![]() ![]() “When he went into the basements of those buildings across the street, he could still smell molasses. “I had a gentleman raise his hand at one of my presentations who said he was a meter reader for Boston Gas in the late 1950s and early 1960s,” Puleo says. The sweet smell of molasses lingered in parts of the North End for years after the tragedy. The Boston Elevated Railway, 1901 photo via Boston City Archives It really did smell like molasses in the North End-for decadesĪlthough it’s been exaggerated a bit in folklore, it’s not an urban legend. Those passenger trains ran every seven minutes between South Station and North Station,” Puleo says. The conductor is able to get out from his vestibule, makes his way across the tangled wreckage and stops another train from plunging to the street below. Take, for example, the train conductor Royal Albert Leeman: “There’s the elevated passenger line that ran right above commercial street, and when a big piece of the tank severs the main support, a train had just gone by and jumped the tracks. “I don’t think that call will happen again,” Puleo says. “Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately! There’s a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street!” That was the once-in-a-lifetime message the Boston Police received from Patrolman Frank McManus, who witnessed the tank erupting. Kind of an eerie scene.” It led to an incredible phone call It’s kind of quiet on the waterfront at night except for the reverberation of gunshots around the harbor as these horses are being put out of their misery. “There are horses in a stable nearby, and half of them were killed instantly upon impact but the other half, 10 or 11 horses, are killed that night-shot by Boston Police-because they are so enmeshed in molasses they can never be extricated. In fact the last person is found I believe three or four months after, under a pier.” It was a bad day for horses “They were knocked into the water by the wave. It’s just a very harrowing kind of disaster.” Some of the dead were found in Boston Harbor People are kind of hit by this debris as it’s being swept by the wave. “That’s how a lot of these injuries happened-fractured skulls, broken pelvises, broken backs. “It picks up everything in its path-carts, animals, wood, houses, debris from an overhead train trestle,” he says. “The theory was an anarchist climbed a ladder and dropped a pipe bomb into a fermentation vent, and that’s what caused the tank to explode, so therefore should be absolved of responsibility because it was a terrorist act,” Puleo says.īoston Herald news clip via Boston Public Library The molasses was full of deadly junk claimed in court that the flood was actually the work of an anarchist terrorist cell. But the company that owned the tank, U.S. We now know in great detail how a shoddily built tank caused the disaster, as more than 2 million gallons of goo burst through its rickety steel shell and wreaked havoc on the streets of the North End. The molasses company tried to blame the incident on terrorists We asked him to walk us through some of the most notable bits from the tragedy that you should absolutely know. ![]() The 100th anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses flood is upon us, but many still fail to grasp the significance of the event, if they’ve heard of it at all. Stephen Puleo, author of the definitive book on the subject, Dark Tide, has spent the last decade-and-a-half telling the story how a massive wave of dark syrup changed the course of history, redefined a neighborhood, and was more gruesome than you probably realized. Headshot and book cover courtesy of Beacon Press
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