There had been warning signs from the very beginning about the 90-foot-diameter, 52-foot-tall tank that allegedly creaked and groaned under load. At noon on the 15th people in the crowded North End neighborhood near the tank had sat down to eat their lunches when they heard a low, deep rumble. and by January 15th the temperatures hit 43 degrees and workers in the vicinity were doffing coats and working in shirtsleeves. Then, over the ensuing days, Boston experienced a mid-January warming spell. At the time, the temperatures hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit. Smithsonian Magazine: "Without warning, molasses in January surged over Boston"Ī ship bearing molasses from another United States Industrial Alcohol subsidiary in Jamaica had arrived just a few days before and its contents had brought the tank to near capacity. In 1919, Boston's Purity tank could hold about two and a half million gallons of the stuff. The old triangle had long been broken by 1919, but New England still made (and makes) rum, as well as baked beans, and the molasses for both still came (and comes) north from the Caribbean and New Orleans. It was built to hold molasses, that old Colonial commodity that stirs school-day memories of the "triangle trade": slaves from Africa to the West Indies molasses from the West Indies to New England rum, made from the molasses, back across the Atlantic for a cargo of slaves. It had been built four years before by the Purity Distilling Company-massively constructed, with great curved steel sides and strong bottom plates set into a concrete base and pinned together with a stitching of rivets. On the water side of Commercial Street, opposite Copp's Hill, there stood in 1919 a giant storage tank. The Purity Distilling Company molasses tank towers over the building in the foreground. Now, with the war just over, countries re-building their arms stockpiles in the wake of the armistice had somewhat supplanted wartime demand, and despite an uncertain future for the industry, compounded by the threatened passage of the 18th amendment, life was good. Its alcohol had been in demand throughout World War I for the manufacture of munitions, bringing it war-profiteer-level cash flows. By early 1919 the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, and its subsidiary, the Purity Distilling Company in Boston, had had a pretty good run.
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