SEVEN
January 15, 1919, 12:45-5:00 p.m.
Midday turned to darkness as the 2.3 million gallons of molasses engulfed the Boston waterfront like a black tidal wave, 25 feet high and 160 feet wide at the outset.
Several years would pass, and a raging debate would ensue, before people knew why the tank had burst, but almost instantly they saw that the power of the molasses was more devastating than any crashing ocean wave. Its crushing weight unleashed a terrible force that pulverized the entire waterfront and a half-mile swath of Commercial Street. Worse, too, unlike an ocean wave, whose momentum is concentrated in one direction, the wall of molasses pushed in all directions after it escaped the confines of the tank, so that it was more like four separate walls of viscous liquid smashing across the wharf and into the street. Add to that the speed with which the molasses traveled—thirty-five miles per hour initially—the fact that the tank itself disintegrated into deadly steel missiles, and that thousands of fastening rivets turned into lethal steel bullets, and the result was destruction in a congested area equal to that of even the worst natural disaster.
The molasses tore the North End Paving Yard buildings into kindling, ripped the Engine 31 firehouse from its foundation and nearly swept it into the harbor, destroyed the wood-framed Clougherty house, crushed freight cars, autos, and wagons, and ensnared men, women, children, horses, dogs, rats, wood, and steel. The molasses wave crashed across Commercial Street into brick tenements and storefronts, rebounded off of the buildings, and retreated like the outgoing tide, leaving shattered windows and crushed walls in its wake. Rolling walls of molasses, fifteen feet high, scraped everything in their paths, carrying a wreckage of animals, humans, furniture, produce, beer barrels, railroad cars, automobiles, and wagons, and smashing them against other buildings, into the street, or sweeping them into the harbor.
This landscape photo, taken from atop a nearby building, shows the massive damage caused by the molasses wave. The top of the tank can be seen in the top quarter-center of the photo, just below the white building on the harbor. Flattened buildings that had been part of the city-operated North End Paving Yard are seen in the foreground.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
Molasses inundated cellars of businesses and residences along Commercial Street and in the freight sheds on the wharf, smothering men who were working below ground level. Electrical wires were torn down from their poles, smoking and sputtering, until they sank into the molasses. A one-ton piece of the steel tank sliced through a column of the elevated railroad, causing the tracks overhead to collapse nearly to the street. Thousands of rivets that fastened the steel plates had torn away as the tank collapsed, becoming deadly projectiles that sprayed the waterfront like machine-gun fire—the rat-tat-tat sound McManus heard—ricocheting off brick and stone and embedding themselves in wood buildings. In minutes—in seconds—the landscape in the North End inner harbor area resembled a bombed-out war zone.
Rescue teams of police, firefighters, doctors, and nurses from the nearby Haymarket Relief Station were on the scene quickly, stunned by the unthinkable scene before them. “Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage,” a Boston Post reporter wrote. “Here and there struggled a form—whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was … Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings—men and women—suffered likewise.”
Police and fire rescue teams worked feverishly, along with more than a hundred sailors from the USS Nantucket and the Bessie J., to free those who were trapped. Firefighters crawled out on ladders stretched across the molasses to pull victims from the quicksand-like morass, careful not to get sucked in, clearing molasses from the breathing passages of the living, dispatching the dead to the mortuary for identification.
Rescuers were too late to save Maria Distasio, who had stood directly in the path of the mountainous wave and perished immediately from asphyxiation. A firefighter spotted her tangled hair swirling in a sea of dark molasses and pulled out her small, broken body. Her brother, Antonio, survived, though he suffered a fractured skull and a concussion when he was thrown against a lamppost; a firefighter managed to snatch him up before the molasses swallowed him. The third child, Pasquale Iantosca, disappeared. None of the dozen or so city workers whom patrolman McManus had seen minutes earlier survived. They had been smothered, buried by debris, or swept into the harbor.
Five minutes after the tank disintegrated, the North End waterfront had been obliterated, property ruined, lives snuffed out. The question now was: How many were dead and how many could be saved?
As the elevated railroad car tipped and settled back onto the tracks, Royal Albert Leeman cracked his right shoulder against the window. He reached up and pulled the emergency cord. His train had just cleared the wreckage, rounding the bend seconds before the weight of the molasses and the large piece of the tank had buckled the support trestle behind him. Leeman had stopped the train about three car lengths beyond the damaged track; had the train arrived just a moment later, it likely would have plunged onto Commercial Street.
The massive piece of the steel tank that caused the overhead tracks to buckle is shown at the bottom of the photo. Workers used torches to cut up the steel before carrying it away. The building’s windows were shattered by the molasses that slammed into the wall like a tidal wave. Note that the windows above the “molasses line” are not shattered, which plaintiffs argued was clear evidence that no concussive force normally associated with an explosion took place.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
Opening the vestibule door, Leeman jumped off the train, glanced behind him and down at the horror. The destruction the molasses had caused in just minutes made him shiver. There was nothing left of the waterfront. All the buildings were flattened, and it appeared that every square inch of ground was covered with molasses. Closer, he could see the elevated trestle, broken and twisted, the track sagging nearly to the ground.
Leeman moved fast, first a few yards north to the trackside guard shack, where he issued instructions to the railroad worker to stop the train coming from North Station. Then he ran back, south, past his stopped train, made his way carefully across twisted track and support beams, and scrambled beyond the broken trestle until he reached undamaged track on the other side. Then he ran again, full speed down the track, for another hundred yards. The next northbound train that had originated at South Station was approaching, the one behind Leeman’s, and it was just beginning to pick up some speed after stopping at the Battery Street station to discharge passengers, about a half-mile before Copp’s Hill.
Leeman stood in the center of the track, waving his arms frantically, screaming, “Stop—the track is down! The track is down!” Through the vestibule glass, he saw the look of disbelief on the engineer’s face, knew the engineer couldn’t hear him, but Leeman held his ground, standing on the track high above Commercial Street, the shredded track and snapped trestle behind him, a three-car train bearing down on him. Finally, Leeman heard the shriek of steel wheels on rail, saw the train slowing down to stop. The engineer opened the vestibule door and stepped out. Leeman turned and pointed northward, behind him, and shouted again: “The track is down—almost to the street. You can’t go any further. The goddamn molasses tank burst!”
He sat down on the tracks then, heart pounding, his entire body shaking. He looked down at the terrible, alien scene below him, the landscape covered with dark brown ooze that swallowed humans, animals, vehicles, and structures with equal ferocity. Raising his head, Leeman saw fire trucks and horse-drawn medical vehicles already approaching the wreckage.
He had just saved a train from crashing to the street below, and in minutes would help the shaken engineer lead his passengers to safety.
Martin Clougherty was sinking, drowning … smothering, but he didn’t know why or how. Awakened by his sister, Teresa, he had rolled over in bed, saw her heading toward the doorway, heard her scream, “Something awful has happened to the tank!” and then felt his bed overturn. He had had the sensation of falling overboard, had felt his head go under, and it was only then—when the liquid rushed into his nose and mouth, when he could taste it—that he realized he was immersed in molasses. He felt himself sliding downward, out of control, as though riding the churn of the most violent river rapids or being swept over a waterfall. Flailing, he battled the suction, struggled to lift his head out of the clammy molasses, used his powerful arms to break the surface, and finally, he breathed fresh air and actually tread molasses as he rode the pounding wave that dumped him into the middle of Commercial Street. The ride stopped then and Martin stood in chest-deep molasses, wood and debris pressing against his back and neck. He cleared his eyes and mouth, looked around and was stunned to see that his house had been swept into the street, smashing into the elevated railroad trestle, and splintering into pieces.
While horrified spectators look on, rescuers try desperately to save the occupants of the Clougherty house, which was torn from its foundation and smashed against the elevated railroad trestle by the molasses wave. Bridget Clougherty, sixty-five, was buried by debris and timber, and died from terrible injuries one hour after crews pulled her from the wreckage. Her son, daughter, and a boarder living in the house survived the disaster.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
He struggled frantically to pull himself from the molasses, which clung to his pajamas and his hair like wet wool. He spotted what looked like a raft, waded through the thick molasses until he reached it, and heaved himself aboard. He realized the raft was his bed-frame, but for now it provided him with a refuge from which to collect his bearings. Taking in the destruction around him, he called for his family, but no one answered. Then he saw a thin hand to his right, protruding from the molasses like a white stick. He lay down on his bed-frame-raft, stretched his arms out and pulled the hand up … up, with all of his strength, the quicksand-like molasses fighting him the whole way. A head emerged from the dark sea and he saw that it was his sister, Teresa. She was choking and gasping, but alive, thank God. “Hold on, sis, I’ve got you—I’ve got you,” Martin cried, and with one mighty tug, he yanked her onto the makeshift raft. He wiped molasses from around her eyes and from inside of her ears, while she choked and coughed it from her breathing passages. Then he hugged her with his strong arms, their molasses-soaked clothing making a whapping! sound as their bodies came together. She was crying and he held her close, whispering in her ear, “Okay, it’s okay.” Then he looked into her eyes and said: “Stay here, you’ll be safe on the raft. I’m going to look for Ma and Stephen.”
He rolled off the bed-frame, splashed back into the black ooze, and waded forward, pushing aside molasses-covered timbers and debris in a frantic effort to locate his mother and his mentally retarded brother.
Giuseppe Iantosca recoiled from the second floor kitchen window of his home, which looked out over Commercial Street. Giuseppe had been keeping an eye on his son, Pasquale, easily tracking him in his bright red sweater as he gathered firewood by the molasses tank. Then Pasqualeno had suddenly disappeared—a dark wall had consumed him as though he had never existed. The wave bore down on Giuseppe, too, and before he could cry out or move his feet, the older man felt the house tremble and he was thrown from the window and onto the floor. As he fell and struck his head, he saw his wife and children tumble to the floor, and then he blacked out. He awoke a short time later, bruised and shaken, saw his daughter comforting his wife, Maria, even as his wife was sobbing and screaming uncontrollably in Italian: “My son is lost! Pasqualeno is lost!”
Walter Merrithew barely had time to turn after the deaf-mute, Ryan, had screeched. Instantly, Merrithew had found himself in the middle of black muck, his eyes squeezed shut, preparing to die. For now he had survived. He was pinned up against the back wall of the freight shed, his feet three feet off the floor, by a wall of debris—timbers, freight cars, automobiles, a suffering horse struggling silently in the molasses. To his left, in the corner, the freight shed wall had opened up and he could see the harbor. He believed it was only a matter of time before the pressure from the mountain of debris burst the wall and carried him into the water. When that happened, he would either be pulled to the bottom of the harbor to drown amidst a tangle of wood and metal, or he would be injured when he tumbled into the water, with a chance to swim to safety.
Something had to give soon. The weight of the debris against his chest was crushing him, and his foot was somehow trapped, so that he could not move. He heard noises then, caught movement through the pile, and wiped away the molasses that had begun to crust around his eyes. Ryan, the deaf mute, was pulling debris away! Ryan was trying to shout again, calling for survivors, but Merrithew only heard a strangled whistle from the man’s throat, an eerie wheeeeeeee, wheeeeeeee, as Ryan worked.
“Back here!” Merrithew shouted. “I’m alive back here.” He knew Ryan could not hear him, but maybe the railroad clerk would sense a motion, a vibration, something that would indicate to him that a person was buried alive back here, at least until he cleared away enough of the mess and could actually see Merrithew trapped against the back wall. Merrithew’s hands were free, although wedged tightly against his body. He managed to bring them up directly in front of his face, and waved them back and forth with the hope that Ryan would notice the movement through the small openings in the wreckage. “I’m here, back here,” Merrithew shouted again.
No answer from Ryan—just the wheeeeeeee, wheeeeeeee, as he kept working.
Hurry, Merrithew thought. Damn it, hurry!
The fifty-six-year-old stonecutter John Barry heard moaning in the darkness, felt searing pain across his back and legs, smelled and tasted the sweet molasses as it tried to flow into his nostrils and mouth. He was pinned face down, his cheek mashed into the sticky molasses, only his left arm free. He used the arm as a sweeper to keep the molasses from smothering him. He tried moving other parts of his body, but other than his neck, which he could twist, he couldn’t budge. Whatever was pressing on his body was crushing the life out of him. It hurt to breathe, whatever breath he could draw seemed insufficient to fill his lungs, and he had to be careful not to inhale a mouthful of sticky molasses.
The darkness was total. The moaning continued, but he couldn’t tell from which direction, or from how far away. He heard a skittering sound. A rat? Oh, God, Barry hated the filthy rodents. Terror gripped him as he imagined a fat, hungry, gray water rat chewing at his face while he lay helpless, trapped in the blackness, buried alive. He called for help, his voice raspy. Could anyone hear him? Did anyone know he was there? He felt on the brink of madness, and with a mighty, panic-filled effort tried to lift his body, but to no avail. He had worked as a stonecutter since he was fourteen years old, but with all of his strength and his skill, he couldn’t lift a hammer or a blade or a chisel to help himself—he could barely lift his head to keep from smothering in molasses. John Barry knew he was going to die, here, buried under the firehouse in this dark stinking space, anonymous and unable to move, a pool of molasses ready to swallow him, rats ready to tear him apart, his screams falling on deaf ears. He would soon join two of his children who had perished from influenza last fall. But what would become of his other ten? Would they become wards of the state when their father was gone?
He began to itch all over and couldn’t do anything to stop it. He felt his body bleeding and could not stanch his wounds. His chest and back burned like they were on fire. He summoned up strength and cried for help again, and this time heard his voice resonate in the darkness. And then, a miracle: a response! He recognized the voice of firefighter Paddy Driscoll, trapped under here with him, one of the moaners he had heard. “Keep up your courage, John,” Driscoll said, his voice cracking. “They’ll get us out.”
John Barry tried to answer aloud, but could not. His initial shout for help had drained him of energy. Overcome with exhaustion and emotion, his broken body wracked with pain, he could barely manage a whisper: “I hope they hurry, Paddy,” he choked. “I hope they hurry.”
He lay sobbing in the darkness, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the molasses that stained his cheeks and threatened to drown him.
Lying just a few feet away from John Barry, though unaware of how close he was to the stonecutter, firefighter Bill Connor realized that there was only one way he and his buddy, Nat Bowering, could remain alive until rescuers reached them. Connor had just extricated himself out from under a steam column-radiator that had pinned him facedown in the molasses. He had managed to turn over onto his back, and there was Bowering, right alongside him, trapped by what once was a firehouse support beam resting across his midsection.
Connor looked up, and no more than a foot above his face were heavy joists and a wooden floor. He surmised that the full force of the molasses wave had slammed into the firehouse, torn it from its foundation, and caused the second story of the three-story building to pancake down on top of the first, creating this eighteen-inch crawl space in which they were now trapped. The molasses was rising—slowly, but rising—and it had reached their chins. Connor could see light, and the harbor beyond, through a small opening in the wall at Bowering’s feet. “For God’s sake, keep that hole clear in front of you,” Connor said. “Kick that shit away so the molasses can flow out.”
Bowering pumped his feet furiously, clearing the hole of sticks and wood and debris. “They will never find us here, Bill,” Bowering cried. “There is no possible chance for us.”
“Our only salvation is for you to keep that hole open,” Connor snapped back.
As the senior man of the two, Connor knew he had to remain calm, had to be the leader, the one that issued the instructions, until help arrived. Though the light was faint, Connor could discern that a collection of odd timbers, chairs, tables, the firehouse piano, and, several feet away, a billiard table, was supporting the second floor, now just inches above them, allowing them to remain alive in a cocoon of debris in this hideous dark place. Both men had bumped their heads hard on the collapsed first-floor ceiling trying to keep their noses and mouths above the molasses.
Molasses clung to him, to his clothes and his skin. It wormed its way under the collar of his shirt and into his hair. He tried in vain to wriggle his body to prevent molasses from seeping into his waistband, crawling down his pants, clinging to his private parts, like an army of insects that just kept coming. Bill Connor wanted to scream, but he fought the urge. He needed to block out thoughts of everything else except survival. After Paddy Driscoll had yelled at them to run, Connor had seen this black wall rushing at them, and it reminded him of boiling oil, curling toward them like a tidal wave. He hadn’t even thought of molasses at first. He and Bowering reached the door, both of them got their hands on the knob, but before they had time to open it, the molasses had surrounded the firehouse and snuffed out the light entirely.
The Boston Firehouse near the harbor, home of the Engine 31 fireboat, was pushed from its foundation by the molasses wave and nearly swept into the water. The second floor of the building pancaked onto the first, trapping for hours stonecutter John Barry and several firefighters, including George Layhe, who was pinned beneath debris. Layhe tried desperately to keep his head above the rising molasses, but his stamina gave out as rescue crews attempted to reach him, and he dropped his head back into the molasses and drowned.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
That was all Bill Connor remembered for a while. When he came to, here he was, facedown under the building, a radiator across his back, Bowering trapped beside him.
“Kick again,” he said to Bowering. His buddy complied, his heavy boots knocking more sticks and debris from the hole to allow the molasses to flow out. Connor couldn’t reach the hole—he would have had to crawl over Bowering to do it, and that would have been nearly impossible in the narrow space. This must be what it’s like to be in a coffin, Connor thought, to be buried alive.
He heard a voice, a new voice, faint but clear. It came from the pool table, just barely visible in the weak light that trickled through the hole at Bowering’s feet. “Oh, my God,” the voice said. “Help me, Oh God.”
Connor recognized the voice. It was George Layhe, his good friend, the man who joined the fire department on the same day as he did. “George!” he shouted. “George, it’s Bill. Stay calm, George. They’ll get us out.”
“Oh, Bill, we’re gone,” George Layhe replied.
Connor could make out the pool table in the gloom, but couldn’t spot Layhe. Then he realized that Layhe was pinned under the pool table, desperately trying to keep his head out of the molasses, which had to be rising faster and higher away from the opening in the wall. “George, hang in,” he screamed. “Hang in, they’re coming, George!”
“I don’t think I can,” Layhe replied, his voice weak. “Oh, Bill, it’s too late. I’m gone—my God, I’m gone.”
“There goes poor George,” Nat Bowering wailed.
“Shut up, Nat!” Connor shouted to Layhe again: “Stay with me, George!” No response. “George, answer me!”
But Layhe remained silent.
Suffolk County medical examiner, Dr. George Burgess Magrath, had no idea what to expect when he arrived on the scene at around 1:30 P.M., but the destruction on and around the Commercial Street wharf shocked him. He had been performing an autopsy at the nearby North Mortuary on Grove Street, when he received word at 1 P.M. that the molasses accident had occurred. He suspended the autopsy, drove to the scene with his assistant, donned a pair of hip-high rubber fishing boots, and ventured into the carnage to lend his assistance.
He had been practicing medicine since graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1898, and had served as medical examiner of Suffolk County for the past twelve years, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw at the Commercial Street waterfront. He had not served with the Army overseas, but had read of the ghastly deaths and seen photos of the destruction, and could not have imagined a wartime scene worse than what he witnessed here. The entire waterfront had been leveled. Every building in the North End Paving Yard and all of the Bay State Railway freight sheds lay in ruins. The large plate glass windows on the Bay State office building had been shattered and the furniture inside split apart, pieces of desks and chairs and cabinets swamped by the thick molasses. Boston’s only trolley freight terminal and most of its big steel trolley-freight cars had been destroyed. Freight wagons had been crushed, railroad boxcars split open, automobiles and trucks bent and broken as though they were children’s toys. The steel trestle that had supported the elevated railroad tracks had buckled like wet cardboard, and the overhead tracks dangled toward the ground.
Horse-drawn and mechanized rescue vehicles and firefighting equipment covered the waterfront and Commercial Street area, venturing as close as they could without getting stuck in the molasses, still knee-deep an hour after the initial wave. Firefighters, police officers, and hundreds of sailors and soldiers from the ships moored in the harbor swarmed over piles of molasses-drenched debris in a desperate search for survivors, more often making the grim discovery of bodies. Priests from the nearby North End parishes slogged through molasses in their long black cassocks and white collars, helping rescuers remove debris, comforting the injured, and performing last rites on the dead and mortally wounded. Rescuers loaded the injured onto wagons and into trucks for transportation to the nearby Haymarket Relief Station; many were swathed in white bandages that stood out in stark relief against the black molasses that saturated their clothing.
Rescuers with stretcher (foreground, right) negotiate mounds of debris to reach victims.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
Dr. Magrath could see how the molasses wave had rolled over the waterfront, like a giant breaker at the seashore, scooping and scouring everything in its path, leaving destruction behind as it receded. He saw several poor souls being pulled from the molasses, later saying their bodies “looked as though they were covered in heavy oil skins … their faces, of course, were covered with molasses, eyes and ears, mouths and nose filled with it. The task of finding out who they were and what had happened to them began by washing the clothing and bodies with sodium bicarbonate and hot water.”
Closer to the waterfront, near the site of the former city stables, Magrath watched in chilled horror as police officers shot dozens of horses who were trapped in the molasses. Most had been knocked down and were struggling in vain to lift their large heads and break free from the viscous liquid, snorting to clear their nostrils of the thick molasses; others had been knocked down and injured by falling timbers and steel. The sound of these gunshots reverberated across the waterfront, and Magrath flinched as each animal was put out of its misery.
Photo shows the Clougherty house smashed under the overhead trestle. In the background are destroyed structures that were part of the North End Paving Yard.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
A police officer spotted Magrath wading through the molasses and directed him to the smashed Clougherty house, which lay in splinters up against the overhead trestle in the middle of Commercial Street. Rescuers had recovered the broken body of sixty-five-year-old Bridget Clougherty from beneath the wreckage and needed Magrath to pronounce her dead. Magrath made his way to what was left of the three-story wooden house, now little more than a pile of splintered rubble. A crowd had gathered on the rise of Copp’s Hill Terrace and looked down silently at the destruction. The onlookers watched—respectfully, Magrath thought—as he examined the late Bridget Clougherty. Her ribcage and chest had been crushed, and Magrath knew before his examination that massive internal injuries had caused her death. He carefully attached an identification tag to her body, and ordered it transported to the morgue. Magrath learned that her two sons, Martin and Stephen Clougherty, and a daughter, Teresa, had all been injured, and had been taken to the Haymarket Relief Station for treatment, along with two boarders who lived in the house.
With his work at the Clougherty house finished, Magrath moved across Commercial Street, the molasses tugging at his boots with every step, to the area where the tank once stood. Steel plates from the tank’s wall lay broken and partially submerged in the molasses. But Magrath saw that the tank’s large circular roof had fallen almost straight down, basically intact, and now lay right-side-up atop the concrete foundation, in sharp contrast to the violence and destruction on the waterfront. It was as if the molasses had spewed out in all directions from under the roof, carrying the tank’s walls in all directions, but the roof had settled gently onto the ground below.
Near the roof, Boston mayor Andrew Peters stood shin-deep in molasses, and, with a crowd of reporters and rescue workers gathered around him, Magrath heard him react to the disaster in a firm, strong voice: “Boston is appalled at the terrible accident that occurred here today … An occurrence of this kind must not and cannot pass without a rigid investigation to determine the cause of the explosion—not only to prevent a recurrence of such a frightful accident—but also to place the responsibility where it belongs. Such an investigation has been instituted this afternoon by corporation counsel [city law office] at my direction.” Magrath took note that the mayor used the word “explosion” and clearly implied that the collapse of the tank had not been an accident.
When the mayor finished, Magrath decided the best place for him to be was back at the morgue. The bodies would be arriving soon, and would continue to arrive well into the night, and probably for many days afterward. He would officially pronounce dead more victims from this disaster than any single event since he had become medical examiner in 1907. He wanted to make sure things were ready at the mortuary, so he left the waterfront by 3 P.M., aware that his day was just beginning.
Photo shows scene in the immediate aftermath of the flood, from approximately where the tank stood. In the foreground is the top of the tank (vent pipe extending), which hit the ground virtually intact. Firefighters opened hydrants in a largely unsuccessful effort to clear the molasses, which began to harden quickly, and they eventually had to pump seawater directly from the harbor. In the background, on the elevated tracks, is the train that was stopped just in time by engineer Royal Albert Leeman, whose own train barely escaped derailment as the main trestle buckled. Leeman’s action probably saved scores of lives.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department)
By leaving early, Dr. Magrath missed a statement issued by USIA attorney Henry F. R. Dolan, one of Boston’s most prominent attorneys, shortly after Mayor Peters finished speaking. Dolan’s message was similar to the mayor’s, though his language was much stronger. Dolan went on the offensive, blaming “outside influences” for the tank’s collapse, most likely North End anarchists who planted a bomb to advance their radical agenda. “We know beyond question that the tank was not weak,” Dolan said. “We know that an examination was made of the outside of the base of the structure a few minutes before its collapse. We know, and our experts feel satisfied, that there was no fermentation because the molasses was not of sufficient temperature to ferment. The company contends that there was no structural weakness, but we do venture the opinion that something from the outside opened up the tank.”
Arthur P. Jell arrived at the waterfront shortly before 2 P.M., shaken by both the level of destruction in front of him and the short telephone conversation he had had a half-hour earlier with USIA headquarters in New York. His bosses had instructed him to remain silent, to let the company attorney, Dolan, issue any statements about the disaster, and, above all, to ensure that no city inspectors or law enforcement officials confiscate USIA property—specifically, pieces of the tank. USIA engineers, based in Baltimore, would be in Boston tomorrow, Thursday, January 16, to begin the process of collecting the remnants of the tank and transporting them to safe storage.
Jell approached the police ropes, about 150 feet from where the tank had been located, his mouth agape at the incredible scene before him. He had not believed it at first when William White called to tell him about the tank, how White had returned from lunch with his wife to discover the catastrophe that had occurred while he was away. White had described the extent of the damage, but no explanation could have prepared Jell for this.
He tried to duck under the ropes but was stopped by a Boston police officer. Jell explained his reason for wanting to reach the tank site, but the officer rebuffed him. A rescue operation was under way and unauthorized persons whose presence might hinder it could not pass. Jell turned and walked away without a fight. Rescuers were concentrating on removing the dead and injured from the molasses; no salvage work had begun yet. He doubted anyone would remove the tank pieces today.
He would return tomorrow with USIA engineers and take control.
As the frantic rescue teams worked to save victims trapped in the hardening molasses, doctors and nurses were scrambling to help others in the nearby Haymarket Relief Station. Located about a half mile from the disaster scene, the small hospital, an adjunct to the large Boston City Hospital in the South End, was transformed into a triage facility as the wagons rolled in with the injured. Fortunately, the hospital was in the midst of a shift change when the molasses tank collapsed, so doctors, nurses, and orderlies from both shifts were at the relief station when the injured began arriving. The relief station, with twenty-five permanent beds, was quickly swamped with more than forty victims, the overflow relegated to temporary cots that were jammed into small hospital rooms.
Hospital personnel removed molasses from the patients’ breathing passages and cut off molasses-soaked clothing so they could learn the gender of the victims and the extent of their injuries. “Those already on duty were soon covered from head to foot with brown syrup and blood,” the Boston Post reported. “The whole hospital reeked of molasses. It was on the floors, on the walls, the nurses were covered with it, even in their hair.”
Dr. John G. Breslin had been superintendent of the relief station for two years and had never seen chaos like this. He tried to remain calm, to prepare his doctors and nurses for the worst, but no one could have foreseen the terrible trauma the victims suffered, nor the difficulties the molasses presented as the staff tried to treat the injured. Within an hour, the wheeled stretchers became immovable because the hospital corridors were covered with congealing molasses. Corridor floors and walls became so slippery with molasses that dripped from the clothing of the injured that attendants found it necessary to repeatedly swab the entranceways with hot water. Doctors and nurses were smeared with the liquid after the first few victims were treated, and the heads of patients who lay in bed were soon encircled by rings of brown molasses that flowed from their hair and clothes onto the white linen pillowcases.
Clergy members arrived at the relief station, and then shortly thereafter, the relatives of victims—men, women, and children—began to stream into the small hospital and seek information about their loved ones, their sobs filling the hallways and small waiting areas. Some relatives begged Dr. Breslin for information about their family members; others who had seen their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons wracked with pain pleaded with him to treat their loved ones first. Breslin heard awful moaning from a nearby room and stepped inside. A nurse stood at the foot of the bed while a woman dressed in a hat and coat comforted the man lying motionless beneath the sheets, his arms folded on his chest, his pallor as white as the bedclothes. His hands and face had been washed, but Breslin noticed the molasses smears that stained the pillow behind his head. The man’s moaning was the only indicator that he was still alive.
“This is Margaret McMullen,” the nurse said softly. “This is her husband, James, who works for Bay State Railroad. I told her she could see him for just a moment if she could remain composed.” Breslin nodded, knowing he should get back out to the main entrance and direct traffic, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from McMullen, away from his parchment-like skin, bleached so white that Breslin thought he might see through the man if he looked long enough.
Breslin heard the wife speak to her husband. “You are one of the unfortunate ones,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I am here but I don’t know how long. Keep up the courage and I will make a battle for you all.”
“Where were you?” Margaret McMullen asked her husband, a catch in her throat. “Where were you when it happened?”
“Right next to the tank,” McMullen rasped. “I was trying to run some kids off, a little girl collecting firewood. I think she’s dead.”
“How do you feel? The pain?”
Breslin saw McMullen move his hands from his chest down his body. “I am all to the bad, hon, from here down. From here down. And I am so thirsty.”
“Mrs. McMullen,” the nurse said in a hushed tone. “Time to go now.”
“Yes,” she said, bending to kiss her husband on the forehead, clutching his face between her hands. “I must go now, my love. I will be back later tonight.”
“Please hon,” Breslin heard the man say. “Bring me something to drink when you come back. They give me some water here, but water doesn’t help. I’m so thirsty.”
Breslin and the nurse stepped out of the room. “Injuries?” Breslin asked.
“Compound fractures of both bones in both lower legs,” the nurse said. “Fragments and splinters in wounds, considerable trauma. He’ll need an operation.” She added, looking directly into Breslin’s eyes: “The wound is badly soiled.” He knew these injuries meant that severe infection was likely imminent. If that happened, surgeons would need to amputate both legs to save McMullen’s life. Breslin nodded to the nurse and she walked away to treat other patients.
Moments later, Margaret McMullen emerged from her husband’s room, her face drawn, eyes red from crying, clutching at the front of her overcoat as though to steady her hands. Head down, she walked shakily toward the front door of the relief station. Breslin thought she would go home for a few moments, take care of her children, perhaps get a bit of rest, and then return for the grueling, sorrowful vigil at her husband’s bedside. James McMullen was forty-six years old, and if he survived, there was a good chance he would never walk again.
Breslin thought: What the hell had happened on the waterfront?
And how bad was it going to get?
For the third time in as many hours, John Barry watched the rescue worker wriggle toward him, pulling himself forward on his elbows, inch by inch through the molasses-drenched dirt and debris. The scruffy-faced fireman needed to use his elbows, because both hands were occupied; one carried a syringe filled with morphine, the other a bottle of brandy. Twice before, this man had crawled to Barry and injected morphine into his spine to relieve the astonishing pain that wracked the stonecutter’s body. Barry was still pinned, facedown, under the firehouse, head facing left, his right cheek squashed into the molasses, his free left hand wiping molasses from his face, the searing pain returning to his back, chest, and legs now that the previous morphine injection was wearing off. Barry longed for the needle again, not just to relieve the pain, but to provide the drug-induced haze that would transport his mind away from this hell. He had stopped screaming hours ago, more from total exhaustion and the morphine than anything else. But still, terror gripped him, squeezing his throat until he was reduced to shallow and ragged breaths. He would become too weak to wipe the molasses away, and it would clog his nostrils and smother him. He would never get out—the unbearable pain would not end and the unbearable fear of being buried alive would not end, and he would die in the dirt.
His only comfort, as the fireman crawled closer, was that the darkness was no longer total. A while ago, two hours or more—though Barry felt like it had been an eternity—workers had cut a hole in the floor of the firehouse twenty feet away from where Barry lay trapped. Light had poured down through the hole and then traveled weakly into the crawl space, casting the tunnel in an eerie gloom. Since then, workers had used key-hole saws to cut away additional sections of floor, allowing more light into the crawl space. Barry could now see the stubble on the firefighter’s jaw and the intensity in his dark eyes as he struggled toward him. “Almost there, John,” the rescuer said, squirming closer. “Almost there.”
Firefighters worked in shifts for four hours clearing debris from around and under the wrecked firehouse to reach their trapped colleagues. Firefighters Bill Connor and Nat Bowering, as well as stonecutter John Barry, were freed.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
Barry heard them cutting right above him now, and he heard timber and wood crashing, too. As workers cut away the floor and moved debris, the building settled further—it was falling around him, Barry thought. “Look out, for God’s sake, or the building will kill the whole of them,” he heard a man shout from above his head, though Barry could not see him yet. The rescuers still needed to remove more floorboards and debris to reach him. Barry was weeping again, distraught that the firehouse would collapse and kill him seconds before crews pulled him to safety.
The firefighter reached Barry now, rested the syringe on the stonecutter’s upper back.
“Are you ready, John?” he asked softly. “Do it,” Barry said, squeezing his eyes shut. He felt the burning pain immediately as the needle plunged into his spine for the third time. He heard himself cry out, a big, wracking sob, but only once.
“There you are, John,” the firefighter said. “No more needles for now.” Then he drew the stopple on the brandy, and stuck the bottle into Barry’s mouth. “Drink all you can, John, but don’t bite it,” he said. Barry drank, coughed, drank some more, and felt somewhat revived. The firefighter was close to him, so close that Barry could smell his foul breath. But the firefighter was free, and, in moments, would crawl backward out of this stinking crawl space. Barry was still pinned by timbers and a large hot water heater that lay across his back, as helpless as a baby and completely dependent on others to save him.
The firefighter jammed the bottle into Barry’s mouth again for one more swig, then Barry swung his free arm, indicating he had had enough. “Hang in, John,” the man said, capping the brandy bottle. “We’re almost there.” Barry’s benefactor began crawling backward to safety, his shoulders and face shrinking as he retreated.
Barry felt the morphine kick in, the pain subside a bit, the thick fog surround his head and eyes. He thought he heard distant voices—“one more … one more … careful!”—though perhaps he was hearing them only in his own head. He dozed, dreamed that he was sitting in his living-room chair smoking his pipe, then heard voices again, closer this time. “That’s his leg—his leg’s out!” Awake now, but drowsy, lying in a pool of molasses, he heard the rhythmic swish-swish of a saw inches above his left ear. Then suddenly, miraculously, he felt the enormous weight being lifted from his back and legs, relieving the pressure. Seconds later, he could move his head and lift his face out of the muck. “Easy, John, easy,” he heard the voices saying, but he didn’t recognize them. Then he heard louder voices, feet clomping on wood, felt hands on his body and felt himself being hoisted into the air. A cool breeze hit him then, salty, from the harbor, and he could breathe again and see gray water and gray sky, and then he was being lowered again, gently, onto a stretcher, his back and legs shrieking with pain. He caught sight of a priest and a group of firemen. He heard himself crying, then laughing, then crying again, tasted tears and molasses, felt molasses running down the sides of his face, down his chest, down his legs. His drenched shirt pressed against his chest as he lay on the stretcher, this time flat on his back, staring at the darkening late afternoon sky. Then they lifted the stretcher with him in it, and he felt himself moving forward; he saw the flash of legs and boots and faces and helmets as he went by, saw men looking down at him, some shaking their heads, others shouting words of encouragement.
He heard one voice, one question that puzzled him: “Who’s the gink with the white hair?” the voice said. He had heard it clearly, cutting through the shouting, through the smell of molasses and freshly sawn wood, through his own pain and the morphine haze.
John Barry didn’t know. But as the exhausted stonecutter slipped into sleep atop the molasses-covered stretcher, he found himself hoping that the white-haired man had not suffered too much.
Late afternoon January darkness enshrouded the waterfront when they finally pulled firefighter George Layhe’s lifeless body out from under the firehouse around 5 P.M. Earlier, workers had rescued firefighters Bill Connor, Nat Bowering, and Paddy Driscoll, all of whom suffered injuries and were taken to the Haymarket Relief Station after they were helped from the crawl space. When John Barry was finally rescued, poor Layhe lay by himself under the firehouse. The firefighter work teams had to be especially careful extricating their fallen comrade; with the weakening of the building after so much of the floor had been cut away, one false step could bring the whole structure down, perhaps killing additional men. The arrival of dusk increased the possibility of missteps and made the task even more risky.
But the firemen helping with the rescue efforts insisted that the work continue until each of their brothers was removed from under the firehouse. They had lived and worked together in that house, and now the house had claimed one of its own, one of their own. There would be no break until George Layhe could be laid to rest with dignity.
Now, steadying himself on a shaky plank of split wood, fire department deputy chief Edward Shallow snapped a salute as four beleaguered firemen carried George’s body across the pile of wreckage, placed it gently on a stretcher, and lifted the stretcher into the ambulance that would take Layhe’s body to the morgue. They had found the thirty-seven-year-old fire department marine engineer wedged under the pool table and the piano, his legs crushed by timbers. Layhe, unable to move, had struggled desperately to keep his head above the rising molasses, and managed to do so for perhaps as long as two hours, before his stamina gave out. He finally dropped his head back into the molasses and drowned. Chief Shallow thought that Layhe “looked like a colored man” when rescue teams lifted him out from under the firehouse, his hands, face, head, and clothing completely covered with the dark molasses. Eyes scanning the dark waterfront, Shallow knew that Layhe was one of many good men who had died today. He believed Layhe had been the only firefighter; miraculously, the others in the Engine 31 station had survived, and he had accounted for the other men in his command. But his crews were now searching the molasses and the destroyed remains of waterfront buildings for the bodies of other men, women, and children who were not so lucky. Police had already called for electric lights, deciding that the search would continue well into the night. Shallow expected to be on the scene until midnight at least, with one break in the next few minutes—when he would call Elizabeth Layhe and deliver the news about her husband.
The fire chief turned and walked away from the ruined firehouse. There would be time to think about rebuilding, but later, much later; after rescuers had completed the grim task of unearthing and identifying the dead, and after clean-up crews disposed of the molasses and restored the face of the waterfront. It could take months. Surveying the damage, Shallow thought that it would take even longer for the shock to wear off in the North End neighborhood and across the city, for people to recover from this disaster and feel safe again, for things to return to normal.
Firefighters tried to wash the molasses away with fresh water, but would later find that briny seawater was the only way to “cut” the hardened substance. In the background is the damaged elevated railroad structure.
(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)
As he waded through the knee-deep molasses that slathered the wharf, Shallow heard a single gunshot ring out from the direction of the city stables, its echo carrying on the cold, evening air.
The Boston Police had put another molasses-enmeshed horse out of its misery.
Returning to normal would take a long time, indeed, Shallow thought.
Giuseppe Iantosca stood alone at the bottom of the stairs that led to the door of his home sandwiched between Charter and Commercial streets. He needed to gather his thoughts before heading inside to see his wife, Maria. He had no more information about Pasquale now than he did nearly four hours ago, when he started searching for his little boy minutes after the tank collapsed, minutes after Giuseppe had regained consciousness from his own fall. No one had seen their son, and Giuseppe feared that God had taken Pasquale from them. The police would not let him past their ropes, so he could not even search for his boy among the piles of splintered wood, bent metal, and smashed railroad cars. In frustration, he had spent the last few hours questioning people along the perimeter of the destruction, using hand gestures and broken English to describe Pasquale, asking whether they had seen him, begging for information about him. In the mass confusion, most onlookers were searching for news about their own missing loved ones, and had neither the inclination nor the patience to listen to Giuseppe’s halting speech and confusing questions. Many had walked away before he could finish speaking.
Giuseppe’s own eyes had told him the horrible story. He had seen the giant wave of molasses consume his ten-year-old son; first Pasquale was standing there and then he was not. Now he could be anywhere. The molasses could have carried him under a building or flung him into the harbor. But the police would not let Giuseppe onto the wharf to find him. He had tried at several different checkpoints, but they had stopped him and ordered him roughly to go home and await news from the authorities. He felt like he had failed Pasqualeno when his son needed him most.
Now, standing very still in the darkness outside of his home, Giuseppe listened, praying that he would hear Pasqualeno’s thin, excited voice calling to him, the boy’s enthusiastic greeting when Giuseppe returned from work. Giuseppe would give his own life to hear his son once more.
But all he heard were scattered gunshots from the wharf as the police put down more trapped horses.
He drew a deep breath, and thought he would faint from the overwhelming, sickeningly sweet smell of molasses that hung thick in the air. Did the disaster only happen hours ago? He felt as though he had been walking, searching, for many days. He recalled Maria’s hysterical screams after the tank had burst, her words filled with heartache, and it seemed to him as though they had been spoken a long time ago. My son is lost! Pasqualeno is lost!
Exhausted and disconsolate, he trudged up the dark stairs and stepped into the house. Maria was waiting for him, her black eyes rimmed red from crying. Neither of them spoke—he had come home alone, and that said everything. He reached for her then and brought her close, enfolded her in his arms, whispered to her gently as she trembled like a wounded bird, felt her broken heart beating against his own, the two of them sharing the unspoken fear that, like Pasqualeno, they, too, were lost.