What was the worst marine disaster in U.S. history?

Would that be the Mississippi steamboat explosion on board the Sultana in April 1865 when 1700 people died?

correct jenny. At least 1,547 people were killed when the boiler of the sidewheeler Sultana exploded on April 27, 1865, on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee. Many of those killed in the blaxe where Union soldiers who had recently been freed from Confederate prison camps. The most unusual survival story was that of a man who used a knife to kill a live alligator that was in a wooden crate on board, then used the crate to float away.