Dark Tide

by Stephen Puleo

  Fragments of the great tank were thrown into the air, buildings in the neighborhood began to crumple up as though the underpinnings had been pulled away from them, and scores of people in the various buildings were buried in the ruins, some dead and others badly injured.

  The explosion came without the slightest warning. The workmen were at their noontime meal, some eating in the building or just outside … once the low, rumbling sound was heard no one had a chance to escape. The buildings seemed to cringe up as though they were made of pasteboard.

  In its first-day report, the Post led with the following account:

  A 50-foot wave of molasses—2,300,000 gallons of it—released in some manner yet unexplained, from a giant tank, swept over Commercial street and its waterfront from Charter street to the southerly end of North End park yesterday afternoon.

  Ensnaring in its sticky flood more than 100 men, women, and children; crushing buildings, teams, automobiles, and street cars—everything in its path—the black, reeking mass slapped against the side of the buildings footing Copp’s Hill and then swished back toward the harbor.

  Eleven persons—a woman, a girl, and nine men—were the known dead at midnight. More than 50 injured were in hospitals and at their homes. Some of them may die. Dead horses, cats, and dogs had been carted away in team after team.

  Sailors at bottom left from the USS Nantucket, which was in port when the flood occurred, aided in the rescue efforts as crews cleared tons of debris to reach trapped victims.

  (Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)

  In its inside pages, the Post described the destruction in the colorful newspaper language of the day:

  A rumble, a hiss—some say a boom and a swish—and the wave of molasses swept out. It smote the huge steel girders of the “L” structure and bent, twisted, and snapped them, as if by the smash of a giant’s fist. Across the street, down the street, it rolled like a two-sided breaker at the seashore. Thirty feet high, it smashed against tenements on the edge of Copp’s Hill. Swirling back it sucked a modest frame dwelling [the Clougherty house] from where it nestled beside the three-story brick tenements and threw it, a mass of wreckage, under the “L” structure.

  Then, balked by the staunch brick walls of the houses at the foot of the hill, the death-dealing mass swept back towards the water. Like eggshells it crushed the buildings of the North End yard of the city’s paving division … To the north it swirled and wiped out practically all of Boston’s only electric freight terminal. Big steel trolley freight cars were crushed as if eggshells, and their piled-up cargo of boxes and merchandise minced like so much sandwich meat.

  The swath of destruction caused by the molasses wave extended for hundreds of feet down Commercial Street. Note the smashed vehicle against the stone wall at right. The mass of debris burying the Clougherty house can be seen in the center of the photo, beneath the trestle.

  (Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)

  Meanwhile, the cause of the disaster continued to be a source of debate carried out in the press. State chemist Walter Wedger, and U.S. inspector of explosives Daniel T. O’Connell, believed strongly in the “collapse theory”—that the tank disintegrated because of a combination of structural weakness and fermentation inside the tank. USIA attorney Henry F.R. Dolan continued to argue “beyond question” that outside influences, “evilly disposed persons,” were responsible for destroying the tank, insisting that the fifty-foot receptacle was structurally sound.

  As the clean-up continued—as workers first tried to remove hardening molasses with chisels and saws, and finally used millions of gallons of briny seawater to cut the congealing liquid; as the injured were ministered at the relief station and the search continued for additional victims amidst the debris on the waterfront—Boston newspapers, and even the New York Times, continued to carry reports of the disaster on their front pages. They listed the names, ages, and occupations of the dead and the injured. They ran sidebars of people who escaped the wave by ducking under railroad cars. They published small stories explaining that people who were feared lost were actually alive and well.

  For a week after the flood, the molasses tragedy became the only news in Boston, the talk of the city, the focus of activity in the North End.

  Meanwhile, rescue teams kept searching for bodies.

  Thursday, January 16, 1919, 8 p.m.

  While clean-up and recovery efforts were continuing, church bells throughout Boston pealed in celebration. Nebraska had just become the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Prohibition amendment, providing the three-fourths total necessary to amend the U.S. Constitution; after a one-year grace period, the actual law banning alcohol in the United States would go into effect on January 17, 1920.

  It no longer mattered to U.S. Industrial Alcohol. Its 2.3 million gallons of molasses covered Commercial Street and filled the basements of homes and businesses in the area. Its attempt to convert its molasses distillation process from industrial alcohol for munitions to grain alcohol for rum—its attempt, in effect, to outrun the oncoming Prohibition amendment—had ended in disaster.

  USIA’s days in Boston were numbered.

  Friday, January 17, 1919

  Two days after the disaster, with the water of Boston Harbor stained brown from the molasses that had been washed into it, more than three hundred workers covered the waterfront, combing through wreckage for the bodies of the missing, clearing debris so the search could proceed more smoothly, and wielding acetylene torches to cut the steel pieces of the tank into manageable sizes that could be carried away. The city provided about 125 of those workers, Boston Elevated another hundred, and the Hugh Nawn Construction Company, builders of the tank’s foundation, supplied another hundred. United States Industrial Alcohol had supplied no workers and, indeed, its first representatives had not visited the scene until Friday, when Vice President M.C. Whittaker arrived from New York, engineers William F. Cochrane and John F. Barnard traveled north from Baltimore, and treasurer Arthur P. Jell made his way over from USIA’s East Cambridge distilling plant.

  Whittaker and his men met with Thomas F. Sullivan, commissioner of Public Works for Boston, and a heated argument ensued that could be heard outside the building in which they met. Sullivan angrily disapproved of the fact that USIA had delayed so long before sending representatives to the scene, and was providing no clean-up assistance. Whittaker finally agreed to hire up to 150 men to assist with the clean-up. In addition, engineers Cochrane and Barnard would supervise the removal of the steel tank pieces to a scrap metal yard in Roxbury, a few miles away. The pieces would either be transported by wagon if they could fit, or for larger sections, dragged by teams of horses fitted with ropes and harnesses. Arthur P. Jell remained on the waterfront for several hours that day, but there is no evidence that he contributed to the discussion during the meeting.

  After the brief exchange between the city and USIA officials, a member of the press cornered Whittaker outside.

  “Can you give some cause for the accident?” the reporter asked.

  “No. If I could, I wouldn’t have to work for a living,” Whittaker snapped back.

  Meanwhile, at about 3 P.M., Ralph Martin, the twenty-one-year-old teamster and driver for Dolan Meats and Provision, died from infection at the Haymarket Relief Center, his parents by his side. He was conscious up to an hour before his death, begging his mother and father for some relief from the pain.

  Peter Curran, whose team of hogs was destroyed in the flood, was luckier. Despite three fractured ribs, a severely bruised thigh, a bruised chest, a wrenched back, an injury to his left eye, and what doctors described as “severe nervous shock,” he was released from the hospital at about the same time as Ralph Martin died. He would be bedridden for a month and incapacitated until May.

  Saturday, January 18, 1919

  Chief Justice Wilfred Bolster of the Boston Municipal Court, renowned in legal circles for his sound judicial temperament, tr
omped through the molasses-covered debris, inspecting the ruins and surveying the horrific destruction on the waterfront with a sense of shock. The North End Paving Yard had been destroyed, reduced to a pile of kindling. The steel girders and trestles and tracks of the elevated railroad structure had been bent and broken into a misshapen mass that would take weeks, or months, to repair. Men and women, hundreds of them, swarmed over the wreckage like ants, their steps tenuous due to the dangerous footing. Some were Red Cross and Salvation Army workers assisting the rescuers, others were firefighters and sailors carefully removing wood and steel in their search for the dead, the more hopeful among them searching for survivors. Scores of other men were wielding brooms, chisels, shovels, or high-pressure hoses in their efforts to remove the molasses from the street and the wharf area. Across Commercial Street, the fire department’s hydraulic pumps were groaning as they worked to siphon thousands of gallons of molasses from the cellars of stores and tenements. In all of his fifty-two years, Wilfred Bolster had never witnessed such a scene.

  As the judge who would next month conduct the criminal inquest into the terrible disaster, Bolster needed to get a complete feel for the scene. He had already interviewed the Boston Public Works superintendent and the USIA lead engineer, William Cochrane, to learn as much as possible about what had happened on Commercial Street.

  Beyond his judicial responsibilities, though, Bolster loved Boston and felt compelled to see the tragedy that had befallen his city. He was a distinguished graduate of Harvard Law School, had served on the Boston School Board, and had been chief justice of the Municipal Court since 1906. Boston had been grotesquely altered by the waterfront catastrophe that had taken place this week. Bolster took this as a personal affront as much as a municipal tragedy.

  As he plodded across the molasses-covered waterfront, avoiding piles of splintered wood and side-stepping the fire hoses that curled through the wharf debris, Judge Wilfred Bolster knew only one thing: Someone was responsible for what had happened here, and someone would pay.

  Sunday, January 19, 1919

  James McMullen, the Bay State Railroad worker who had shouted at Maria Distasio for trespassing at the tank, died at approximately 10 A.M. from infection. His wife, Margaret, who had been at his side from the beginning, said he was delirious and complained about his ferocious thirst right up until his death.

  One hour later, Patrick Breen, the teamster for the City of Boston Paving Department who had been hurled into Boston Harbor by the molasses wave and rescued by sailors, died alone, from pneumonia as a result of his injuries. His daughter, Margaret, and cousin, Charles Breen, had left their bedside vigil for a few hours to get some rest.

  John Barry was alive and home before the end of the day Sunday, January 19, and whereas he merely feared death while he was trapped under the firehouse four days ago, now he wished for it. He hadn’t been able to get a good look at himself in the hospital—each time he moved a nurse would order him to lie back and rest—and the morphine had masked much of his pain. But now he could see and feel, and he thought that death would be a welcome alternative.

  The timbers and heavy water-heater that had pinned him for hours had damaged his torso, injured his back and legs, and crushed his spirit. His pain was indescribable. His entire body, from his neck down, was black from bruising. His thighs and knees were torn and lacerated, and his spine felt as though it would snap at any moment. Boils covered his arms and chest; the doctor had already visited once to slice them open and drain the pus, and he showed John Barry’s daughters how to clean the boils in the future. His girls, he knew, still couldn’t bear to look at him. Their strong, powerfully built father had, within days, become a broken, pitiful old man with snow-white hair.

  As wretched as he looked and felt today, as much as he believed that dying would be better than the suffering he was experiencing now, John Barry still had no way of knowing how profoundly his life would change. His back and legs would never heal completely. He would remain bedridden for weeks, and even after he did manage to get out of bed, he would never be able to stand fully erect.

  When he did return to work for the city, he would shuffle paper in the office, keeping track of the paving jobs—John Barry, a strapping picture of health, a man who had never been treated by a doctor prior to the molasses disaster, would also never again be physically able to cut stone for a living.

  The molasses flood would not claim John Barry’s life, but it would claim his health, his livelihood, and, eventually, his self-worth. He had no way of knowing all of this on January 19, 1919, no way of knowing how much he would suffer in the years to come.

  Monday, January 20, 1919

  John Callahan, the City of Boston paver who sent his wife out of his room and confided to her cousin that he was “sinking fast” on the night of the molasses disaster, died five days later from shock and pneumonia. The time of death was 4 A.M. John Callahan died alone—his wife, Kittie, had not yet arrived from their South Boston home.

  Later That Day, Boston City Hospital

  It was just after noon, but already, it had been a long day for Martin Clougherty. His mother’s funeral had just ended, a simple, but well-attended affair. He suspected that the throngs who had paid their respects had come not so much as a testament to the family’s popularity, but more out of curiosity about the bizarre and violent manner in which his mother had died.

  Now, Martin stood at the bedside of his sleeping brother, Stephen, who had been transferred to Boston City Hospital yesterday from the Haymarket Relief Station. His thirty-two-year-old brother, a man with the mind of a seven-year-old, had been a far cry from his pleasant, docile self when Martin first arrived to visit him. He had been frightened to death, begging Martin to stay with him, fearing that the hospital personnel were conspiring to harm him. “The nurses are getting ready to poison me and throw me out the window,” Stephen had cried, “just like I got thrown out the top window of our home.”

  Martin had learned that sailors from the USS Enterprise had pulled his brother from the molasses and placed him in the ambulance that took him to the relief station. His brother’s hands and arms had been cut and bruised, but beyond that, he had no serious injuries. Physical injuries, Martin corrected. There had definitely been a serious diminishment of his brother’s mental condition. Normally, he could tease and joke with Stephen. But Martin had known as soon as he had walked into his brother’s room that something had changed. He could see it in Stephen’s eyes first, the sheer terror, and then his brother had begun talking about the hospital staff’s plotting to kill him. Martin had calmed him, speaking softly and gently stroking his forehead, until Stephen had fallen asleep. How he would react when he awoke was anyone’s guess.

  Martin had to think about Stephen’s future. Before the accident, Stephen had handled simple chores around his mother’s house and, despite his feeble-mindedness, was enjoyable to be around. Immersed in routine and familiar surrounding, his brother could manage day-to-day living without constant care and direction. But what now? Stephen had clearly taken a turn for the worse. He was terrified and paranoid. How long would these feelings last? What if they were permanent? Stephen had no familiar surroundings to come home to. Their mother was gone. Their home was gone.

  Martin himself had been affected by the disaster more than he had imagined possible. He missed his mother, but it was more than that. His own injuries were minor, but his nerves were on edge nearly every moment and he had not been able to sleep since the disaster. He was staying with friends, and on two occasions already, they had mentioned to him that he cried out during the night. If the tragedy was affecting Martin this much, keeping him awake at night and in a state of anxiety during the day, he could only imagine how it was affecting Stephen. His brother often had trouble separating fantasy from reality. How much would his ordeal change him? And could Martin care for him if Stephen’s mental condition became much worse?

  He would have to deal with this eventually, but first things first. As M
artin looked down upon his sleeping brother, he wondered how he would tell Stephen that their mother was dead.

  Late That Afternoon, the Waterfront

  They pulled out ten-year-old Pasquale Iantosca’s battered, molasses-covered body from behind a railroad freight car as late afternoon dusk enveloped the waterfront and a raw wind whistled off the harbor. The boy’s arms, legs, pelvis, and chest were broken and his face was disfigured beyond recognition. The molasses had driven the railroad car into Pasquale, carried them both about fifty feet, and smashed both up against the wall, the railroad car crushing the little boy instantly. Rescuers knew Pasquale was missing, and when they pulled the boy out, one ran to get Pasquale’s father, Giuseppe, at his Charter Street home.

  When Giuseppe arrived, he recoiled in horror upon seeing his son’s body. He couldn’t recognize the boy’s face. His first instinct was to cover his own face with his hands and weep, but Giuseppe would not do this in front of the rescue workers. He composed himself, saw that the dead boy was wearing a red sweater, bent down, lifted the sweater, and saw the second red sweater underneath. It was Pasquale. The black corduroy pants and the high brown shoes were also Pasquale’s.

  Giuseppe gently hugged little Pasqualeno’s shattered body close to him, felt his son’s broken bones squirming under the sweaters, tried to imagine the boy’s pain and fear in those last seconds. Giuseppe prayed to God that Pasquale had died quickly, that he was dead before the railroad freight car had smashed his body against the wall of the building.

  In a few moments, Giuseppe felt hands on his shoulders and men pulling him to his feet. One man carefully took Pasqualeno’s body and placed him tenderly into the back of a Red Cross ambulance that would take him to the morgue. The other rescuers turned away to continue their work and give Giuseppe his privacy. Giuseppe stood motionless and watched the ambulance drive north on Commercial Street. His heart was broken, but at least little Pasqualeno was no longer lost. And his wife, Maria, would be grateful. Their son would have a funeral.