Here we are for another semester and with it, a new series of Love Letters to Boston. Seeing as we’re back and better than ever, I figured I’d start off with possibly the strangest story I’ve ever heard shared in Boston lore.
On January 15, 1919, a 50-foot-tall industrial tank full of molasses burst open onto Commercial Street in the North End (showed as the area circled on the map below). The tank had raised concern amongst the residents for a while — it had been built in a hurry when molasses was in high demand from the alcohol industry and was prone to leaking rather frequently.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
The United States Industrial Alcohol, the company that owned the tank, had even received at least one report from an employee who believed that its condition was unsafe, but they — predictably — did absolutely nothing about it.
The result? A wave of 2.3 million gallons of molasses crashing down the street and destroying everything in its path. At its peak, the wave was 25 feet tall and reached 35 miles per hour.
That description might sound dramatic, but that’s because the Great Molasses Flood, sometimes referred to as the “Boston Molassacre,” was a surprisingly dramatic event. You wouldn’t think that molasses could do that much damage, but because it’s much denser than water, the wave packed quite a punch.
Image Credit: Bettmann Archive
The image above shows what happened when the wave of molasses collided with an elevated train track in the area — the metal holding up the tracks was no match for the sticky sugar product.
Although the fact that the idea of a “molasses flood” is somewhat goofy, this story has a rather sad ending. The eventual death toll of the flood was 21 people, plus another 150 who sustained injuries.
Following the disaster, USIA faced over 100 lawsuits from Bostonians who were affected by the flood. They argued that the tank had been poorly built and was unsafe for use, thus putting USIA at fault for the tragedy. However, USIA came up with an interesting alternative explanation in their own defense. They alleged that the tank failure was the result of sabotage!
A year earlier, during WWI, USIA had received an anonymous threat from a man who said that he intended to blow up the tank with dynamite. Because of this previous incident, USIA argued that the tank had been intentionally blown up as a terror attack — despite the earlier report from their own employee that the tank had been in need of repair.
Thankfully, after a long five years, the victims won the case and received pay for the damages caused by a flood — a hefty sum that would be worth about $8 million today. Although the area of the North End where the flood occurred recovered long before the lawsuit was settled, the Boston Harbor looked brown from the spill for months after it happened.
Local lore claims that on a hot summer day in Boston, you can still smell a faint, sweet scent of molasses in the air on Commercial Street.
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