No Escape from Gigantic Molasses Wave

in the North End

The molasses tank—90 feet in diameter— stood on the marked spot. When it burst, a colossal molasses wave swept away people and animals, crushed freight cars, autos, and wagons, and destroyed buildings.  Additional damage was inflicted by the tank’s steel segments and thousands of fastening rivets that became projectiles.

Courtesy of the Boston Public Library

In late 1915, a five-story, steel tank to store molasses was built here at the edge of a densely-populated neighborhood.  Midday January 15, 1919, the tank burst. A 30-foot wave of fast-moving, thick molasses suffocated many in the vicinity. Others, like 10-year-old Pasquale, were crushed by debris swept up by the molasses, or died in buildings that collapsed. Twenty-one people perished—some immediately, others after lingering in pain for several days. Dozens more suffered debilitating physical and emotional injuries.

The tank had been built quickly with virtually no oversight. The owners used only six inches of water to test its strength. Then they filled it multiple times with 2.3 million gallons of molasses weighing 26 million pounds. From the outset, people had reported excessive leakage from the seams, so much so that children routinely filled buckets with molasses at the tank’s base.

In 1925, in the biggest law suit in Massachusetts history, the court ruled unequivocally in favor of the victims. The catastrophic event led to reforms in building standards in Boston and beyond.

Police, firemen, Red Cross workers, sailors, and volunteers rushed to the rescue, freeing victims trapped in the molasses, which began to harden, and from collapsed buildings.

Courtesy of the Boston Fire Department Archives

A segment of the steel tank sliced through a column supporting the elevated railroad. The tracks collapsed mere seconds after a passenger train had passed.

Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

Detail from the 1917 Bromley map shows the round tank next to the fire station, popular beach, and up against the elevated trolley tracks.

Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center at Boston Public Library

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The number of people who died when the tank disintegrated almost doubled to 21. Their ages ranged from 10 to 76.

 

Patrick Breen               44-year-old laborer

William Brogan           61-year-old teamster*

Bridget Clougherty      65-year-old homemaker

Stephen Clougherty      34 years old

John Callahan                43-year-old paver

Maria Distasio                10 years old

William Duffy                  58-year-old laborer

Peter Francis                    64-year-old blacksmith

Flaminio Gallerani          37-year-old driver

Pasquale Iantosca            10 years old

James Kinneally                age unknown, laborer

Eric Laird                            17-year-old teamster

George Layhe                    38-year-old firefighter

James Lennon                   64-year-old teamster

Ralph Martin                     21-year-old driver

James McMullen              46-year-old foreman

Cesar Nicolo                       32-year-old expressman

Thomas Noonan               43-year-old longshoreman

Peter Shaughnessy           18-year-old teamster

John Sieberlich                 69-year-old blacksmith

Michael Sinnott                76-year-old messenger

*A teamster drove a team of horses, delivering goods

In addition to the 21 men, women and children who died, dozens of horses died or had to be euthanized as they drowned in the molasses.

As early as February 1919, a month after the tragedy, MIT Professor C. M. Spofford reported that the steel plates were of insufficient thickness to withstand the pressure of the molasses and that there were not enough rivets to fasten the steel plates sufficiently. “The tank was improperly designed and its failure was due entirely to structural weakness,” he stated.

In 2014, engineer Ronald A. Mayville, PhD, PE, who had studied the catastrophe extensively, concluded that the steel plates were 50 percent too thin (which was known at the time) and made from steel susceptible to fracture—as was the Titanic (information not known at the time). The tank had been filled several times before it fell apart, and it is likely that this repeated use contributed to the disaster.

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600,000 gallons of still warm molasses had been transferred from a steamship to the tank January 12 and 13—two days before the tank fell apart. In 2016, a Harvard team concluded that when the tank burst on January 15, almost a quarter of the 2.3 million gallons of molasses that filled the tank were still relatively warm and so they flowed out fast, in a huge wave. It’s estimated that the wave traveled at 35 m.p.h. propelled by its colossal weight. One man was swept out into the harbor. Then the molasses cooled rapidly in January temperatures, becoming very thick, sticky and dangerous in other ways. Victims were stuck and trapped in place among wreckage, unable to move, suffocating on the thickening molasses, and complicating rescuers efforts.

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The molasses arriving by ship from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the West Indies were stored first in the North End tank and then transported by freight car to the distilling plant in Cambridge. Both facilities were owned by United States Industrial Alcohol (USIA), who was responsible for the tank’s woeful construction. At the distilling plant, most of the molasses was converted into industrial alcohol, which, in turn, was used to manufacture munitions. During WWI, USAI was making enormous profits and local management was under pressure to build the storage tank as quickly as possible.

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There was significant unrest and violence during this period, perpetrated by anarchists. USIA claimed that an anarchist had dropped explosives into the tank and that’s why it ruptured. However there was no evidence to support that claim. On the other hand, as the presiding court official wrote in his report, there was “sufficient evidence of trouble [related to the tank] available to a reasonably competent management to cause it to investigate and see whether something ought to be done in the interest of common safety.” Instead, USIA caulked the seams twice in the tank’s three-year life, and then painted it the color of molasses perhaps so the seeping liquid wouldn’t show.

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“The [Molasses] Flood essentially ended 300 years’ worth of high-volume molasses trade in Boston and New England,” writes Stephen Puleo in Dark Tide. “While some molasses distilling took place in the city up until World War II, the industry never resumed its level of importance. Sugar prices dropped markedly after World War I, replacing molasses as a sweetener.

New technologies in the production of high explosives and smokeless powder soon eliminated the need for munitions companies to rely on industrial alcohol distilled from molasses. Molasses, which had played such a key role in the American Revolution, the slave trade, the rum business, and in munitions production, slowly disappeared as a staple product in America and as a critical part of the New England economy.”

Source: Puleo, Stephen. Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Beacon Press, 2003, p. 235.

Resources

Acknowledgments

  • Warm thanks to Stephen Puleo for his assistance and support.
  • Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind and David W. Cook for their partnership in creating the audio files.
  • Thank you to the Boston Marine Society for funding the Spanish and Italian translations as well as the recording of this sign.