Submitted by Mary Kocz, program director
The Sultana Disaster occurred on April 27, 1865, on the Mississippi river near Marion Arkansas.
In 2009, the Congress of the United States officially announced the destruction of the Steamboat Sultana as the greatest maritime disaster in United States history.
Historian Louis Intres, PhD, an Honorary Member of the SRGMC, will present the Sultana Disaster Story at the Spring River Gem & Mineral Club, 10 AM, November 7, at Thunderbird Center, 62 N. Lakeshore Rd in Cherokee Village. This story was hidden from the American people and its history books for over 125 years.
“I first learned of the Sultana from Captain Leo Blakely of Fort Smith, who was my surrogate father as a young boy. He was the last steamboat captain before the technological era,” Dr. Intres explains. “I’ve extensively researched the Sultana disaster since 2003. It is a story of over 2,400 souls, placed aboard a small and dangerous steamboat. There are hundreds of individual stories surrounding the death of the Sultana. Fueled by greed and corruption at the highest levels of the Union Army, the catastrophic event killed over 1,200. Early estimates went as high as 1,800.”
Dr. Intres is one of the most knowledgeable speakers on the subject. He created the Sultana Historical Preservation Society, a non-profit organization that manages the existing Sultana Disaster Museum and which led to the creation of the major national Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, AR, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2026.
Dr. Intres retired at age 58 from the banking industry where he served in positions as Chief Operating Officer, Chief Executive Officer, and President. After retirement Dr. Intres earned two Master’s degrees and a PhD from ASU in History. Beginning in 2009 he taught for ten years as Adjunct Professor of History at ASU while simultaneously serving as Interpol Visiting Scholar, mitigating the theft of artifacts from the Middle East.
Submitted
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