Dark Tide (18 page)

McManus froze momentarily, wanting to flee but unable to move. Then he recovered enough to bark into the phone words that sounded unbelievable even to him, let alone the dispatcher at the other end:

“Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately—there’s a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street!”

SEVEN

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.