The Great Molasses Flood

Leslie Jones, a Boston Herald staff photographer took this photograph of the
wreckage. [Public domain photo]

This is the kind of story you might read in Paul Bunyan, an absurdist novel or an early Woody Allen movie. But it actually happened. It has been ninety years (and a couple of months) since The Great Molasses Flood a/k/a The Boston Molasses Disaster, a/k/a The Great Boston Molasses Tragedy.

On January 11, 1919, a massive tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses [1] burst. It sent an enormous wall of molasses down Commercial Street and through a quiet Boston neighborhood. This wall was traveling at about 35 miles per hour.

21 people - from age 10 to 76 - died in the flood. 150 more people were injured. Houses were destroyed, and so were the elevated railroad tracks. Streets and sidewalks were flooded.

No one ever determined just why the tank broke open. Some people speculated on the unusually warm day and others that the tanks itself was flimsily constructed. Naturally, the tank's owner The United States Industrial Alcohol Company went so far as to claim that deranged anarchists were responsible.

According to a Boston historian, Robert J. Allison, the flood's impact changed the way tanks were built and tested:

"Immediately you had this 50-foot wall of molasses which destroyed the elevated rail tracks, the fire house, and killed 21 people while creating a big mess," said Allison, who is chairman of Suffolk University's history department. "But after the flood happened, companies who made these big drums had to have different standards for safety. If the molasses tank did not explode, there could have been a big explosion in the future, perhaps something like a gasoline tank."



If you want to know more than this, Stephen Puleo wrote a book in 2004 book called "Dark Tide" [2] that goes into the disaster and its aftermath, in great depth.
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[1] In 1919, molasses was still the standard sweetener in the United States. It was also used to produce rum and ethyl alcohol. Alcohol was not only good drinking, but it was a key component in manufacturing ammunition.

[2] Puleo, Stephen (2004). Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-5021-0.