Remembering the Sultana disaster: This 14-foot model greeted Arkansas museum visitors for years. It was one of two made for a film about Civil War tragedy

The old Sultana museum (Picket photo), Gene Salecker with model and a still from film abouit the disaster

About 25 years ago, an Ohio documentary maker who was passionate about the steamboat Sultana tragedy put his dreams into production, filming scenes in a river, swimming pool and a recreated ship’s cabin, among other locations.

The late Tom Koba’s production apparently never enjoyed widespread distribution, but he did leave behind two models of the Sultana. The actual vessel exploded and caught fire in April 1865, killing about 1,200 people. Hundreds of Federal soldiers, many recently freed from Confederate prisons, including Andersonville and Cahaba, were on their way home.

Sultana author Gene Salecker worked from the remains of those boats to create new models, one of which was the star at the Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Ark., before the museum closed two months ago as a larger, permanent venue is built a few blocks away.

A giant version of the doomed vessel will be the centerpiece of the new museum. “People will be able to actually walk up onto the recreated deck and see our actual 1842 steamboat engine (right) and a display on the fateful boilers, as well as other featured displays,” said Salecker, who has purchased numerous artifacts for the museum over the years.

Museum executive director Jeff Kollath said Salecker’s model, which was disassembled recently, will be placed in the main area, too. Salecker will put it back together in October, a month ahead of the museum’s grand opening.

“People can see pictures or drawings of the Sultana, but can only imagine what it really looked like,” said Norman Shaw, a founder of the Sultana Association of Descendants and Friends. “With Gene's large model, they can examine one up close. Also get an idea (of) how it operated.”

History is fortunate a photograph of the overloaded Sultana, taken shortly before the disaster, survives.

Blue tape in the gym shows shape of new Sultana model (Gene Salecker)

Sultana author Jerry Potter said Salecker’s model “is an incredible tool to give people an understanding of the layout of the Sultana. Gene has done an amazing job of restoring it. Now, it is going to its final home.”

I asked Salecker to talk about the Sultana models and how they have been used. His responses have been edited and ordered for brevity and context.

Q. Did you build the model? If so, when did you build it and why?

I built the existing model during the summers of 2013 and 2014 while I was still teaching and had the summers off. However, the foundation of the model came from someone else.

The 14-foot model (actually, two of them) were the brainchild of Tom Koba, of Berlin Heights, Ohio. Tom was an independent filmmaker who had worked with the state of Ohio on a couple of Civil War documentaries

I met Tom at the Ohio Civil War Show in Mansfield after my 1996 book was published. Tom bought a copy and was instantly hooked on the story. He would come to the show each year and pick my brain, hoping one day to make a documentary on the Sultana.

Scenes from filming in 2000, of survivors and fiery water (Courtesy Gene Salecker)

I believe Tom began his film in about 2000. He lived on a large farm and actually built a full-scale main saloon, boiler and coal bin area, some of the decking, etc. At one point, he rented out a public pool and at night, he put up some fake deck pieces, lit them on fire and had people rushing from the burning "boat" and jumping into the water. He hired professional stunt people to set themselves on fire and jump into the water, and a professional makeup person to put "burns" and "scalds" on many of the people. He also used local re-enactors as some of the ex-POWs.

Tom hired a couple of retired gentlemen to build him the two 14-foot models. One was to be detailed and the paddlewheels could move by radio control. He planned to run this on a river near his farm and take shots of the crowded boat going up the river. The second boat was not as well detailed and was meant to be exploded and burned.

Original Sultana model several years after film production (Gene Salecker)

At one of the Sultana Association reunions, Tom came and showed a few of us the finished "rushes." He was getting ready to edit the scenes when he unexpectedly died in 2007 at age 61.

In about 2012, I got a phone call from (his companion and business partner) asking me if I wanted the two 14-foot models. They had sat on her mother's front lawn, covered by a blue tarp .. . near Lake Erie. I rented a U-Haul truck and went and brought the two models back to my house in River Grove, Ill.

(The Picket contacted the business partner and will update this if she responds to questions about the project.)

In the summer of 2013, I moved the best model into my shed and began stripping off the old paint and mold and preparing it the way the Sultana had actually looked. It took me two summers and a lot of work but I completed the first model and brought it down to Marion for the grand opening of the interim museum in April 2015 (photo above).

Q. What materials are primarily used? How much of the original models were used?

A. I primarily used cedar and balsa wood. I also used chairs, spittoons, door handles, buckets, barrels, etc. from scale dollhouses.

Model that greeted museum visitors for 11 years awaits reassembly in new venue (Gene Salecker)

As for how much of Tom's original models I used, (it was) the hulls (Tom had them painted black and I had to strip, sand and paint them white.) I used the decking. I used all the slats in the railings and the upright railing posts. I used much of the paddlewheel housings but had to cut and redesign them. I used all of the stairs leading into the Texas cabins. I used his stage planks. In other words, to honor Tom, I used as much of the original model as I could but much of it needed a lot of modification. I would say I used about 60% of what was not too damaged by the elements.

Q. How did you/the builder come up with the specs and design?

A. All of the information about the Sultana (size, number of boilers, etc.) came from the January and February 1863 Cincinnati newspapers, which were reporting on the building of the Sultana. In 1979, I was working as a draftsman and drew up blueprints of the boat. No steamboat was built by blueprints so there were no existing prints for the Sultana. When someone wanted a new boat built, he went to the boat builder, gave him the measurements he wanted and etc., and the boat builder went to work. Steamboats were pretty standard.

Click on this 1865 panorama of St. Louise to see Sultana at center-right (credit below)

I used the information on the Sultana for specifics, and for the genera overall design of a steamboat, I referred to “The Western Rivers Steamboat Cyclopoedium” by Alan L. Bates, a retired steamboat engineer. Bates wrote his book, which is almost entirely of line drawings of parts of the steamboat, with "a nod to the modeler." When I was finished with my blueprints, I sent them to Alan L. Bates himself to check them over and he returned them with some comments and corrections. Those were what I used and referred to in building the 14-foot model.

(Photo above: Courtesy Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library at the University of Missouri-St. Louis)

Q. Tell me about the second model you built.

A. I used the best of the two (Koba) models to build the one that was displayed in the Interim museum. A few years later, I used the second model to build an "after the explosion" model which has only been put on display once -- at the 2021 kickoff of the fundraising for the new museum. I had to make an exact duplicate of the first model and then strategically wreck it.

I tried to use as much of Tom's original model in the second one (above, courtesy Gene Salecker), also. However, since I had picked the best pieces from both models when I made the first one, there weren’t much undamaged pieces left. Of course, I used the hull and some of the decking but most of it had to be handmade to an exact match of the first model. That was the hard part -- being exactly like the first model except for the ruptured middle of the boat. The stern, the bow, the paddlewheel boxes, everything had to be exactly the same.

Fortunately, I took hundreds of photos as I worked on the first model so I used those as reference for the second model... and I made sure that I kept my measurements of everything.

(Editor's note: There is no room in the gallery for the  "after the explosion" version, which is in storage in Marion, Kollath told the Picket.)

Q. How has the model added to the story of the Sultana?

A. Melody Walker of the interim Sultana Disaster Museum used to say that the two things everybody photographs when they come to the museum is the many names on the Memorial Wall and the 14-foot steamboat model. People like to look at the model to get a better understanding of what the Sultana looked like. They can see how difficult it would have been for a soldier to leap from the top hurricane deck into the crowded water 25 feet below.

Photograph of the Sultana near Helen, Ark., a day before tragedy on the Mississippi (Library of Congress)

The model has added to the understanding of where the explosion came from (top, back end of the boilers in the center of the boat), and how the blast traveled upward at about a 45-degree angle, tearing everything before it, including the pilothouse. The model adds to the understanding of just what the ex-POWs and the others had to go through to reach the supposed safety of the water.

 As they say, a picture (or in this case, a model) is worth a thousand words. It is a great educational aide in helping to explain the tragedy of the Sultana.

Previous Sultana coverage:

• Documentary, events mark 150th anniversary

• Will victim's journal and Bible become part of collection?

• Descendants drop flowers in memory of the lost
• Model captures every detail of Sultana

• Disaster took lives of those who had endured so much
• Siblings recall learning of disaster

Sultana Disaster Museum picks director to lead an expanded venue that will add 'wow factor' to story of 1865 steamboat explosion on the Mississippi

The longtime executive director of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis is leaving to oversee the expansion of a museum in Marion, Ark., dedicated to the story of the Sultana maritime disaster that occurred near the end of the Civil War.

The Sultana Historical Preservation Society announced Thursday the hiring of Jeff Kollath, who had been at the Stax museum for nine years and previously worked at historical, veterans and humanities sites in his native Wisconsin.

Kollath (left), who is in his mid-40s, officially starts work as executive director at the Sultana Disaster Museum on July 1, a day after he leaves his current job.

An enticement was an opportunity to build something fresh. Kollath will be deeply involved in devising exhibits for the new location of the Sultana museum.

"As a museum professional, one of my greatest joys has been uncovering, interpreting and telling the stories of everyday people and their extraordinary lives,” Kollath said in a news release. “There are thousands of stories to be told in this new museum. The Sultana disaster is something that still reverberates generations later, and I look forward to working with the board and others in making this important story come alive in our museum for guests of all ages."

The society touted Kollath’s experience in grant writing, budget development, facilities management, public speaking and exhibit development and design. The Memphis museum where he has worked provides a deep look at Stax records, which was instrumental in the development of soul music.

“Jeff expressed to the Board of Directors his passion for making history come alive through high quality exhibitions, immersive educational experiences, and free, accessible programming, and we could not be more excited,” the Sultana board said. Marion is across the Mississippi River from Memphis. 

The society earlier this year awarded a construction contract for a larger, more dynamic museum than the current small one a few blocks away. The venue will be housed in the gymnasium of an old high school, with a couple additions.

Museum acquired this Grand Army of the Republic item remembering brothers who died on boat (SPHS)

Marion, close to where the side-wheeler Sultana exploded and caught fire in the Mississippi River, broke ground in 2022 for the venue, which will honor soldiers who died in the disaster and local residents who helped save others who were plunged into the river in late April 1865. About 1,200 passengers and crew perished. Hundreds of Federal soldiers, many recently freed from Confederate prisons, including Andersonville and Cahaba, were on their way home.

John Fogleman, president of the Sultana Historical Preservation Society, told the Picket in an email Thursday, "Especially valuable is Jeff's ability to tell compelling stories in a compelling way. Our museum is all about telling the story of the individual soldiers and that is one of Jeff's strengths."

Kollath has been in the museum business for 20 years and has experience in telling the stories of soldiers through his work at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.

Pat Mitchell Worley, CEO of the Soulsville Foundation, which overseas the Stax museum, said the museum professional is “a lover of great stories at heart, and Stax and the Sultana, the greatest maritime disaster in America, are both that. He’s getting the chance to create a museum from the ground up, and draw on his passion for research and storytelling with this new opportunity."

Design for the front of larger museum in Marion (Courtesy Sultana Disaster Museum)

Worley said Kollath oversaw a major renovation of the Memphis museum last year for its 20^th anniversary, created a program offering free field trips for all Title One schools in Tennessee and “has been a tireless supporter of free educational programming, curating more than just exhibits, but also having conversations surrounding the story of Stax, how history shaped it then, and continues to do so today.”

Most recently, Kollah was instrumental with the research required to tell the Stax story as part of a recently released HBO docuseries. 

Gene Salecker, Sultana author, collector and museum supporter, previously said he believes the big attraction at the new museum will be a mock-up of the forward part of the Sultana, which will include the steamboat’s boilers.

“Since the boilers were the main cause of the destruction of the Sultana, we are hoping to have a display on how the boilers worked and what went wrong,” he said, describing the overall museum experience as immersive. “We have tons of information and a great number of artifacts to put into each display.”

Museum officials say the exhibits will build off the full story of the Sultana with information about the importance of the river, the Confederate prisoner of war camps at Cahaba and Andersonville, the bribery and corruption that led to the overcrowding of the boat, the explosion and fire, and the creation of the Sultana Survivors Association. (At left, photo of 1891 reunion banner, courtesy of SHPS)

Fogleman said construction at the gymnasium-auditorium has slowed somewhat after the discovery of issues related to water leaks in the roof and elsewhere.

"Before interior work can continue a new roof will be required. Some of this was anticipated but some was not. Since federal grants are involved, it slows the process."

Previous Sultana coverage:

• Documentary, events mark 150th anniversary

• Will victim's journal and Bible become part of collection?

• Descendants drop flowers in memory of the lost

• Model captures every detail of Sultana

• Disaster took lives of those who had endured so much
• Siblings recall learning of disaster