Comments on: A Sticky Wicket

A Sticky Wicket

OmieWise — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 06:55:25 -0800

The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in which 21 people died. (A picture of the devastation.) Another account from The Smithsonian. A present day picture of the site (scroll to the bottom). Brief accounts of two other molasses floods. And while we're at it, don't forget the London Beer Flood. Cheers.

By: Rubbstone

Rubbstone — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:03:08 -0800

A total of eight people were killed, seven due to drowning and one due to alcohol poisoning.

By: keswick

keswick — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:13:41 -0800

Sweet sassy molassy!

By: Slack-a-gogo

Slack-a-gogo — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:15:28 -0800

The smell of molasses remained for decades a distinctive, unmistakable atmosphere of Boston. I remember reading about the Molasses flood years ago in Murder Can Be Fun and whenever I told people about it they said that it couldn't be true. If I had to pick a favorite obscure bit of American History, this might be it. To me The 1919 Boston Molasses Flood is one of the great unused bubblegum pop band names. I even named a mix disc after it.

By: imaswinger

imaswinger — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:16:24 -0800

I read a neat article about this in an old zine called 'Murder Can be Fun'. Great to get more info on it.

By: carter

carter — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:16:35 -0800

Nice, thanks OmieWise!

By: imaswinger

imaswinger — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:17:03 -0800

wow, should've paid attention on preview...

By: doozer_ex_machina

doozer_ex_machina — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:20:20 -0800

Great story, one of the few Urban Legend sounding stories that turns out to be true.

By: wfrgms

wfrgms — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:29:24 -0800

Also mentioned here way back in 2001.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:43:09 -0800

Oops, sorry, I searched for molasses using the Google search. It never came up.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:55:06 -0800

Love the fluid dynamics tag. Awesome post; I've never heard of this. According to this page, the wave of molasses was 20 feet high and travelled at 35 mph. I'm most intrigued by the third flood, which seemed to set off a chain reaction of other floods, Rube Goldberg style. This whole thing blows my mind. So is molasses still stored in huge, hulking vats? Because if it is, we may be on the precipice of another bittersweet disaster.

By: R. Mutt

R. Mutt — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:59:41 -0800

When I was a kid, my grandmother used to tell stroies about the molasses flood. She was born in 1901, and lived in the italian section of Boston. She always went on and on about the number of flies that benefited from the molasses residue.

By: jonson

jonson — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:59:55 -0800

No worries, OmieWise, this is the kind of story that deserves to be brought back to front page attention! I also read about it on MCBF, I'm amazed so many people read that zine. In fact, one of my first posts on Mefi was an online reprint of my favorite Murder Can Be Fun articles.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:01:54 -0800

iconomy writes "So is molasses still stored in huge, hulking vats?" We just don't use that much of it anymore. It was used to make industrial alcohol, which we produce in other ways now...But silo fires, we get plenty of those.

By: briank

briank — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:08:38 -0800

As it happens, I just finished reading Dark Tide, which is apparently the only non-fiction book ever written about the flood and has just appeared in paperback. Highly recommended (well, by me anyway) if you're interested in Boston history.

By: nickmark

nickmark — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:14:50 -0800

The Meux porter vat breaking pretty much put an end to the vat size wars between the various London porter brewers. Some of those things were immense; they would inaugurate them by having dinner parties inside. The largest beer storage vats in use today (at Coors, last time I checked) are significantly smaller -- and those old things were made of wood, not steel.

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:15:39 -0800

Extraordinary. Thanks omiewise. ..bittersweet disaster. heh.

By: fire&wings

fire&wings — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:23:08 -0800

Wow, the London beer flood sounds like it would make an awesome film.

By: Uccellina

Uccellina — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:32:14 -0800

"There is a slow but steady interest in the disaster," says Elva Bogard, a librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Oh, dear.

By: davy

davy — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:32:52 -0800

"There's a beer flood?!? Grab a bucket! A trash can! A dump truck!" Now a rum or whiskey flood, you'd just strike a match....

By: scruss

scruss — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:42:47 -0800

There's a fictional (black) treacle flood in the Uncle books by J P Martin. Since the books were probably written in the 1920s, he was probably inspired by the Boston flood.

By: Livewire Confusion

Livewire Confusion — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:47:57 -0800

Looks like Sticky Situation!

By: Livewire Confusion

Livewire Confusion — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:48:27 -0800

...sorry

By: warbaby

warbaby — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:57:56 -0800

Beer flood?!?! *grabs straw*

By: djwudi

djwudi — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 09:33:53 -0800

Also mentioned briefly a few years ago in Something Postitive: The Sweet Taste of Turmoil, Part 1 and Part 2, which led me to search out the relevant Wikipedia article.

By: rolypolyman

rolypolyman — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 09:37:51 -0800

fifty-eight feet high and ninety feet across That's huge... about the size of a broad, six-story apartment building.

By: Misciel

Misciel — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 09:55:57 -0800

Known by locals as the "Boston Molass-acre"!

By: exceptinsects

exceptinsects — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:02:09 -0800

This reminds me of the super-awesome children's book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

By: infowar

infowar — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:04:20 -0800

Interview with John Marr who wrote "Murder Can Be Fun". This particular story is found in issue 13.

By: R. Mutt

R. Mutt — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:10:21 -0800

As a kid in Boston, I seem to remember a high school history teacher explaining that the large molasses storage in Boston was a component and historical legacy of the international slave trade. Where molasses was shipped from the west indies to the north to make alcohol. Does this make sense?

By: ifjuly

ifjuly — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:26:17 -0800

great post!

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:36:20 -0800

R. Mutt writes "was a component and historical legacy of the international slave trade." Yes, molasses was a component of triangle trade. MCBF was an awesome 'zine, although I never saw the issue that had this in it.

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:40:07 -0800

molasses storage in Boston was a component and historical legacy of the international slave trade That is true. It was part of the "Triangle Trade." - Molasses to Rum to Slaves.

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:40:28 -0800

On preview - what OmieWise said.

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:44:53 -0800

"Boston's first rum distillery is recorded as operating in 1667. By the 1700s, New England distilleries were producing millions of gallons of cheap rum to supply traders with rum that could be exchanged for slaves. Once the slave ships arrived in Africa, merchants could buy adults for 110-130 gallons of rum or children for about 80 gallons. Rum cost as little to produce as five and a half pence per gallon; in 1746, a slave could be purchased for about £5 and auctioned in the West Indies for £30-80. Rhode Island alone dominated between 60-90 percent of the exchange rum trade with its Guinea Rum. Slave traders owned and operated 30 rum distilleries in Newport whose casks they loaded onto over 150 slave ships. It is estimated that the slave traders of the single city of Newport, Rhode Island, exchanged rum for over 106,000 Africans. Once brought to the islands, the enslaved would produce sugar, yielding molasses to distill into rum to exchange for more slaves, in a vicious cycle of profit."

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:29:34 -0800

A classmate in an entomology class reported on this event as the origin of the phrase "as slow as molasses in January."

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:32:05 -0800

Crap! ~~entomology~~ etymology! Though I imagine that even in January, the maggots were working in Dead Ernest.

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:04:35 -0800

Mayor Curley might say that this famous 1919 disaster would not have happened if Mayor Curley (who left office a year earlier) had still been in charge.

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:13:12 -0800

Molasses to Rum to Slaves. A history lesson that appeared on stage in the Broadway musical 1776, in the song that started with the same phrase.

By: vodkadin

vodkadin — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:17:15 -0800

Yeah Rubbstone I'm wondering how that one guy died of alcohol poisoning. Did he try to drink his way out of a basement or something?

By: leapfrog

leapfrog — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:52:33 -0800

Also, sailors, particularly the British ones, would make a concoction known as grog out of a cheap rum and a certain green citrus fruit. This was encouraged by the captains of the ship, as the regular consumption of citrus fruit greatly reduces the occurence of scurvy. Hence the term "limey".

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:03:44 -0800

Ah, Pusser's Rum - the Original British Navy Rum!

"For more than 300 years, from the earliest days of wooden ships and iron men, sailors of Great Britain's Royal Navy were issued a daily ration–or 'tot' –of rum by the ship's 'Purser' (corrupted by the sailors to Pusser's). Prior to 1740, the men's daily tot of Pusser's Rum was a pint a day, which they drank neat, that is without water! Before battle, they were issued a double 'tot', and always after victory for a job well done!"

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:06:15 -0800

And when not drinking rum, they were imbibing water, hanging out at the scuttlebutt, gossiping away!

By: briank

briank — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:32:35 -0800

We just don't use that much of it anymore. It was used to make industrial alcohol, which we produce in other ways now Indeed. As the Puleo book points out, the molasses was indeed used for industrial alcohol production, which in turn was being used for munitions production throughout the First World War. The Boston facility provided much-needed raw material for the U.S. Army arsenal on the other side of the river in Cambridge/Watertown. With the war at an end by early 1919 and the need for munitions reaching a sudden slowdown, it's possible that the tank would have been rendered unnecessary had it not burst.

By: imaswinger

imaswinger — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:04:19 -0800

are there MCBFs posted online? that one link went to a page about pizza. I have a bunch, but not all of them, and a few have gone missing, either stolen or lent out never to return.

By: DeepFriedTwinkies

DeepFriedTwinkies — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:50:00 -0800

This is my favorite kind of post! Thanks for sharing, OmniWise.

By: DeepFriedTwinkies

DeepFriedTwinkies — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:51:08 -0800

Tell OmieWise I liked it too....sorry.

By: Dunvegan

Dunvegan — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:21:35 -0800

Amazing photograh...I've read about this but had never had a visual married to the text before. Thanks, Omie.

By: tsarfan

tsarfan — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 01:07:35 -0800

this is why i love metafilter thanks omie

By: tiamat

tiamat — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 08:53:45 -0800

I remember being told about this by my grandmother, but always figured she'd made it up. Go figure.