- General Lyon
"General Lyon" (not to be confused with the USS "General Lyon", a naval sidewheel steamer of the same era) was a
U.S. screw steamer built in the spring of1863 .Late in the war, "General Lyon" was chartered by the
US Army for a passage fromNorth Carolina toNorfolk, Virginia . On board were a large number of discharged Union soldiers returning from the war, along with a number of Confederateprisoners of war , sixty refugees and some other passengers.On
March 17 1865 , two days into the voyage, the ship hit rough weather offCape Hatteras and a fire broke out in the engine room, quickly spreading through the ship. Of the passengers on board, approximately 600 lost their lives, including all but three members of a 205-man contingent of the US56th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment . There were only 28 survivors of the disaster in total.A few days later, United States President
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and GeneralRobert E. Lee of the Confederacy surrendered to U.S. GeneralUlysses S. Grant , ending the long and bloody civil war. As a result, the "General Lyon" disaster was overshadowed by larger historical events, and an investigation into the cause of the tragedy was never carried out.References
* [http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/1994/ihy940238.html The "General Lyon" Tragedy] , Illinous Periodicals Online (a project of Northern Illinois University Libraries).
* [http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilcivilw/history/056.htm 56th Illinois Infantry Regiment History] , ILGenWeb (Illinois Genealogy Web Project).
* [http://hometown.aol.com/kc8a3/myhomepage/survivor.html US Army Transport General Lyon] (personal website with additional links).ee also
56th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment List of battles and other violent events by death toll
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
