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Jan. 22, 2010 In January of 1919 Americans, along with much of the world, basked in the afterglow of World War I’s conclusion and the Armistice of November 11, 1918. Kaiser Bill had been drubbed and America had played an important role. Times looked up for a change. Expectations for improved lives, reunited families and lasting peace were lofty and swelled daily. A peace conference had met in Paris last December. More than thirty countries sent diplomats to discuss fates of the defeated empires. The conference promised lasting stability in Europe. It also created the League of Nations, a phenomenon never seen before in world history. Of course, not all was hunky-dory, as many Americans would acknowledge. Although America’s doughboys trounced the Kaiser’s horde and made the world safe for Democracy, when the troops arrived home, they brought the horror of La Grippe with them. A term picked up by the young US soldiers in France, La Grippe was also known as Spanish Flu. Before the pandemic was over it would have infected one in every four American citizens. In the end, fifty million deaths was the estimate world-wide. Despite the complexities of the day confronting them everywhere they looked, people worked as diligently as they always had. In Boston, Mass the workday on January 15th started early as usual. Winter had been mild. Streets were snow-free and the sun shone, winter-weak but decidedly up there in the pale sky. The New England doughboys, the 26th Division known as The Yankee Division, had not returned from their duty in Europe as yet. When they did get home, Prohibition would greet them since the final vote in favor of forbidding the use of alcohol inside the national boundaries would be cast the next day, January 16th. In the near-down-town north side area of Boston, Copp’s Hill rises near the confluence of the Charles River and Boston’s inner harbor. The area was industrial in 1919. Anyone working on Copp’s Hill would be able to see Old Ironsides moored at the Boston Naval Shipyard. At the bottom of Copp’s Hill, on Salem Street, sat then as it sits now the Old North Church. On the water side of Constitution Street, opposite Copp’s Hill, stood the gigantic storage tank built by the Purity Distilling Company. The massive construction had been built four years earlier, in 1915. It was put together with strong metal plates on the bottom that had been set into concrete. The curved steel sides were riveted with more metal. Standing approximately 50 feet high, the monster was 90 feet around. On the morning of January 15th 2,300,000 gallons of Caribbean molasses filled the astonishing girth and depth of the mammoth container. Historically, Boston always had and still dealt energetically in molasses for the local rum making trade and in support of the city’s renowned Boston baked beans. Near noon that day the workers nearby the molasses tank would have been settling into their lunches. The open space around the tank offered a congenial spot for sandwiches, coffee and gabbing. Down at the waterfront, the members of the Boston Fire Department fireboat would have done the same inside their land quarters. The two groups separate but still Bostonians through and through would probably have been discussing baseball. After all, Boston won the World Series in 1918. There was a new Charlie Chaplin movie out. The title was “Shoulder Arms” and it was a Chaplinesque satire on life as lived in the trenches. Politics would most assuredly have been discussed. Boston workers were always interested in the political scene. Their jobs depended on the politicians. President Wilson was in Europe trying to get the diplomats to base the peace contract on his Fourteen Points. Former President Teddy Roosevelt had died just two weeks before and the men had admired him as a person even though they didn’t care much for his politics. As far as Boston’s very own political scene was concerned, Ex-Mayor John J. Fitzgerald was no longer in that scene and the laborers would have truly missed old Honey Fitz, who never forgot his Irishness or the men who worked day after day to keep Boston running smoothly. So what if there was a bit of graft while he was in the mayor’s office? Honey Fitz had been born in North Boston when it was still thick with Irish not Italians. He was a darlin’ man when all was said and done. The lunch hour was nearing its close when a horrendous noise began. The sound was a combination of screeches, thunder and a machine gun going off. The banshee noises came from the molasses tank as it tore itself apart. The bullet-like sounds were the rivets tearing themselves from the staves. North Boston was about to become inundated by nearly two and a half million gallons of wet, viscous, brown anguish. A wave of hell, 15 feet high, wiped out everything in its path. One of the steel sections of the tank was blown across Commercial Street. The flying metal took out one of the supports of the Elevated Train track that ran across Commercial. An oncoming train stopped just in time not to sink into the god-awful mess following the tracks downward. As the molasses punched into houses along its path the buildings crumpled like flimsy cardboard. People within their own homes died instantly. The wave caught and smothered the workers who had just eaten their lunches beneath the tank‘s walls. Tank pieces became airborne and pierced or shredded everything they encountered. The fireboat company quarters were demolished in a stupefyingly short time. You know the old saw about being as slow as molasses in January? Of course you do. And just how fast can molasses move downhill on a 40 degree January day? One estimate was 35 miles an hour. The devil wave caught children on their way home for lunch. Many of them never made it home. The casualty numbers increased all day. Some of the bodies could not be identified. They were glazed over with the molasses and battered by the inhumane flood. In the end, 21 dead were counted and over 100 were injured. The wave spread out over several city blocks to a depth of two feet. Rescue workers could barely walk through the sticky muck. Vehicles were helpless. After the disaster was over and the following legal suits had been settled, the city fathers sat down to figure out how in Heaven’s name the calamity could have happened. What had caused it? They came up with three possibilities. 1. Molasses is made by continuously boiling the liquid from sugar cane until it becomes what is called “blackstrap.” This very thick form of molasses is used to add to cattle feed, giving the cows the calories they need in order to sell well. Fermentation of the stored molasses could have been at fault. 2. Some Bolshevik terrorist may have planted a bomb on top of the tank. There were foreign-aligned terrorists back then, too. 3. Structural failure. The court found that the tank had ruptured because the safety factor was too low. Inspections had been lax. The company was found guilty of negligence. The city’s incredible mess of sticky brown muck was cleaned up by spraying the streets with salt water from the fireboats and then spreading sand over the entire scene. Sadly, the cleaning crews, the general population and the hordes of sightseers who tramped into Boston spread the stickiness all over the city. Molasses coated just about everything from streetcar seats to public telephones. And Boston smelled of molasses for decades. I must thank the journalist Edward Parks, writing as Eric Postpischil, for his marvelous Smithsonian article entitled: “Eric Postpischil’s Molasses Disaster Pages, Smithsonian Article.” Much of what is in my article was in Mr. Parks’ work first and better. I discovered him and his wonderful article by, what else, Googling.
I also have to thank the Husband Person for giving me the tear-off History Channel calendar for Christmas. It’s just squirming with fascinating ideas. Thanks, Honey!
Writing was always my first choice in life. I began writing at the age of 8, small books about pioneers heading west. Little did I know then that I would be living in the most "western" of all the states, Texas. No one told the Texans that they are simply Southerners who, like Bugs Bunny, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up here.
I am sneaking up on 70 years of age and now own a vast store of useless knowledge. Happy to share any or all of it with you all.
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