Maggie's Farm

A legal tale:

The Molasses Flood

By Alton Hall Blackington, New England’s Disastrous Weather, Yankee Books, 1990

As long as people work, 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. 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 railroad and the 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 Fireboat 31, and the wharves with patrol boats and minesweepers moored alongside. In the background to the left was the Charlestown Navy Yard. And towering above the freight sheds was the big tank of the Purity Distilling Company-bulging with more than two million gallons of crude molasses waiting to be made into rum.
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 running board 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 thermometer on the sunny side of the freight shed had been climbing. On January 12 it was only 2 degrees above zero. But on the thirteenth the temperature rose rapidly from 16 degrees to 40; now, at 12:30 P.M. on Wednesday the fifteenth, it was 43 degrees 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 pea jackets on their arms.
Mrs. Bridget 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, who was dusting her geraniums on a dingy windowsill.
At 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," he said. "This is the first time in three years I've 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. The earth heaved under their feet, and they heard a sound of ripping and tearing-steel bolts snapping like machine-gun fire-followed by a booming roar as the bottom of the giant molasses tank split wide open and a geyser of yellowish brown fluid spurted 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. In 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 onrushing 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 that 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 disappeared.
As the 58-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 "EI" structure. The trestle snapped, and the tracks sagged almost to street level, but the motorman of an approaching train, seeing the danger, managed to throw his train in reverse and prevent further catastrophe.
The roaring wall of death moved on. ..