Sultana Museum receives unique artistic donation

Painting with historic significance added to collection

Sultana Disaster Museum Director of Special Projects MARION, Ark. — The Sultana Disaster Museum received a unique donation this week from the collection of Tom & Jo Alice McDonald of Jonesboro: a watercolor painting of the Sultana disaster, painted by local artist, Marion Sue Thompson. Although the museum has obtained several paintings of the disaster over the years, this piece has a distinctive significance to it. In 1992, this Thompson painting, entitled The Burning of the Sultana, 1865, was chosen by author and historian Jerry Potter to be the cover of his book, The Sultana Tragedy: America’s Greatest Maritime Disaster. The Sultana was a Mississippi riverboat which was chartered to carry Union ex-prisoners-of-war northward back to their homes following the Civil War. A web of greed and corruption led to the boat being vastly overcrowded, despite already treacherous river conditions and hasty repairs made to the ship’s faulty boilers. In the early morning hours of April 27, 1865, the boilers exploded just north of Memphis, sending the boat into flames. Nearly 1,200 of the almost 2,200 individuals on board perished in the disaster. The burning hull of the Sultana then drifted and sank on the Arkansas banks of the river, near Marion.

Thompson and Potter first met through their mutual interest in the Sultana.

Thompson, an avid history enthusiast in addition to her art, had long been intrigued by the story and was inspired to paint a depiction of the disaster. Around this time, she read an article in a Memphis newspaper about Potter’s upcoming book on the Sultana.

According to a 1992 Jonesboro Sun article on the painting, Thompson reached out to Potter by letter to congratulate him on his book and inform him of her painting. It was this connection that eventually led to her piece landing on the cover of The Sultana Tragedy. Potter, now a board member of the Sultana Historic Preservation Society which helps facilitate the museum’s operations, had kind words to say about his interactions with Thompson. “She was a wonderful lady,” he said.

“[She] really got excited about the story of the Sultana as she painted the picture.”

Although Thompson passed away in 2007, her painting lived on in the possession of Tom & Jo Alice McDonald. When Tom McDonald died in 2021, Jo Alice held onto the painting until this week, when she graciously chose to pass it on to the

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Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion.

There, the piece will become a part of the museum’s effort to commemorate the disaster and tell the forgotten story of the steamboat