McCormack and others of his unit were captured by the Confederates at Franklin, Tennessee on December 1, 1864. They were confined in Cahaba Prison in Mississippi until being paroled in March 1865. He and thousands of other released prisoners from Cahaba, Macon and Andersonville prisons were transported to Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, to wait for space on steamships to take them back to their homes in the Midwest.
On April 25, the side-wheel steamship Sultana arrived from New Orleans, and over 1600 ex-prisoners crowded aboard her, joining regular passengers, two companies of infantry and the crew of the vessel for a total of more than 2300 persons. By law, the ship could carry only 376, but the captain got money from the government for every soldier that was transported.
About 2:00am in the morning of April 27, 1865, as the vessel was eight miles north of Memphis, one of the Sultana's boilers exploded, sending fragments of metal slicing through the wood cabins and decks, followed by scalding steam. The dry wood was quickly ignited by the coal fires, and the entire ship was soon wrapped in flames.
Passengers not killed by the metal fragments and steam, or trapped in the burning wreckage, were forced to jump into the black river, which was three miles wide at that point. It wasn't until victims floating downstream washed ashore at Memphis that anyone else became aware of the accident.
It became the worst maritime disaster in the history of the United States. The exact number of deaths will never be known, but it is estimated that 1700 of the 2300 persons on board were lost.
Andrew McCormack was one of the lucky ones. He was a good swimmer, and managed to find a floating gangplank to which he and twenty five other men clung until being rescued after passing Memphis. Fifty-five of his fellow soldiers of the 9th Indiana Cavalry were not so lucky and perished that day.
Beech Grove Cemetery, in Muncie has a memorial plaque to honor those East Central Indiana soldiers lost on the Sultana. It is located in the Civil War section just west of the office building.
