Looking up information on the internet is a bit like playing the children's game Telephone, where one person whispers something in the ear of the next, and on down the line, until finally the last person blurts out something totally different than the original lines.

This site says a "holding tank" owned by United States Alcohol Company exploded:

http://www.3ammagazine.com/short_stories/non-fict/truetales/molasses.html

This site says the explosion occurred at the Purity Distilling Company facility:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/The+Boston+Molasses+Disaster

This site has a nice picture of a train with a "Molasses Tank Car from the Purity Distilling Company" that says is similar to the one that exploded on the day:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~sjheeta/disaster/main.html

This page seems to blame the accident on recklessness on the part of the company, who was apparently anxious to make all the rum it could before Prohibition was declared:

http://cems.alfred.edu/students99/DICKMADS/background.htm

So what exploded, a storage tank, or a railroad car?

Who owned and was responsible for whatever it was that exploded, United States Alcohol Company, or Purity Distilling Company?

What the hell did Prohibition have to do with any of it?

And did Tom of Schooner Fare read the article in the 1983 issue of Smithsonian magazine, and then write the song, which debuts on the band's 1985 album "We the People"?

Some sites claim the "storage tank" was as high as 58 ft. tall, and 90 ft. diameter. Others show a train, which is most definitely NOT 58 ft tall.

No good researcher should rely solely on the Internet for factual information on a subject like this. If your sources are coming mainly from USA Today, Paul Harvey and the Wierd Deaths website, you might want to seek out primary sources.

I went to the NYT "On this Day" website, and it isn't even mentioned. I was guessing this is just the sort of thing they'd put on the website (it is an educational website for use in the schools), but I was wrong.

The Smithsonian article, which shows up in their archive as being in the November 1983 issue, seems to be one of the secondary sources later writers were using. The article was written in a folksy sort of style by a Boston native, who apparently worked for a local paper and grew up hearing stories about the disaster. He finally researched it in the Boston Globe archive, and then tells his folksy tale about it.

The Great War had just ended (two months previous).

The accident occurred the day before a vote for ratification of the 18th amendment for the next day in Nebraska, and only one more state was needed to win it, hence the idea that the company was greedily stockpiling molasses for it's rum operations. The Smithsonian story does say that rescue workers "...paused in puzzlement at the sudden ringing of church bells all over downtown Boston. Nebraska had voted on the 18th Amendment and ratified it. Prohibition was law, and churches which had campaigned for it in their pulpits now celebrated. Men up to their ankles in the makings of rum listened for a moment and went back to work."

The story says that Purity Distilling Company had sold out in 1917 to United States Industrial Alcohol, which sheds some light on the conflicting story of ownership of whatever it is that exploded. This story says it was a huge storage tank, not a railroad car, that exploded. [my edit note: I find it hard to believe that 2.5 million gallons of molasses would fit in any railroad car]. And this story says that a ship from Puerto Rico had unloaded it's molasses cargo (2.3 million gallons) "a few days before." However, I don't know if the "African Man" reference which opens the song is a bit dodgy. I'm guessing it suggests African slaves/former slaves cut the sugar cane in Puerto Rico, but there seems to be a bit of the process cut out of the story, shall we say? But hey--makes for a real folksie beginning, whether it is true or not.

The Yankee Magazine article seems to be the oldest source for the story online, and the most journalistic "just the facts ma'am" style. That article sheds some light on how the railroad cars might have gotten into the story. There were apparently cars being loaded which were in front of the tank at the time, which were swept away on the wave. Also, the L tracks collapsed, though no train was on it at the time. The name of the company given in this article is a bit different too: United States Industrial Alcohol Company.

Oddly, not much mention is given in the other stories about the company's defense strategy, which was that a bomb (Bolsheviks?) destroyed the tank. Yankee mag says of the subsequent hearings:

"Altogether, more than 3,000 witnesses were examined and nearly 45,000 pages of testimony and arguments were recorded. The defendants spent over $50,000 on expert witness fees, claiming the collapse was not due to a structural weakness but rather to a dynamite bomb.

When Auditor Ogden made his report, he found the defendants responsible for the disaster because the molasses tank, which was fifty-eight feet high and ninety feet across, was not strong enough to withstand the pressure of the 2,500,000 gallons it was designed to hold. In other words, the "factor of safety" was not high enough."

So really, the Schooner Fare song has a whole lot of mixed up history, which I don't get the point of. They talk a lot about rum, but why? Because it was an ingredient in rum, and the disaster occurred on the eve of the last state voting to approve the 18th amendment? OK, but its a bit of storytelling stretch, isn't it? Along with the Boston Tea Party analogy--what's up with that? I don't know for sure, but I'm going to guess that "New England tea" was a euphemism for Boston made rum, but still..."The Colonies nearly took a fit."???

And Abby, I think the "you could smell the molasses for decades" story likely has it's origins in the Smithsonian article--it is the "I remember when..." device in the article. The author talks about remembering smelling the combination of coffee and molasses as a wee boy...which of course gets you no closer to the song you are looking for. It seems to me the chorus of "find high ground, find high ground" makes more sense in context than "Old King George put a tax on it"!

Good luck with your ballad hunt.