Eliza Battle

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Location: Tombigbee River
Time Era: mid-1800s
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In the second month of 1858, the steamboat Eliza Battle set sail down the Tombigbee River. She carried 60 passengers and over twelve hundred bales of cotton to Mobile, Alabama from Columbus, Mississippi.

On March first, the air was unusually cold for that time of year.

That chilly night, the cotton bales somehow caught fire. The entire ship was enveloped in flames. In the fire, thirty-three passengers and crewmen were killed.

It was the greatest nautical disaster of the Tombigbee River.

On brisk, cold nights, some people see the Eliza Battle, still aflame, as she rises from the mist-blanketed waters where she sunk all those years ago. She tries fruitlessly to complete her voyage to Mobile, Alabama.

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