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By Bill Lombardi
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
January 15, 1919 was a beautiful winter day, more like spring, when 22 year-old Ralph Martin left his house for work at 120 Train St. in Boston. Just recently discharged from the Navy, he obtained a job driving a truck in the North End transporting produce to stores in the area.
Nearby, on Commercial Street, there was a huge tank, seven to eight inches thick, about 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter, that contained molasses. The tank, built two years before, was purposely built near the docks so that the crude molasses could be pumped directly into the tank from the ships. It would then be pumped into delivery trucks and taken to the refinery where it was processed. Inside the tank, heated pipes were installed to help the molasses flow freely.
It was a little past noon when a rumbling noise was heard, followed by a loud explosion. The tank exploded. Like a gigantic tidal wave, a mass of brown-yellow liquid shot up in the air and a sea of 2,300,000 gallons of molasses rushed out in all directions. When the tank collapsed, there was a tremendous rush of air that created a vacuum of such force that it began to pull houses and structures from their foundations.
Directly across the street, at 6 Copps Hill, the Clougherty house was pulled up and landed under the elevator structure on Commercial Street. Bridget Clougherty was crushed to death. Boston firefighter William Layhe, on duty at the fireboat station a few yards away, died as tons of molasses crushed the station.
One of the most remarkable incidents involved Martin, who was driving his truck on Commercial Street. The truck was picked up by a great rush of air and dragged across the street toward the tank. After being turned over, it hurled against the park fence and Martin was thrown into the harbor near the fireboat. Sailors on a nearby navy ship that was tied up at the pier dove into the water and pulled him aboard. Everything was done to comfort him, because he was in such great pain from fractured and broken bones.
Ralph Martin laid for two days at Boston City Hospital before he finally died from his injuries.
The cement-like molasses whacked against the elevator structure attached to the nearby elevated train and knocked it down. A commuter train carrying passengers from South Station to North Station stopped just in time; a few feet more, and it would have fallen to the streets below. The molasses engulfed everything in its path. People began running in all directions to escape. Jim Kenneally, a 47 year-old city employee, was coming out of the public works shack on Commercial Sheet when he made a mad dash for safety. Running as fast as he could wasn't enough to save him as he fell and was smothered and suffocated by the molasses.
Clergy from the North End churches were at the scene, comforting the injured and administering to the dead. It was difficult to tell the women from the men. Hundreds of workers and volunteers came forward to clean up the streets and dwellings, particularly the cellars of houses, where the molasses settled in deep amounts. Salt water from the ocean was used to cut the heavy, thick molasses. Pumps were operated day and night.
A number of arrests were made when people were caught looting and robbing at the disaster site.
Twenty-one people lost their lives. Many more were injured and some were permanently maimed for life.
It was later determined that the tank was never really built to withstand the pressure that a full load of molasses would exert upon it. On the day it exploded, the heating system’s temperature was raised, thus causing the molasses to ferment, generating a mixture of gas and air that caused the blast.
Bill Lombardi is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He is the grandfather of Emily, Ashley and Zachary Sullivan, and Cayce and Jimmy Lombardi - all Walpole residents.
