The Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919
by John Mason
Reprinted from Yankee Magazine
(Dublin, New Hampshire: January 1965), pages 52-53 and 109-111.
As long as people work and live and play in the vicinity of North End Park in
Boston, no winter will pass without someone recalling the catastrophe that took
place there on January 15, 1919, just forty-six years ago.
The scene of this tragic accident was that low-lying section of Commercial
Street between Copps Hill and the playground of North End Park.
Looking down from Copps Hill on that mild, winter afternoon, you saw first the
tracks of the Boston elevated—and the old, old houses nearby. Across the
street were the freight sheds of the Boston and Worcester and Eastern
Massachusetts Railways, the paving division of the Public Works Department, the
headquarters of Fire Boat 31, and the wharves with patrol boats and
minesweepers moored alongside. In the background to the left, the Charlestown
Navy Yard. Towering above the freight sheds was the big tank of the United
States Alcohol Company—bulging with more than two million gallons of
crude molasses.
In the Public Works Department, a dozen or more horses munched their oats and
hay, as flocks of pigeons fluttered around to catch the stray kernels of grain
that fell from the feed bags. Stretched out on the runningboard of a heavily
laden express truck, "Peter," a pet tiger cat, slept in the unseasonably warm
sunshine.
This was the fourth day that the mercury of the freight shed had been climbing.
On the 12th of January it was only two degrees above zero. But, on the 13th,
the temperature rose rapidly from sixteen degrees to forty; now, at 12:30 p.m.
on Wednesday, the 15th, it was forty-three above zero, and so warm in the sun
that office workers stood around in their shirtsleeves (talking about the
weather). Even the freight handlers had doffed their overcoats, and sailors
from the training ship
Nantucket carried their heavy peajackets on their
arms.
Mrs. Clougherty put her blankets out to air and smiled at little Maria Di
Stasio gathering firewood under the freight cars. She waved to her neighbor,
Mrs. O'Brien, planting her geraniums on a dingy window sill.
In the pumping station attached to the big molasses tank, Bill White turned the
key in the lock and started uptown to meet his wife for lunch. He bumped into
Eric Blair, driver for Wheeler's Express, and said, "Hello, Scotty. What are
you doing around here at noontime? Thought you and the old nag always went to
Charlestown for grub?"
The young Scotsman grinned, "It's a funny thing, Bill. This is the first time
in three years I ever brought my lunch over here;" and he climbed up on the
bulkhead and leaned back against the warm side of the big molasses
tank—for the first and last time.
Inside the Boston and Worcester freight terminal, Percy Smerage, the foreman,
was checking a pile of express to be shipped to Framingham and Worcester. Four
freight cars were already loaded. The fifth stood half empty on the spur track
that ran past the molasses tank.
Smerage had just told his assistant to finish loading the last car when a low,
deep rumble shook the freight yard. Then the earth heaved under their feet and
they heard a sound of ripping and tearing—snipping of steel bolts (like a
machine gun)—followed by a booming roar as the bottom of the giant
molasses tank split wide open and a geyser of yellowish-brown fluid spouted
into the sky, followed by a tidal wave of molasses.
With a horrible, hissing, sucking sound, it splashed in a curving arc straight
across the street, crushing everything and everybody in its path.
Less time than it takes to tell it, molasses had filled the five-foot loading
pit, and was creeping over the threshold of the warehouse door. The four
loaded freight cars were washed like chips down the track. The half-loaded car
was caught on the foaming crest of the eight-foot wave and, with unbelievable
force, hurled through the corrugated iron walls of the terminal.
The freight house shook and shivered as the molasses outside, now five feet
deep, pushed against the building. Then the doors and windows caved in, and a
rushing-roaring river of molasses rolled like molten lava into the freight
shed, knocking over the booths where freight clerks were checking their lists.
Like madmen they fought the on-rushing tide, trying to swim in the sticky stuff
that sucked them down. Tons of freight—shoes, potatoes—barrels and
boxes—tumbled and splashed on the frothy-foaming mass, now so heavy the
floors gave way, letting tons of the stuff into the cellar. Down there the
workers died like rats in a trap. Some tried to dash up the stairs but they
slipped and fell—and disappeared.
As the fifty-eight-foot-high tank split wide open, more molasses poured out
under a pressure of two tons per square foot. Men, women, children and animals
were caught, hurled into the air, or dashed against freight cars only to fall
back and sink from sight in the slowly moving mass.
High above the scene of disaster, an elevated train crowded with passengers
whizzed by the crumbling tank just as the molasses broke loose, tearing off the
whole front of the Clougherty house and snapping off the steel supports of the
"L" structure. That train had barely gone by when the trestle snapped and the
tracks sagged almost to street level.
The roaring wall of death moved on. It struck the fire station, knocked it over
on its side and pushed it toward the ocean until it fetched up on some pilings.
One of the firemen was hurled through a partition. George Leahy, engineer of
Fire Boat 31, was crushed to death under a billiard table.
In the Public Works Department, five men eating their noonday meal were
smothered by the bubbling, boiling sludge that poured in upon them.
Up at fire headquarters, the first alarm came in at 12:40 p.m. As soon as Chief
Peter McDonough learned the extent of the tragedy, he sounded a third alarm to
get workers and rescue squads.
Ladders were placed over the wreckage and the firemen crawled out on them to
pull the dead and dying from the molasses-drenched debris.
Amidst a mass of bedding and broken furniture, they found the body of Mrs.
Clougherty—killed when her house collapsed. Nearby lay the body of
"Peter."
Capt. Krake of Engine 7 was leading his men cautiously along the slippery
wreckage under the elevated when he saw a mass of yellow hair floating on a
dark brown pool of molasses. He took off his coat and plunged his arms to the
elbows in the sweet sticky stream. It was Maria Di Stasio, the little girl who
had been gathering firewood.
Over by the Public Works Building, more than a dozen horses lay floundering in
the molasses. Under an overturned express wagon was the body of the driver.
Fifteen dead were found before the sun went down that night and six other
bodies were recovered later. As for the injured, they were taken by cars and
wagons and ambulances to the Haymarket Relief and other hospitals.
The next day the firemen tackled the mess with a lot of fire hoses, washing the
molasses off the buildings and wreckage and down the gutters. When hit by the
salt water, the molasses frothed up—all yellow and sudsy. It was weeks
before the devastated area was cleaned up.
Of course, there was great controversy as to the cause of the tank's collapse.
And there were about 125 lawsuits filed against the United States Industrial
Alcohol Company.
The trial (or rather the hearings) was the longest in the history of
Massachusetts Courts. Judge Hitchcock appointed Col. Hugh W. Ogden to act as
Auditor and hear the evidence. It was six years before he made his special
report.
There were so many lawyers involved, that there wasn't room enough in the
courthouse to hold them all, so they consolidated and chose two to represent
the claimants.
Never in New England did so many engineers, metallurgists and scientists parade
onto the witness stand. Albert L. Colby, an authority on the amount of
structural strain a steel tank could sustain before breaking, was on the
witness stand three weeks—often giving testimony as late as ten o'clock
in the evening.
Altogether, more than 3,000 witnesses were examined and nearly 45,000 pages of
testimony and arguments were recorded. The defendants spent over $50,000 on
expert witness fees, claiming the collapse was not due to a structural weakness
but rather to a dynamite bomb.
When Auditor Ogden made his report, he found the defendants responsible for the
disaster because the molasses tank, which was fifty-eight feet high and ninety
feet across, was not strong enough to withstand the pressure of the 2,500,000
gallons it was designed to hold. In other words, the "factor of safety" was not
high enough.
And so the owners of the tank paid in all nearly a million dollars in
damages—and the great Molasses Case passed into history.
Thanks to Yankee Publishing for
permission to reprint this article. You can return to the main molasses page, read the Smithsonian article, or visit some of my
other pages through the yellow bar below.
A book was published about the Boston molasses disaster in 2003, Dark Tide
by Stephen Puleo. There are other articles about the Boston molasses
disaster at Wikipedia
and Ooze.
Another unsual accident happened at Lake Peigneur, where an entire lake
swirled down the drain into a salt mine, described in Wikipedia and
How to Cite This Page
Cite this page as:
- John Mason, “Eric Postpischil’s Molasses Disaster Pages, Yankee Magazine Article,” Eric Postpischil's Domain, 27 August 2015, <http://edp.org/molyank.htm> accessed 15 September 2017.
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