Drowning in the River of Dreams
April 26-27, 1865, on the Mississippi just north of Memphis
Lieutenant Malcolm Reed of Company K, 36th Illinois "Fox Valley Volunteers" stood at the railing of the steamboat Sultana as the ship laboriously pushed its way north. The great river was in flood stage and the ship, licensed to carry only 376 passengers, was packed with closer to 2,400, many being Union soldiers who had somehow survived Andersonville, the hellhole that was the Confederate prisoner of war camp in Sumter County, Georgia. One of them was Reed's friend, Charles "Trip" Tucker, III, a major in the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Tucker and Reed were a strange pair. Tucker, a Floridian by birth who held no truck with slavery and had taken his oath to defend the United States seriously, had remained loyal to the Union when many of his West Point classmates had resigned their commissions and "gone South" as the country broke apart after Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in the election of 1860. Tucker was a handsome, outgoing man with blond hair, sparkling blue eyes and a lazy drawl that made him the target of much teasing which he bore with easy grace. He was also a brilliant combat engineer, and his small unit of "sappers" routinely seemed to perform miracles laying corduroy roads and pontoon bridges, repairing railroads and constructing field fortifications. They'd been attached to Brigade, which is how he'd met Reed. Reed's Company K often provided protection for Tucker and his men when they were working forward. Tucker had been captured at the rout at Chickamauga. Tall and thin to begin with, he was now little more than a walking skeleton after his stay as a guest of the Confederacy. He'd been overjoyed when, while boarding the ship at Vicksburg, he'd meet up with Reed who had promised to get him home.
Reed had immigrated to America in his teens after his father had disowned him for refusing to follow in his footsteps, and the footsteps of generations of Reed men before him, who had made the Royal Navy their home. He'd traveled steerage with some of his mother's people who were fleeing the potato famine in Ireland. He'd quickly learned it was better to speak with his father's clipped accent than with his mother's musical brogue. He was also careful to hide the rosary with the smooth wooden beads and small gold crucifix that she had given him. The Irish and their religion were despised in his adopted country, but with his proper English accent he had been able to apprentice himself to a master gunsmith in Chicago and had found he had a real talent for the work. In due course, he'd started his own business in one of the small farming communities on the rich land to the west of the city. When war came, he joined up at the urging of the other men in town who valued his skills and knew they would be needed. They had amazed the small, quiet, unassuming young man with the shy smile by electing him one of the regimental officers. It seemed like a lifetime ago rather than merely 3-½ years.
Reed moved away from the railing. Ever since that miserable passage to America in his youth, he had felt uneasy on the water. He made his way back to the small space on deck that had been allotted to him and Tucker. He pulled a piece of cheese out of his haversack and coaxed Tucker to eat some. He then shared his bedroll with him, the two of them huddling together under the single blanket in a mostly vain effort to ward off the chill of the night. Tucker couldn't sleep. He told Reed that the machinery of the ship just didn't feel or sound right. Reed tried to put it down to the ship's overloaded condition and the strong current, but Tucker wasn't convinced.
At 3:00 a.m. one of the ship's boilers exploded. Passengers were blown into the water, many of them badly scalded by the escaping steam. Burning embers were scattered about the wooden ship that quickly became a flaming hulk. Passengers still aboard stampeded in an effort to escape the flames. Both Reed and Tucker had suffered burns and were caught up in the press of people. Somehow, Reed managed to keep a grip on Tucker even in the throng. He remained mindful of his promise to his friend to see him safely home. Eventually, they were pushed to the railing. There was no choice really but to jump into the dark, cold and rapidly moving water. Reed tightened his grip on Tucker, and they jumped together. It was a shock when they hit the water. At first, it almost felt good on Reed's burns, but soon enough the cold had numbed him. He wasn't strong enough to fight the current, although he kept calling encouragement to Tucker and refused to let him go. Tucker never replied, and Reed finally realized that his friend had long since died. Nonetheless, one hand still tightly clung to Tucker while the other fumbled in a pocket for the comforting feel of the worn wooden beads. In the musical brogue of his mother's people, Reed began to recite the words: Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee. . .
Their bodies were found together snagged in the branches of a tree a few miles down river from the scene of the disaster. Colonel Jonathan Archer, Reed's commanding officer, identified them. He arranged for the embalming and had their bodies sent north by express train for burial at Elmwood, the new cemetery with the large, ornate, wrought iron gate and pointed wrought iron fence in the small, rural, county seat on the prairie. He tried for years to get in touch with Tucker's folks, to let them know what had befell their eldest son, but they were lost in the chaos of war and reconstruction. He eventually received a letter from Captain Stuart Reed. Yes, he'd had a son named Malcolm, a ne'er-do-well who'd run away from home at the age of 16, possibly for America. He didn't really know or care. As far as he was concerned, the boy had been dead to him from that day.
Years passed. Colonel Archer tended the graves until he moved away to take a job surveying Marias Pass for James J. Hill's Great Northern Transcontinental Railway that ran from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington. His place was taken by other veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic and their families. Later still, Boy Scouts would place small American flags by the graves every Memorial Day. In 2161, the tercentenary of the start of the Civil War, a local high school history teacher researching the lives of the "Boys in Blue" whose final resting place was Elmwood would write a book about Tucker and Reed and the disaster that had claimed their lives. Despite the fact that anywhere from 1,500 to 1,700 people had died in the Sultana tragedy, more than had died with the sinking of the Titanic, virtually no one had heard of it. It was the last gasp of a war that had claimed 600,000. It was overshadowed by the assassination of President Lincoln that had occurred only a few weeks previously. People had been ready to move on with their lives and to put the unpleasantness behind them.
It took a few years, but the members of the local Civil War Round Table eventually got all the necessary papers together, and on Memorial Day, 2165, new standard issue grave markers were obtained from the Department of Veterans Affairs to replace the crumbling, illegible makers for the two old graves side by side in the shade of the massive elm tree just inside the great wrought iron gate. Civil War re-enactors stood guard for the entire three-day weekend. The high school band marched past to the somber sounds of the "dead cadence" with only the Stars and Stripes flying free. At the end of the ceremony, the lead trumpet, a senior soon to graduate and bound for the Air Force Academy in the fall, played Taps. He hoped that by the time he received his commission, the US would finally have a warp 5 vessel. He wasn't sure yet whether he preferred weapons or engines, but he knew he wanted to be on that ship. He wondered what the two long-dead warriors would think of it.