![]() ![]() "It's a common misconception that the tanks exploded," says Jamie Windon, owner and co-founder of Lyon Distilling in Maryland, via email. With little in the way of regulation at the time, the Purity Distilling Company tossed together its molasses tank without the benefit of anyone qualified to design so massive a tank. But the reason for the tank's explosion was much more insidious: reckless craftsmanship. 16 edition of "The Boston Globe" suggested that an internal explosion could have been the culprit. Initial reports suggested that anarchists might have blown the massive tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company. 15, 1919, just a year before Prohibition would go into effect, the tank ruptured. Just before the disaster, the tank had been filled close to capacity with a recent shipment of molasses. ![]() Later investigation found that the tank wasn't structurally sound to begin with - in fact, it had even been quickly painted brown to hide the fact that it leaked molasses constantly. In 1915 they had erected a massive steel tank, 52 feet (15.9 meters) tall, 90 feet (27.4 meters) across, and able to hold 2.5 million gallons (9.5 million liters) of molasses, which was a prime ingredient for their enterprise. "All the things we now take for granted in the business - that architects need to show their work, that engineers need to sign and seal their plans, that building inspectors need to come out and look at projects - all of that comes about as a result of the great Boston molasses flood case," explains Puleo.The Purity Distilling Company was a manufacturer of rum and industrial alcohol in Boston's North End. The case also completely changed the relationship between business and government. The case was historic in many ways.Īccording to Puleo, the case set the stage for future class action lawsuits and was "the first case in which expert witnesses were called to a great extent - engineers, metallurgists, architects, technical people." Immediately following the flood, 119 plaintiffs filed a civil lawsuit against U.S. Rescue efforts continued for days, and cleanup took even longer. As it spilled out, it cooled and thickened, trapping survivors in the mess. Two days before the accident, a new shipment of hot molasses had been added to the tank, so when it burst, the molasses inside might have been slightly warmer than the outside air. Supposedly, you can still smell the molasses when it gets hot enough. A lot of that potential energy that you had from stacking this thing up really high is going to turn into kinetic energy. Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer and science educator, explains: "You basically have a giant stack of something that's really heavy and as soon as you remove whatever's holding that - in this case, the walls of the tank - all of that's gonna rush out. When the company received complaints that the tank was leaking, it painted the tank brown to disguise the leaks rather than repair them.īesides the structural aspects of the tank, researchers have explored how the scientific properties of the molasses itself explain why the flood was so destructive. Industrial Alcohol, the company that owned the tank, had rushed to build it, employing an overseer who was an expert in finance, not engineering. On top of that, the steel that they used, although it was state-of-the-art of the day, we know today that it could be relatively brittle under certain circumstances." Whoever did the design failed to provide the adequate thickness of the steel. However, "one thing is very clear: it was under-designed. Researchers have been fascinated by this flood, studying the causes behind it as a phenomenon of science and poor engineering.Īccording to Ronald Mayville, an engineer who researches the flood in his spare time, there is no surefire reason the tank failed. ![]()
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