On the morning of September 20, 1863, the men of the 42nd Indiana rushed up LaFayette Road, and filed into line on the east side of McDonald Field, across from where the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center now stands, and faced into the woods mere moments before their line was overwhelmed by the advance of General John C. Breckinridge's Confederate division.
Fifty-three men of the 42nd were captured and soon found their way into the Confederate prison system, initially being sent to Danville, Virginia, then being transferred to Andersonville when it opened in early 1864. Seventeen members of Company A, from Vanderburg County, Indiana, among them. However, over the next few months that number dwindled as Andersonville proved to be the deadliest acreage of the American Civil War, taking six of Company A. With the end of the war, the three survivors found themselves in Vicksburg, Mississippi, being packed aboard the Steamboat Sultana with around 2,100 recently released POWs.
The men were cramped for space as the boat was designed to hold only 376 people. Grossly overpacked, the ship departed Vicksburg on the night of April 24. Around 2 am, on April 27, just a short distance north of Memphis, Tennessee, the overstrained boilers exploded, turning the ship into a roaring inferno. It became the worst maritime disaster in American History and second worst explosion (only the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11 resulted in more deaths). One thousand seven hundred men died as a result.
Of the Company A men, only Private William McFarland survived. He later recounted, "I seemed to be dreaming and could hear some one saying, 'there isn't any skin left on their bodies.' I awoke with a start and the next moment the boat was on fire and all was as light as day. The wildest confusion followed. Some spring into the river at once, others were killed, and I could fear the groans of the dying above the roar of the flames...I was on the hurricane deck, clear aft. This part of the boat was jammed with me. I saw the pilot house and hundreds of them sink through the roof into the flames, at which juncture I sprang overboard into the river."
