The steamboat Sultana was a Mississippi River paddlewheeler which was destroyed in an explosion on 27 April 1865, the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. An estimated 1,700 of the Sultana's 2,400 passengers were killed when one of the overcrowded ship's four boilers exploded and the Sultana sank. This disaster did not receive the press attention one would expect, due to the recent assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the end of the Civil War.