Dark Tide (20 page)

Connor looked up, and no more than a foot above his face were heavy joists and a wooden floor. He surmised that the full force of the molasses wave had slammed into the firehouse, torn it from its foundation, and caused the second story of the three-story building to pancake down on top of the first, creating this eighteen-inch crawl space in which they were now trapped. The molasses was rising—slowly, but rising—and it had reached their chins. Connor could see light, and the harbor beyond, through a small opening in the wall at Bowering’s feet. “For God’s sake, keep that hole clear in front of you,” Connor said. “Kick that shit away so the molasses can flow out.”

Bowering pumped his feet furiously, clearing the hole of sticks and wood and debris. “They will never find us here, Bill,” Bowering cried. “There is no possible chance for us.”

“Our only salvation is for you to keep that hole open,” Connor snapped back.

As the senior man of the two, Connor knew
he
had to remain calm, had to be the leader, the one that issued the instructions, until help arrived. Though the light was faint, Connor could discern that a collection of odd timbers, chairs, tables, the firehouse piano, and, several feet away, a billiard table, was supporting the second floor, now just inches above them, allowing them to remain alive in a cocoon of debris in this hideous dark place. Both men had bumped their heads hard on the collapsed first-floor ceiling trying to keep their noses and mouths above the molasses.

Molasses clung to him, to his clothes and his skin. It wormed its way under the collar of his shirt and into his hair. He tried in vain to wriggle his body to prevent molasses from seeping into his waistband, crawling down his pants, clinging to his private parts, like an army of insects that just kept coming. Bill Connor wanted to scream, but he fought the urge. He needed to block out thoughts of everything else except survival. After Paddy Driscoll had yelled at them to run, Connor had seen this black
wall
rushing at them, and it reminded him of boiling oil, curling toward them like a tidal wave. He hadn’t even
thought
of molasses at first. He and Bowering reached the door, both of them got their hands on the knob, but before they had time to open it, the molasses had surrounded the firehouse and snuffed out the light entirely.

The Boston Firehouse near the harbor, home of the Engine 31 fireboat, was pushed from its foundation by the molasses wave and nearly swept into the water. The second floor of the building pancaked onto the first, trapping for hours stonecutter John Barry and several firefighters, including George Layhe, who was pinned beneath debris. Layhe tried desperately to keep his head above the rising molasses, but his stamina gave out as rescue crews attempted to reach him, and he dropped his head back into the molasses and drowned.

(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)

That was all Bill Connor remembered for a while. When he came to, here he was, facedown under the building, a radiator across his back, Bowering trapped beside him.

“Kick again,” he said to Bowering. His buddy complied, his heavy boots knocking more sticks and debris from the hole to allow the molasses to flow out. Connor couldn’t reach the hole—he would have had to crawl over Bowering to do it, and that would have been nearly impossible in the narrow space. This must be what it’s like to be in a coffin, Connor thought, to be buried alive.

He heard a voice, a new voice, faint but clear. It came from the pool table, just barely visible in the weak light that trickled through the hole at Bowering’s feet. “Oh, my God,” the voice said. “Help me, Oh God.”

Connor recognized the voice. It was George Layhe, his good friend, the man who joined the fire department on the same day as he did. “George!” he shouted. “George, it’s Bill. Stay calm, George. They’ll get us out.”

“Oh, Bill, we’re gone,” George Layhe replied.

Connor could make out the pool table in the gloom, but couldn’t spot Layhe. Then he realized that Layhe was pinned
under
the pool table, desperately trying to keep his head out of the molasses, which had to be rising faster and higher away from the opening in the wall. “George, hang in,” he screamed. “Hang in, they’re coming, George!”

“I don’t think I can,” Layhe replied, his voice weak. “Oh, Bill, it’s too late. I’m gone—my God, I’m gone.”

“There goes poor George,” Nat Bowering wailed.

“Shut up, Nat!” Connor shouted to Layhe again: “Stay with me, George!” No response. “George, answer me!”

But Layhe remained silent.

Suffolk County medical examiner, Dr. George Burgess Magrath, had no idea what to expect when he arrived on the scene at around 1:30
P.M.
, but the destruction on and around the Commercial Street wharf shocked him. He had been performing an autopsy at the nearby North Mortuary on Grove Street, when he received word at 1
P.M.
that the molasses accident had occurred. He suspended the autopsy, drove to the scene with his assistant, donned a pair of hip-high rubber fishing boots, and ventured into the carnage to lend his assistance.

He had been practicing medicine since graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1898, and had served as medical examiner of Suffolk County for the past twelve years, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw at the Commercial Street waterfront. He had not served with the Army overseas, but had read of the ghastly deaths and seen photos of the destruction, and could not have imagined a wartime scene worse than what he witnessed here. The entire waterfront had been leveled. Every building in the North End Paving Yard and all of the Bay State Railway freight sheds lay in ruins. The large plate glass windows on the Bay State office building had been shattered and the furniture inside split apart, pieces of desks and chairs and cabinets swamped by the thick molasses. Boston’s only trolley freight terminal and most of its big steel trolley-freight cars had been destroyed. Freight wagons had been crushed, railroad boxcars split open, automobiles and trucks bent and broken as though they were children’s toys. The steel trestle that had supported the elevated railroad tracks had buckled like wet cardboard, and the overhead tracks dangled toward the ground.

Horse-drawn and mechanized rescue vehicles and firefighting equipment covered the waterfront and Commercial Street area, venturing as close as they could without getting stuck in the molasses, still knee-deep an hour after the initial wave. Firefighters, police officers, and hundreds of sailors and soldiers from the ships moored in the harbor swarmed over piles of molasses-drenched debris in a desperate search for survivors, more often making the grim discovery of bodies. Priests from the nearby North End parishes slogged through molasses in their long black cassocks and white collars, helping rescuers remove debris, comforting the injured, and performing last rites on the dead and mortally wounded. Rescuers loaded the injured onto wagons and into trucks for transportation to the nearby Haymarket Relief Station; many were swathed in white bandages that stood out in stark relief against the black molasses that saturated their clothing.

Rescuers with stretcher (foreground, right) negotiate mounds of debris to reach victims.

(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)

Dr. Magrath could see how the molasses wave had rolled over the waterfront, like a giant breaker at the seashore, scooping and scouring everything in its path, leaving destruction behind as it receded. He saw several poor souls being pulled from the molasses, later saying their bodies “looked as though they were covered in heavy oil skins … their faces, of course, were covered with molasses, eyes and ears, mouths and nose filled with it. The task of finding out who they were and what had happened to them began by washing the clothing and bodies with sodium bicarbonate and hot water.”

Closer to the waterfront, near the site of the former city stables, Magrath watched in chilled horror as police officers shot dozens of horses who were trapped in the molasses. Most had been knocked down and were struggling in vain to lift their large heads and break free from the viscous liquid, snorting to clear their nostrils of the thick molasses; others had been knocked down and injured by falling timbers and steel. The sound of these gunshots reverberated across the waterfront, and Magrath flinched as each animal was put out of its misery.

Photo shows the Clougherty house smashed under the overhead trestle. In the background are destroyed structures that were part of the North End Paving Yard.

(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)

A police officer spotted Magrath wading through the molasses and directed him to the smashed Clougherty house, which lay in splinters up against the overhead trestle in the middle of Commercial Street. Rescuers had recovered the broken body of sixty-five-year-old Bridget Clougherty from beneath the wreckage and needed Magrath to pronounce her dead. Magrath made his way to what was left of the three-story wooden house, now little more than a pile of splintered rubble. A crowd had gathered on the rise of Copp’s Hill Terrace and looked down silently at the destruction. The onlookers watched—respectfully, Magrath thought—as he examined the late Bridget Clougherty. Her ribcage and chest had been crushed, and Magrath knew before his examination that massive internal injuries had caused her death. He carefully attached an identification tag to her body, and ordered it transported to the morgue. Magrath learned that her two sons, Martin and Stephen Clougherty, and a daughter, Teresa, had all been injured, and had been taken to the Haymarket Relief Station for treatment, along with two boarders who lived in the house.

With his work at the Clougherty house finished, Magrath moved across Commercial Street, the molasses tugging at his boots with every step, to the area where the tank once stood. Steel plates from the tank’s wall lay broken and partially submerged in the molasses. But Magrath saw that the tank’s large circular roof had fallen almost straight down, basically intact, and now lay right-side-up atop the concrete foundation, in sharp contrast to the violence and destruction on the waterfront. It was as if the molasses had spewed out in all directions from
under
the roof, carrying the tank’s walls in all directions, but the roof had settled gently onto the ground below.