The Great Molasses Flood

I was cruising the Internet on Saturday afternoon looking for a good recipe for Baked Beans to cook for dinner today. If things worked out, I plan to post the results on my cooking blog, The Redneck Gourmet. The most common recipe I found was for Boston Baked Beans.

In doing this research, what I wasn’t expecting to also find was a story about an engineering disaster that occurred in Boston in 1919, called The Great Molasses Flood.

Have you ever heard about it?

Being a Mechanical Engineer, I couldn’t resist following up on the story, and here is CNN’s account of what happened.

"BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Danny O'Brien looked at a photograph of firefighters knee-deep in molasses trying to rescue people trapped in a collapsed firehouse, and remembered his grandfather's tales of sticky horror.

"Those stories were something ... horses stuck in this sea of molasses, a lot of cars, people stuck, houses smashed to pieces," said O'Brien, looking through a Boston Public Library exhibit commemorating the 85th anniversary of Boston's Great Molasses Flood, which killed 21 people and injured 150.

His grandfather lived in the city's North End, where on January 15, 1919, a gigantic steel vat exploded, spewing 2.3 million gallons of molten molasses. Thirty-foot waves of gooey liquid plowed through the streets, catching men, women, horses and vermin in its sticky flow, crushing freight cars, wagons and automobiles and reducing entire buildings to broken planks of wood.

"They were smelling it for years after that," said O'Brien, whose grandfather volunteered to help with the months-long cleanup.

The tank, 50 feet high and 240 feet around, was built in 1915, just as the demand for molasses -- used to produce industrial alcohol for ammunition as well as rum -- was skyrocketing at the peak of World War I.

Its site on the waterfront was convenient for delivery ships coming from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the West Indies.

But the tank, built in a hurry with faulty design, was at the edge of the city's most densely-populated neighborhood, the North End, where politically-inactive Italian immigrants had little clout, said Stephen Puleo, the author of "Dark Tide," a book about the flood released in September.

The tank leaked constantly, worrying employees and neighbors. But in their rush to keep up with demand, company officials just repainted the tank in the same color as the leaking molasses. "

I’m constantly amazed at the things you can learn from the internet.

In the process of looking for a Baked Bean recipe I found this story, and learned about Boston’s role during pre-prohibition times as the largest distiller of Rum and sugar cane importer in the US.

Who else in my audience knew about this?

Now you’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve got to go check on how my baked beans are doing...

I don't want to cause the Great St. Simons Molsses Baked Bean flood...