happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)

Subject: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 15 Jan 06 - 08:54 AM


The Great Boston Molasses Flood was 1/15/1919:

A 2½ -million gallon molasses tank burst. The tidal wave killed 21 and injured 150 plus considerable property loss. (per Grim Reaper's Book of Days by Ed Morrow.)

Per "Urban Legends", on hot, summer days in a certain neighborhood in Boston, a faint, sickeningly-sweet odor can be detected wafting up from cracks in the pavement.

          Find high ground, find high ground,
          find high ground, find high ground,
          or you'll drown in the great molasses flood.
  
                  "The Great Molasses Flood" as sung by Barry Gold (author unknown, not sure if
                  this song is re the 1919 flood)   [thanx Harold Groot]

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved
What are Happy's all about? See Clicky

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Jan 06 - 09:35 AM

MOLASSES
Words and Music by Tom Rowe

African Man cuts the sugar cane,
Oh Molasses
He works in the sun, he works in the rain.
Oh molasses rhum
Then he loads it up on a wooden ship,
Sends it off on a northern trip.
Oh molasses, oh molasses rhum.

        Oh molasses, Ole New England tea.
        You killed my Grampa, killed my Pa.
        And you sure as hell are a killin' me.
        Oh molasses, oh molasses rhum.

When they fought the war for the Colonies;
They fought it over New England tea.
Old King George put a tax on it,
The Colonies nearly took a fit.

In the time of the nineteen-seventeen war;
Molasses sitting on the Boston shore.
When they pumped it in it was twelve degrees,
A long cold night in a Boston freeze.

In the morning it was forty-two
Molasses vat split clean in two.
Two million gallons covered the bay
Twenty-six people drowned in the flood that day.

Grampa, he died cuttin' cane.
Pa went down in the great brown rain.
But I won't go in a pool of blood,
I won't drown in a blackstrap flood;
But still I'll go down to molasses, Oh molasses rhum.

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Suffet
Date: 15 Jan 06 - 11:44 AM


Were You in Boston in 1919?
Words and music by Stephen L. Suffet @2006
Small letters are notes (mostly quarter) ranging from g (6th string 3rd fret on standard guitar) up to g' (3rd string open). Rests (®), pick-up measures, irregular beats, variations of melody to fit others verses, etc., need to be worked out as song is performed.

3/4 time, key of C, ® = quarter rest, or extends value of note as needed.

C                               G                C
Oh, | were you in | Bos-ton in | nine-teen nine-| teen? ® ®
g      c    c   c    e   e   e    d    e    d      c

                            F                G
| Were you in | Bos-ton in | nine-teen nine- |teen? ®
   c    c   c   g'   g' g'   f    e    f      d

      C                            F               C
Mo- | las-ses did | flood like a | wall of brown | mud, ® ®
d    g'   g'   g'    e    e    d   c    c   a       c

                            G                C
| Were you in | Bos-ton in | nine-teen nine- | teen? ®
   c    c   c    e   g' g'   g    b    d       c


Oh, were you in Boston in 1919?
Were you in Boston in 1919?
Molasses did flood like a wall of brown mud,
Were you in Boston in 1919?

They built a big tank at the foot of Copp's Hill,
And up to the top that big tank they did fill,
It was on a cold day that the big tank gave way,
Were you in Boston in 1919?

Oh, four years had passed since they last took a peek,
To see if the big tank would would dribble or leak,
Oh, thirty past noon was the hour of doom,
Were you in Boston in 1919?

The foreman had told them, "Just fill it half way,"
He said that the tank would be safer that way;
The boss said, "Don't stop 'til it's up to the top,"
Were you in Boston in 1919?

The rivets went "Pop!" like the burst of a gun,
I thought once again I was facing the Hun,
I thought then for sure I was back in the war,
Were you in Boston in 1919?

It wasn't a German, it wasn't a Red,
No act of God left twenty-one dead,
Just greed and neglect they did cause that big wreck,
Were you in Boston in 1919?

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 15 Jan 06 - 09:35 PM

I went to an entertaining lecture on this event a couple of years ago. It seems the contract called for the tank to be tested by filling it with water; the contractor put in a few inches & called it a day. When it was put in service, it leaked so badly that a continuous molasses creek flowed from it; people in the neighborhood came with buckets & scooped it up. Remarkably, the lawsuits arising out of the disaster did not bankrupt the company, any everybody got paid off in full.

What do moles like to lick?

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Whatever is worth doing is worth doing badly. :||

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 16 Jan 06 - 09:11 AM

Good stuff. I first came on this one 10 years ago. It was pretty obscure although well-documented. Now there's considerable stuff on the Web. Odd & nice how that works.

Has it's own web site now. From http://edp.org/molyank.htm

Of course, there was great controversy as to the cause of the tank's collapse. And there were about 125 lawsuits filed against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company.

The trial (or rather the hearings) was the longest in the history of Massachusetts Courts. Judge Hitchcock appointed Col. Hugh W. Ogden to act as Auditor and hear the evidence. It was six years before he made his special report.

There were so many lawyers involved, that there wasn't room enough in the courthouse to hold them all,

Paid nearly $1,000,000 in toto.

So what's new?

I am very excited now to be asked to be a member of a Class Action Suit. If successful, the lawyers stand to make $25,000,000 (they don't come right out with that - you have to do some arithmetic but the info has to be included in the papers.) If I respond and wait and do all I'm supposed to do I could expect up to $0.40. 40 cents. WOW!

Thanks Rapaire & troubadour Steve & Guest,Joe. Adds some real spice to the File.

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Jan 06 - 12:18 PM

The lawsuit on the molasses case was so disruptive that as a result, a number of universities whose faculty were hired or called as experts in the case inserted clauses in their tenure contracts prohibiting faculty members from testifying against each other in any future disputes of the kind (as "hired consultants"). Of course this just resulted in lawyers asking the court to issue subpoenas for them, to which of course they were obligated to respond; so it had relatively little real effect.

As recently as the early 1960s, one could still find professors at MIT, Harvard, and at a couple of other Boston area Universities who'd been on opposing sides in testimony on the case, and there was "remaining tension" visible on the subject among some faculty members.

Analyses of the possible causes of the molasses tank failure were applied to apparently similar failures in the *North Sea Tanker fleets built hastily during the early part of the War (II), and it wasn't until the tanker problem was successfully resolved that numerous consultants accepted the prevailing view of the cause of the molasses debacle and abandoned their previous pet theories.

- Or some of them did -

* Liberty Ships, built 1936-1940, suffered a reported 1,500 incidents of cracks now **believed similar to the molasses tank inititating failure, and several sinkings resulted during the early period of their use.

** Except by a few profs who never did change their minds.

John

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Suffet
Date: 16 Jan 06 - 06:25 PM

Greetings:

I started to compose Were You in Boston in 1919? in a song writing class taught by George Ward during CDSS Folk Music Week at Pinewoods Camp in Massachusetts in 2003, but I was finally inspired to finish it by Abby's happy? George gave us a magazine article about the molasses flood to read, and then assigned each of us to write a song about the incident. I remember that another member of the class, Mark Maniak, wrote a song with the line: We were up to our asses in God damned molasses. I wish I had thought up that one!

--- Steve

Subject: BS: Terrible Tragedy In Boston! 21 Dead!
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 11:30 AM

A terrible tragedy struck Boston on this date in 1919, when millions of gallons of molasses flooded the town. The flood, the result of storage tanks crushing under the expansion of the molasses with recent warm weather, drowned 21 people.

Indeed, a tragedy for all New England, which had to make due without the rum the molasses would have made.

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 01:20 PM

"What do moles like to lick?"

Molasses as the old story goes.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Suffet
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 04:37 PM

Greetings:

Please click here for a link to Were You in Boston in 1919?, my song about the Great Molasses Flood. Today is the 92nd anniversary of the disaster, and you are welcome to download the song for free through the end of this month.

Go for it!

--- Steve

Subject: RE: happy? – Jan 15 (Boston Molasses Flood)
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 10:31 PM

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction!