"The date is April 27, 1865. You are crammed onboard the steamboat Sultana with more than 2,000 passengers. Many of them are soldiers heading home after the Civil War. You're cruising on the Mississippi River when a massive explosion rips through the ship. Do you dive into the water to save yourself or stay onboard to help the survivors? Will you try to swim for shore or wait for help to arrive? Will you stay with your sick friend or try to find someone...

Twelve-year-old Emma receives unexpected friendship from a Black roustabout and a Union soldier during an explosion on the steamboat Sultana in 1865.

"For famous one-armed war correspondent Paddy Quinn, this is to be his final Civil War assignment: the funeral of the assassinated President Lincoln. Quinn and his new bride Felice are aboard the steamboat Sultana going up the spring-flooded Mississippi River toward Illinois to meet the Funeral Train, when their honeymoon vessel stops at Vicksburg and takes on a pathetic human cargo of 2,000 sick and ragged survivors of the hellish Andersonville prisoner-of-war...

The History detectives teams investigates four mysteries from America's past: the disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoff; the sinking of the steamboat Sultana in the Civil War-era South; a series of serial killings in 19th century Austin, Texas; the disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller in 1944.