PART II
SIX 
Boston, Wednesday, January 15, 1919, 4 a.m.
Martin Clougherty walked home from the Pen and Pencil Club on this damp Wednesday morning with elation and wistfulness as his companions, both tugging at him like lovers competing for his affections.
His elation was easy to understand. Since acquiring the club outright three years ago, he had succeeded in amassing nearly $4,000, more than enough to purchase a nice home in Revere, or other points north of Boston, for him and his family. He finally could move his mother, sister, and brother out from the shadows of the elevated railroad trestle, away from the unending noise and the pervasive grime, far from the stench of horse manure and slaughtered chickens. It was time to leave the North End, and Martin finally had the means; he would meet with his accountant that afternoon to hammer out the details of selling his club and his mother’s house.
Martin’s wistfulness was nearly as strong, but more complicated to define. There were the usual feelings of anxiety that came with leaving familiar surroundings for parts unknown. He would miss the boys at the Pen and Pencil Club. He had built a successful business from scratch and considered many of the bar’s patrons his friends. He enjoyed the rich conversation he overheard while he tended bar, often joining in as he mixed and poured drinks. The spark he felt when the club was jumping, the camaraderie that warmed him as surely as a shot of top-shelf whiskey—Martin wondered if he would ever again experience those feelings.
The loss would soon extend beyond Martin’s world, and perhaps that was the true cause of the sad nostalgia that played around the edges of his otherwise good spirits. Prohibition was coming. In a matter of days, maybe a single day, one of a handful of states vying for the honor would become the thirty-sixth state—representing three-quarters of the nation’s forty-eight—to ratify the Constitutional amendment that would prohibit the legal sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. There would be a one-year grace period to allow manufacturers, distributors, and tavern and restaurant owners to prepare for the economic impact of the law, and then Prohibition would be in full effect.
It was a foregone conclusion that by January 1920, the United States would be dry.
No longer would Americans be able to experience the warm glow of a tavern on a snowy evening, or the taste of a cold beer as the summer sun baked the city streets. No longer would working men be able to unwind with a drink after a dusty day of hauling cargo on the docks, nor would journalists enjoy swapping raucous opinions about Wilson’s peace plans while ordering double shots of brandy to fuel the debate. Martin thought that Prohibition would make it more difficult to make friends, meet women, conduct business, and enjoy life. These thoughts alone were enough to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.
Martin reached his home, and once inside, scribbled a note to his sister, Teresa, asking her to wake him at 12:30 P.M., which would give him more than enough time to get ready for the 1:30 P.M. meeting with his accountant.
Amid his conflicting emotions—the elation about moving, the melancholy about leaving the club, the uncertainty of Prohibition—Martin was clear about one thing: Life as he knew it was about to change.
He climbed the stairs to his bedroom and was fast asleep in moments.
11:55 a.m.
Today should be a quiet day at the molasses tank, a rarity, William White thought. The Miliero had discharged her huge shipment two days ago, and no new molasses deliveries would arrive for at least three months. Within the next few days, and continuing for weeks afterward, White would be busy. He would supervise the process of filling railroad tank cars with molasses and transporting them to the USIA Cambridge distilling plant. He would fill out enough paperwork to bury his small office that sat next to the pump pit. Today was a bonus day, a “middle day,” the calm between the Miliero’s arrival and the frenetic production cycle that followed a major delivery.
White was thankful for the pause, even more so when his wife, Sarah, had called a few moments ago from South Station asking if he could meet her at the Jordan Marsh department store to help her choose some dresses she wanted to buy. She suggested that they could have lunch at a downtown restaurant following the brief shopping trip. White, who usually ate at his desk, thought he deserved a lunch-hour away from the tank, and saw the invitation as a good opportunity to indulge his wife. Besides, the weather had warmed considerably in the two days since the Miliero’s delivery, with temperatures soaring from 2 degrees to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. It was another good reason to venture downtown and walk around a bit.
He grabbed his coat and hat and set out to meet Sarah, happy for the break in his routine in the middle of the workweek.
The thought crossed his mind that the tank would be left unattended while he was gone, but no harm—he would be back in his office within an hour.
12:41 p.m.
Pasquale Iantosca and Antonio Distasio crouched behind the giant molasses tank and watched the two adults scold Antonio’s sister, Maria. The children’s parents had told the youngsters to collect firewood from around the molasses tank while they were home for lunch from the Paul Revere Elementary School on Prince Street. Pasquale complained to Antonio that he knew his father would be watching him from the window of their home across the street to make sure this chore was done, a task made all the more difficult with the two sweaters Pasquale’s parents forced him to wear to keep from catching cold. Antonio smiled when he looked at his friend; Pasquale was so bundled up that he had a hard time moving, and beads of sweat were forming on his forehead on this mild winter day.
Hiding behind the tank, both boys were frightened and restless as they watched two big railroad workers wagging their fingers at Maria, whom they had spotted gathering wood between a railroad freight car and the molasses tank. The men were shouting at her to leave the area.
Antonio felt sad that his sister was suffering alone and he left his hiding spot next to the tank to help her. Little Pasquale—Pasqualeno—remained where he was, hunched between the tank and a railroad freight car.
Antonio emerged from behind the tank and circled to his right. He watched as Maria turned toward him, and away from the men who were scolding her. Then everything happened fast.
The railroad workers screamed and Maria swung her head back to face them, her long hair trailing across her face. Antonio saw that the men were no longer yelling at Maria. Their mouths agape, their eyes wide, they were focused on something behind his sister, fixed on the spot that he had just vacated, where Pasqualeno still hid. Terror darkened the men’s faces, and, in the same instant, Antonio glimpsed a blur of movement to his left and saw a shadow falling across his sister …
Peter Curran walked his two-horse team into the Commercial Street wharf yard, the fifteen hogs he had just picked up from the New England Beef Company on nearby Clinton Street squealing and snorting in the wagon behind him. He backed the wagon carefully into the Bay State Railway shed, coaxed the hogs out of the truck and onto the platform, and presented the receiving clerk with the bill of lading. As the two men talked, Peter Curran felt the ground shake and heard a roar. The hogs squealed louder and huddled closer, becoming a single mass of pink-brown flesh jiggling on the platform. Curran turned to look, convinced by the tremor and the noise that a Commercial Street elevated train had jumped the track and plunged to the street below …
U.S. Navy gunner’s mate Robert Henry Johnston stood on the deck of the Bessie J. talking to two other sailors about the work the men had completed that morning. Since the armistice had been signed, the Navy—in this case, Johnston and his mates—was stripping a number of small boats of their ordnance and armaments. These smaller craft pulled alongside the Bessie J., and all morning, Johnston had been removing guns and ammunition so that the boats could be decommissioned. They had just taken a breather and were about to eat lunch, when Johnston, facing the Commercial Street wharf, heard a rumble and began shouting at the top of his lungs …
Twenty-year-old Walter Merrithew, a freight clerk for the Boston & Maine Railroad Company, walked under the covered platform at the Number Three freight shed on the Commercial Street wharf. He saw Ryan, the deaf mute laborer employed by the railroad, stacking crates and preparing them for shipment. Merrithew didn’t envy the fellow, unable to hear a word or make a single sound. Ryan worked hard, but could never join in the banter with the fellows on the docks and loading platforms, an activity Merrithew considered the best part of the job. Even now, Merrithew could hear boisterous laughter from the cellar of the freight shed, where other men were storing boxes and barrels that had arrived from ships and would be transported by train up and down the East Coast. It was laughter that Ryan could not hear and could not share.
Merrithew paused for a moment in the doorway, his bulk cutting the light. Ryan looked up as the shadow crossed his face. At that moment, Merrithew heard a long rumbling sound behind him, similar to the passing of an elevated train over Commercial Street, only louder.
Then something happened that Merrithew would never forget. The deaf mute, the boy Merrithew had never heard utter a sound, pointed a trembling finger in Merrithew’s direction, but beyond him, and let out a long, painful screech that sliced through to Walter Merrithew’s soul …
Babe Ruth was complaining again and the boys at the Engine 31 firehouse found it laughable. The Boston Red Sox star, who had led his team to a World Series victory over the Chicago Cubs in October, was threatening to retire to his forty-acre farm in nearby Sudbury if his demands for a big salary increase were refused by the team. Ruth earned $7,000 in 1918, four or five times more than most firefight-ers, for playing a game, Bill Connor scoffed as he dealt a hand of lunchtime whist. Plus, the Sox ace had earned another $1,100 for his winning World Series share. “We should all be so lucky,” he said to his fellow players around the table—firefighters Fred McDermott, Nat Bowering, and Paddy Driscoll—and to George Layhe and the stonecutter, John Barry, both of whom were watching the friendly card game.
The firefighters played whist almost every lunch hour, and Barry enjoyed the visits, found that the hour passed pleasantly. Sometimes he joined the games, but mostly he filled his pipe, relaxed, and talked with the guys, about sports, like today, or about politics or what was happening around the city. Today he had felt a chill outside, despite the warm-up in temperature, so he welcomed the warmth of the firehouse during the noon hour.
Connor had just finished dealing another hand when the men heard a tremendous crashing noise, a sound Barry later described as a “roaring surf” and one Connor likened to a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence. Driscoll, who was closest to the window, jumped from his chair and looked out onto the wharf. “Oh my God!” he shouted to the other men, who were already scrambling. “Run!” …
Royal Albert Leeman, a brakeman for the Boston Elevated Railroad, stood in the front vestibule of the third car of the passenger train bound for North Station. He was working the 12:35 shuttle train out of South Station, traveling on elevated tracks above Commercial Street, a trip he had made hundreds of times before. The train, filled with midday shoppers and workers, had just made its stop at the Battery Street station and was chugging up to the big left-hand bend in the track near Copp’s Hill, traveling between fifteen and twenty miles per hour, on its way to North Station. Leeman looked out at the molasses tank and the harbor through the closed vestibule window as the train began its turn, its steel wheels screeching and straining against the rails. A moment later, he saw a black mass bearing down on him, pushing toward the elevated track, darkening the sky. As Leeman blinked in disbelief, his ears filled with the scream of tearing steel and, behind him, a thunderclap-like bang! Then he felt the overhead trestle buckle and his train start to tip …
A few moments later than she was supposed to, Teresa Clougherty tiptoed across the room and gently shook her brother, Martin, awake. He had less than an hour to get ready for his meeting. Their mother, Bridget, had lunch ready downstairs. Teresa turned away from the bed, caught movement through the window from the harbor area, and just as Martin murmured, “I’ll be right down,” she heard a deep growling sound, felt the house shaking, and was thrown to the floor …
Boston Police patrolman Frank McManus approached the call box on Commercial Street to make his regularly scheduled report to headquarters. It was the kind of day Frank McManus had been waiting for—warm and quiet. The temperature had climbed past 40 degrees, which was practically a heat wave after the previous few days. Aside from the danger of saboteurs during the war, and the noise the Italian anarchists were making even now, there was nothing he disliked more about walking the waterfront beat than the bone-chilling wind and dampness that numbed his fingers and toes, and burnished his face raw. Today, though, was like the arrival of an early spring, and there was an extra buoyancy in the activity around the wharf that McManus attributed to the unusually fine weather. Horses stepped lively as their teamsters drove them onto the wharf to deliver produce, beer, and leather goods. City workers sat outside the paving yard buildings, eating lunch and talking, and McManus heard occasional laughter carry across the street.
McManus picked up the call box and began his report to headquarters. A few words into it, he heard a machine-gun-like rat-tat-tat sound and an unearthly grinding and scraping, a bleating that sounded like the wail of a wounded beast. McManus stopped talking, turned, and watched in utter disbelief as the giant molasses tank on the wharf seemed to disintegrate before his eyes, disgorging an enormous wall of thick, dark liquid that blackened the sky and snuffed out the daylight.
McManus froze momentarily, wanting to flee but unable to move. Then he recovered enough to bark into the phone words that sounded unbelievable even to him, let alone the dispatcher at the other end:
“Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately—there’s a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street!”