The molasses tank had become a fixture and familiar presence above Commercial Street in Boston’s North End, the city’s oldest and, at this point, largely Italian immigrant neighborhood, since its construction in 1915. The tank was cylindrical, made of steel, and towering—about 50 feet tall and nearly as wide. When fully filled, as it would be on this fateful day, it held about 2.3 million gallons, or 26,000,000 pounds, of the thick liquid.
People sometimes worried about how the tank groaned; something felt eerie. But, then again, so did the ships in the harbor. So did boilers and bridges and the city itself. People learned to live with the sounds. And yes, the tank leaked. By some accounts, daily. But that just turned into a sweet treat for children on warm days. They would scrape the leaks with sticks, carrying the sweetness home on their fingers.
Few imagined that the tank could burst.
—
January 15, 1919, was, by most measures, just an ordinary winter day in Boston. The big anomaly was the weather — forty-three degrees midday, unusually warm for the season. The times themselves were a mixture of sorrow and delight. The Spanish flu epidemic had finally slowed after killing nearly 700,000 Americans. World War I had just ended. The boys were coming back home. Though for some families, their boys didn’t come back.
But then shortly after 12:30pm, there is a sound—some say like a gunshot, others like thunder at close range—and then the steel ruptures. Rivets shear loose. Plates peel outward. The tank bursts outward. Molasses surges forward—a wall of brown syrup rising as high as fifteen feet—rushing into the street at an estimated thirty-five miles per hour.
It snaps telegraph poles and folds them into itself. It lifts freight wagons and tosses them aside. It shoves a Boston firehouse from its foundation and does the same to many other houses. Horses rear, stumble, vanish. People are struck from behind, knocked down, pinned before they understand what is happening.
The molasses clings and holds. Those caught in it find their bodies betraying them. We don’t have to go into the details.
Then, the flood stops. Rescue comes quickly from anyone who can help. But what remains are ruins. Wreckage suspended in brown stillness. Some people remain trapped for hours. Others are not recovered for days. Twenty-one people will be dead. More than 150 injured.
—
Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of United States Industrial Alcohol, is the tank owner. The molasses has been a valuable product for them, as it feeds the production of industrial alcohol, rum, and other products. They’ve made a lot of money as a manufacturer during the war effort.
But they built the tank quickly, without proper testing or expertise, using steel that was too thin. Business was waiting, and, well, from their perspective, money was at stake. That’s why the tank leaked from the start. But the complaints had been ignored. Instead, the tank was painted brown to hide the stains.
Arguments over responsibility begin immediately. The company claims sabotage. Anarchists, they suggest, must have bombed the tank. It’s fathomable — America is going through a chapter of history in which anarchists and socialists are turning to violent means, bombings in particular, in hopes of achieving their goals, which have proven successful in countries such as Russia.
In the end, the explanation is clear. The tank failed because it was poorly designed, cheaply built, and recklessly maintained. The tank had never been properly reviewed or tested by a qualified engineer. The company is found negligent. Around a million dollars in damages are paid to victims and their families.
Something else happens. Engineering standards tighten. Inspections become mandatory. Calculations are required. Industrial safety, also a theme of that time period, is given more prominence.
And years later, to this very day, some people say they can still smell molasses on hot days in the North End. Whether that is true hardly matters. What lingers are the changes that have come to be, the ones that should have been in place from the beginning, but at least are there now.
—
Notes
Read a history story about “1816: The Year Without a Summer.”
Sources
- “Boston Uncovered: the Great Molasses Flood.” City of Boston, https://youtu.be/882WqoVjoYE
- Kops, Deborah. The Great Molasses Flood, Boston 1919. N.p., Charlesbridge Publishing, Incorporated, 2015.
- “Huge molasses tank explodes in North End; 11 dead, 50 hurt [Boston Post, January 16, 1919].” Boston Public Library, https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/4901511429 & Attribution 2.0 Generic CC BY 2.0 Deed
- “Why some people say they can still smell Boston’s Great Molasses Flood.” GBH News, https://youtu.be/_1FnQmAsajc
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