Preston Lodwick, at a price of $60,000, and launched on January 3rd, 1863.  The name “Sultana” is derived from the original Arabic word for a wife, mother, or sister of a sultan. Just as a little superstition side-note, this name was not exactly attached to good maritime fortune…  three other ships had been made before this one with the same name. All three previous ships were destroyed in accidents. This was not connected to a common builder or designer or anything of the sort. It was merely a coincidence. The Sultana was one of the largest business steamers ever built for its time. It was 260 feet in length, with a 42 foot beam (that’s the width at its widest point), and had a hold that went 7 feet deep. Its weight was registered at 1,719 tons. The steamer held a regular route between New Orleans and St. Louis as a trade vessel. The steamer had a carry capacity of 1,000 tons, making it ideal for transporting trade cargo. In addition to the cargo area, it could accommodate 76 cabin passengers and 300 deck passengers. So, that means that its largest capacity for passenger transport, with all safety measures in place, would be 376 passengers. Keep those numbers in mind… At that time, however, the Sultana only had two lifeboats and 76 life preservers, as it was only set up to carry cargo, not passengers.  On the deck of the Sultana were four high-pressure tubular boilers, measuring 18 feet in length  and 46 inches in diameter. These boilers were smaller and lighter than the boilers found on conventional steamers, but were made to produce steam more efficiently. The Sultana’s engines powered two water wheels that were each 34 feet in diameter, which were mounted on the sides of the steamer. The cabin of the steamer featured a long, narrow saloon, lined on each side by a row of staterooms. Each stateroom was luxuriously-furnished, and the saloon was stocked with fine china and glassware.  The vast majority of the passengers aboard the Sultana on its last trip up the Mississippi were Union soldiers that had been captured in battle by the Confederacy, but as the war was coming to a close, they were now being paroled from the Cahaba, AL and Andersonville, GA prison camps. Most of them had seen horrific carnage on the battlefield, but even still,
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    42 mins

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