![]() It was just after noon on January 15 when the tank exploded, and molasses flooded the streets of Boston with waves eight to 15 feet tall. No engineers or architects were consulted to ensure that the tank was constructed safely. It held 2.3 million gallons of molasses, used for the fermentation of ethanol used for liquor. As reported, the man who oversaw construction could not read blueprints, nor had any technical training. It was fabricated of low-manganese steel plates, riveted together. This tank was 90 feet wide and 58 feet tall, with a head of 49.5 feet of molasses. The United States Alcohol Company fabricated a large cast iron molasses tank in Boston in December 1915. A solitary vent was the only outlet for fermenting gases. Pipes entering the tank were heated to aid the flow of the dense liquid. The company’s huge steel tank in the North End was filled with more than two million gallons of molasses. In January of 1919 Purity Distilling Company of Boston, maker of high-grade rum, was working three shifts a day in a vain attempt to outrun national Prohibition. It was this failure that was the origin of the Professional Engineer’s License and stamp as we know it today. It also required stamped drawings certifying that an engineer had reviewed the drawings. One interesting result of this disaster was that Massachusetts and many other states created laws to certify engineers and regulate construction. “But now it’s known you need to have a higher ratio.” “The steel conformed to the standards of the time,” Mayville told the Boston Globe. Mayville argued, were too thin to hold 2.3 million gallons of molasses and made from low-manganese steel susceptible to fracture – the same type of steel, coincidentally, used on the Titanic. Ronald Mayville, a senior structural and metallurgical engineer with Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger in Waltham, Massachusetts, concluded that several design flaws had contributed to the tank’s collapse. The original cause of the deadly disaster, which has remained a mystery for the past century, was explored in the study published in 2015. Investigation many years later indicated that the probable cause of this failure was brittle fracture of the tank at rivets, with the temperature below the ductile to brittle transition temperature. Length of time that Boston Harbor ran brown with molasses: Six months The sum that the Purity Distilling Company paid in damages to the 125 people who filed suit: Over $1 million Number of people who died of drowning or suffocation in the molasses flood: 21 ![]() The estimated height of the wave of molasses: 30 feetĮstimated speed of the wave of molasses: 25 miles per hour Gallons of molasses that flooded the North End on January 15, 1919: 2.3 million The brutal aftermath of the molasses tide: Those persons attempting to aid others all too often found themselves mired fast in the goo. The chaos and destruction were amplified - and rescue efforts were hampered - by the stickiness of the molasses. Twenty-one people were killed by the brown tidal wave, and 150 more were injured. Eyewitness reports tell of a “30-foot wall of goo” that smashed buildings and tossed horses, wagons, and pool tables about as if they were nothing. This great wall of molasses was reported to have moved at speeds up to 35 miles per hour, and it devastated a large section of Boston. Half-inch steel plates were torn apart, and these plates were thrown with enough force to cut girders of the elevated railway. The United States Alcohol Company fabricated a large cast-iron molasses tank in Boston in December 1915. “As slow as molasses in January.” There was one memorable exception to that proverb.
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