![]() ![]() Eventually, as a last ditch idea a fireman had the notion to spray salt water from Boston Harbor on it, which did the trick to loosen it up and hose it into the bay. But because it wasn’t hard like candy, it was just sort of a sticky blob that refused to budge. Rescuers worked for days to free people trapped in their homes, businesses, and basements.įor months the City of Boston tried all sorts of ways to remove the sticky mess, including lighting it on fire. When the tank gave way a few minutes later, it immediately demolished a nearby fire house and everything in its path. He radioed to his headquarters immediately requesting “all available rescue personnel”. When a police officer who walked by one day and heard the pings and pops that initially sounded like gunfire, he took cover until he realized it was the metal rivets exploding out the side of the tank. But they were topping the thing off with as much molasses as they could store. One of the corners they cut was on this leaky tank that probably would have been fine if they hadn’t been working under their usual level of demand. To meet the increased demand, USIA rushed as much as they could out the door. In that great American tradition, people rushed out to buy as much alcohol while it was still legal. The problem, though, was prohibition’s sales deadline was approaching. Industrial Alcohol, pivoted back to alcohol. Molasses was also used in WWI as a sort of sticky Molotov cocktail bomb.Īfter the war, bombs weren’t necessary so the company that owned the tank, U.S. Molasses has all sorts of uses, including as an ingredient in alcohol. Why’d the tank fail? Because it was hastily built by unskilled laborers and, of all things, prohibition was coming. Most grain silos midwesterners are familiar with are about 30 feet tall (though can be much taller). The tank leaked from the moment it was erected and it’s worth remembering this was a big tank. Though only a few years old at the time of the flood, the tank showed signs of instability. The tank was used to store molasses, which came up on ships from the Caribbean, until it could be transported to a nearby distillery where it was expected to become rum in the last days before Prohibition. So there were deliveries all day long, this was a bustling, hustling kind of place.” ![]() ![]() “Almost all of the shipping that left Boston to go up and down the East Coast, to go to Europe, left from this site. “This was one of the busiest commercial sites in all of Boston,” he explains. Baseball fields now line Boston Harbor, but Puleo says a hundred years ago, you’d find a bustling port, a municipal yard and an elevated railway. Walking around the North End today, Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, points to a plaque where the 50-foot-tall steel tank once stood. This “Great Molasses Flood” killed 21 people, injured 150, and had effects far beyond the Boston waterfront. 15, 1919, a tank of molasses burst, releasing a thick, sugary tsunami down the streets of Boston’s North End. This past weekend was the 103rd anniversary of the JanuBoston Molasses Flood.Ī lot of people chuckle at the notion, but it was a very big deal: ![]()
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