William White’s assistant at the Commercial Street tank, Isaac Gonzales, had been suggesting for months now that USIA erect a chain-link fence around the tank property. The idea was for the tank itself to be fully surrounded by fencing and for two large swinging gates to be installed on the Commercial Street side to allow railcar access to the pumping area. The gates would be padlocked at the close of business, effectively sealing the property. White had resisted Gonzales’s suggestion, believing a fence was costly and unnecessary. Police officers guarded the tank property day and night and, up to now, their presence had provided a strong deterrent against trespassers.
But this police station bombing, a few blocks from the molasses tank and just a week before Christmas, had changed things. Authority meant nothing to these people, White thought, nor did the spirit of the season. If they were capable of sneaking a bomb into a police station and exploding the device during the holiest season of the year, they were capable of most anything.
Now White believed Gonzales was right about the fence. He would talk to Mr. Jell in the morning about authorizing the expense. USIA had signed contracts with the country’s largest munitions producers, and the company could face financial disaster if its Commercial Street operation were sabotaged.
A fence around the molasses tank would be one added level of precaution. These days, you couldn’t be too careful.
THREE
ALONG THE GULF STREAM
At Sea, Late January 1917
Captain Frank Van Gelder maneuvered Miliero expertly, hugging the coastline and riding the Gulf Stream as he headed north toward Boston and New York, carrying a full cargo of molasses. The steamer was the pride of U.S. Industrial Alcohol’s Cuba Distilling Company, the island shipping subsidiary responsible for negotiating with and purchasing molasses from the sugar cane plantation owners in Puerto Rico, Cuba and the West Indies, and transporting the thick brown liquid north to USIA’s distilling facilities in Baltimore, New York, and Boston.
Van Gelder had worked for USIA as a master of oceangoing steamers since 1910, and Miliero was the finest ship he had ever commanded. Launched from the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, just six months earlier, the newest steamer in the Cuba Distilling/USIA fleet was also the largest. It weighed 5,500 tons, measured nearly four hundred feet from bow to stern, and was capable of carrying more than 1.5 million gallons of molasses. Her hold was divided into sixteen separate steel compartments, each large enough to store between 100,000 and 120,000 gallons. Pumps aboard ship were used to transfer the molasses from the Miliero’s compartments through a ten-inch-wide discharge hose that linked to permanent pipelines connected to USIA’s different molasses tanks in the Northeast.
Van Gelder loved piloting ships, loved the sea, had captained oceangoing vessels for more than thirty years and never tired of it. He had been a master of sailing vessels up to 1893 before becoming a master of steam-powered ships. Steam power was easier to handle, and ships made more accurate time when they were not forced to rely on the randomness of the wind. Steam was better for commerce and improved the profits for the ship owners; a sailing ship caught in a dead calm halfway up the East Coast for a day or more could put a serous strain on a company’s financial resources. Not to mention the fact that a becalmed sailing ship would make a more inviting target for the Germans, who were threatening loudly to resume their U-boat submarine campaign against U.S. shipping, which they had suspended in 1916 amidst American protests.
But for all of steam’s advantages, Van Gelder missed sailing, the art of sailing more than anything else; figuring the gusts and the swells, positioning his crew on the sails to take advantage of a sudden shift in wind direction, the feeling of being an underdog in the battle of man against weather. The steel-hulled steamers were larger, faster, sturdier, sleeker, and more reliable, but decidedly less challenging to him.
Still, Cuba Distilling paid him well and had increased his salary since the war had begun in Europe. Under pressure to produce industrial alcohol at an unprecedented rate to meet the demands from the munitions companies, USIA had delivered clear policy messages to Van Gelder and the other Cuba Distilling captains: make sure the steamer storage tanks were filled with molasses when they left the islands; journey northward with the utmost speed; and carry out unloading procedures day and night at the storage tanks in Baltimore, New York, and Boston. Depending on the temperature of the molasses and the air temperature at the port cities, it could take several days to discharge hundreds of thousands of gallons of molasses. USIA ordered its captains to do anything they could to expedite the process, though Van Gelder was familiar enough about the peculiarities of molasses to know that the viscosity of the substance itself usually determined the pace of the transfer from the ship’s holds to the tank.
Actually, Van Gelder welcomed the opportunity to get in and out of Boston as quickly as possible. This was his third visit to the North End waterfront since the company had built the new 2.3 million-gallon tank. The previous two times, he had witnessed a sight that made him queasy in a way that thirty years at sea had never done, a sight that actually forced him to avert his eyes and carry on grimly with the mundane tasks of connecting the discharge hose to the dockside pipes and pumping molasses from the Miliero’s hull compartments.
It was a strange and chilling sight he and his crew members saw, though they never spoke about it, either during the pumping process or even as they pulled away from the dock and pointed the Miliero seaward. It was one thing for a tank to leak a bit; he had seen it dozens of times when he made deliveries up and down the East Coast.
But the steel tank in Boston, which went into operation only about one year ago, leaked more molasses through its riveted seams than any other he had seen.
Frank Van Gelder transported molasses along the East Coast following the same route that captains before him had traveled since the early 1600s. For three centuries, the molasses trade had been a vital part of the American and the New England economy, as important as fishing or textiles, and a critical component in the country’s political and social development.
This dark-brown viscous liquid, a by-product in the processing of sugar cane, played a major role in some of the biggest events in American history: in the colonial discontent that led directly to the Revolution; in the introduction of slavery to the New World and, thus, the Civil War; in the growth of rum and liquor distilleries throughout the United States, and the resulting Prohibition movement; and in ensuring the superiority of Allied firepower that would eventually lead to victory in the First World War. It all started in Boston and New England.
“Our orders are that you embrace the first fair wind and make the best of your way to the coast of Africa, and there invest your cargo in slaves.” According to historian James Pope-Hennessy, these were instructions issued to a ship’s master, not in the Deep South, but in Salem, Massachusetts. It was from Salem, as well as from Boston, Newport, and Bristol, Rhode Island, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and New London, Connecticut, that the slaving ships set sail for the coast of West Africa, their holds laden with barrels of rum. Once they arrived, they traded the rum to African coast merchants in exchange for black slaves, whom they sold, in turn, in the West Indies for local products—most notably, molasses. These ships then transported molasses to New England to be used as a cheap sugar substitute, and to distill into rum. The cycle then began all over again. The “Triangle Trade” was born and became the backbone of New England’s economy and prosperity before the American Revolution.
The first American-built vessel to carry slaves was the Desire, sailing out of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1638, and the trade continued to enrich New England merchants for nearly two centuries. One historian said it was probably “not an exaggeration to say that the slave trade was the lubricating oil that kept the machinery of the colonial New England economy moving smoothly.” Another added: “Indeed, one of the grievances of white Southerners in the nineteenth century—probably even a covert grievance still to
day—was that the Yankees who had become so vociferously humanitarian over the evils of slavery were the direct descendants of the chief American traders in slaves.”
Up and down the West Coast of Africa, New England traders purchased slaves with rum made from molasses. Early records show that African men fetched 115 gallons of rum each and African women ninety-five gallons apiece. Most New England ships took their slaves to sell in the West Indies, many of whom were later sent to the colonies in America. Boston was by far the most important slaving port in the first half of the eighteenth century, and many of her leading merchants sent vessels to Guinea, on the African coast. New England merchants plunged into the rum trade with such enthusiasm that they often created a glut of rum on the Guinea Coast. This, in turn, created an overabundance of slaves in the West Indies, men and women shipped from Africa to the islands, as part of the “middle passage” of the slave trade.
To alleviate the excess, many slaves were imported into the Southern colonies to support the plantation system that had begun to spread throughout the region. By the early 1700s, the average Southern plantation covered more than seven hundred acres, and many of the Virginia and South Carolina plantations were much larger. Thus, the New England-Africa-West Indies triangle slave trade formed the genesis of the “peculiar institution” in the Southern colonies and states, a way of life which would tear the country apart and plunge it into Civil War a century and a half later.
Molasses was at the center of it all.
Beyond its role in the commercial distillation of rum, certainly its most important contribution to the colonial economy, molasses was a staple among families. A cheap sugar substitute, molasses is a by-product extracted during the sugar refining process. Sugar cane is crushed to remove the juice, which is then boiled to extract sugar. The remaining syrup, after the sugar has been crystallized, becomes known as “first molasses,” the sweetest variety. The leftover syrup from the second boiling is called second molasses—less sweet and cheaper—and the syrup remaining after the third extraction of sugar from sugar cane is known as “blackstrap molasses,” a dark, bittersweet, unpleasant-tasting liquid that was used in the production of industrial alcohol by USIA and other companies.
Colonists not only used molasses to produce their own beer and rum, they considered it a vital part of their diet. New Englanders made baked beans, brown bread, and pumpkin pie with it. The German communities in Pennsylvania used molasses in shoofly pie and pandowdy, a baked apple-and-spice dish. In colonial Carolina, molasses went by the name of “long sugar” and was said to “serve all the purposes of sugar, both in eating and drinking.” Historian John J. McCusker, in his comprehensive 1989 study of the molasses trade and rum production in the thirteen American colonies, points out that in the town of Colchester, Connecticut, at least one Thanksgiving celebration had to be delayed until additional molasses could be procured. During Christmas, molasses was the key ingredient in the traditional gingerbread. In the mid-1700s, each colonist was consuming about three quarts of molasses per year.
Molasses played an even greater role in the distilling industry. In 1750, there were twenty-five distilleries in Boston and about ten others in coastal towns around Massachusetts. By 1770, the number had grown to fifty-one across the colony, thirty-six of which were in Boston. Massachusetts produced more than 2 million gallons of rum, or more than 40 percent of the total distilled in North America. Another two dozen distilleries operated in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and all of them distilled molasses to produce rum. In 1770, New England imported fifteen times the amount of molasses that the colonies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire had imported a half-century earlier, mostly to support the burgeoning rum business. New England also exported thousands of gallons of molasses to other colonies and to Canada during this period, and cash from molasses trading helped the colonists repay their debt to England.
Molasses—whether for eating, for export in exchange for cash, or for use in rum production—had become an indispensable part of the Massachusetts and New England economy by the eve of the American Revolution.
Which is why, when Parliament renewed and enforced the Molasses Act of 1733 as the Sugar Act of 1764, colonists viewed it as a threat to their livelihoods and their lifestyles, and protested vehemently. The act imposed new or higher duties on sugar, textiles, molasses, and other goods from non-British territories and mandated that colonists could ship these goods only to English ports. This was the first law Parliament enacted specifically designed to raise revenue from the colonies, part of a broader effort to help reduce England’s national debt after the Seven Years’ War.
But angry colonists dubbed it “taxation without representation”—the first widespread use of the phrase—because their elected representatives sat in colonial legislatures and not in Parliament. Colonists began corresponding with each other and agreements were made in a number of cities not to import British goods. This set the stage for the stauncher, bolder resistance that followed over the next several years when Parliament imposed the Stamp Act and Tea Act. The colonists simmered, revolution was brewing, and the trade in molasses contributed decisively to both.
Years after the American Revolution, former President John Adams wrote to a friend: “I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American Independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes.”
A sharp drop in sugar prices following the Revolutionary War meant that molasses was used less as a sweetener, but it continued to provide the raw material for the Massachusetts rum and distilling businesses. Industrial alcohol became a significant part of the economy by the late 1800s. It was used in cleaning products, solvents, dyes, and lacquers, and companies like U.S. Industrial Alcohol relied on molasses to produce these products for a country whose economy was expanding and becoming more industrialized. The production of industrial alcohol from molasses continued steadily into the early 1900s, and then spiked dramatically just before and during the First World War, when munitions production soared.
By the time U.S. Industrial Alcohol built the tank on the Boston waterfront in 1915, by the time Frank Van Gelder, Isaac Gonzales, and George Layhe noticed its disquieting amount of leakage, molasses had developed deep and integral roots in the New England and Massachusetts economies, based on nearly three centuries of nautical and economic tradition.
Molasses was as much a part of the fabric of Boston’s history and personality as the Old North Church, the Common, and the fishing boats that departed the wharves for deeper Atlantic waters in the early morning darkness.
Boston, February 1917
Twelve days after Frank Van Gelder brought the Miliero into port and connected its discharge hoses to the molasses tank’s two-hundred-foot intake pipe, his crew pumped the last of the seven-hundred-thousand-gallon cargo from the ship’s hold.
The temperature had plummeted to 10 degrees below zero on the morning they arrived and had not warmed up much during their entire stay. The men were anxious to be on their way. They still had a stop to make in New York before turning southward toward the islands again. Pumping molasses was difficult with the air temperature so cold; under these conditions, it didn’t flow so much as crawl through the ship’s ten-inch-wide discharge hose and through the permanent pipeline that ran from the ship’s hose to the molasses tank. Van Gelder’s fingers stung like they had been cut with shards of glass and his feet were blocks of ice. His men had been shivering for a week, but there was no rushing the molasses. Van Gelder had seen it behave like it had a mind of its own. “Molasses is queer,” he had been known to say. “Sometimes you would get a molasses that was heavy. You would think you would have trouble with it, and it would pump all right. Other times you would have thin molasses and sometimes it wouldn’t pump good. You can’t explain the reason.”
This trip, the molasses had been finicky, almost reluctant, as though it did not want to leave the relatively warm confines of the ship’s hold only to be deposi
ted into the cold tank. When molasses left the islands, its temperature generally hovered between 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit; by the time it reached Boston, it usually had only dropped to between 65 and 70 degrees. Even this trip, when the temperatures were as cold as Van Gelder could ever remember, the molasses temperature hadn’t dropped below 52 degrees. The reason: Van Gelder and other captains followed the warm Gulf Stream northward. The molasses held its temperature for most of the trip—its thick consistency enabled it to hold its temperature better than water or oil anyway—and did not begin to cool until about twenty-four hours from port. That’s when the big molasses steamers veered toward shore. The frigid temperature had cooled this shipment more quickly than usual, and now the pumps strained and squealed as they forced the molasses toward the enormous storage tank that towered over the wharf.
While Van Gelder and his crew pumped molasses and smoked, stamping their feet and thrusting their hands into their armpits against the bone-chilling cold, USIA’s Isaac Gonzales bent over the connection adjacent to the tank to make sure the inflow hose was tight. He had been outside for the last twelve days, too, checking that the pumps worked properly, that no air was being sucked through any loose connections and into the inflow pipes, and that the small heater pump through which the main connector pipe ran operated effectively to warm the thick molasses flowing inside.
Even with the heater pump, this shipment of molasses seemed to have the consistency of wet sand. As Isaac straddled the pipe and gripped the flange to examine the bolts, he could almost hear the molasses shifting and slurping inside the pipe, could feel it wriggling inside, like a long thick worm inching toward its home.
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