Robert Louden (died 1867), also known by the alias Charlie Dale, was a Confederate saboteur and mail carrier during the American Civil War.
As a Confederate agent, Louden was involved in the sabotage and sinking of several Union steamboats near St. Louis, Missouri and, on his deathbed, claimed to have been responsible for the destruction of the steamboat Sultana, which exploded on April 27, 1865 just north of Memphis, Tennessee, killing an estimated 1,300 to 1,900 paroled Union prisoners and civilians returning home after the war, the deadliest maritime disaster in United States history.
He was a notorious Confederate mail carrier and blockade runner, was captured some five or six times, and once, at least, was sentenced to death by a military commission in this city."
Then he told me the story of the torpedo in the coal, and, using his own expression, 'It had got to be too — ticklish a job to set a boat afire and get away from her.
Most modern scholars support the official explanation that the disaster was purely accidental, pointing out that the explosion occurred in the top rear of the boilers, relatively far from the fireboxes where a coal torpedo would have exploded, which suggests that Louden's story was fabricated.