Tom Rowe 1985
The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in Boston killed 21 and injured 150. Molasses was made into alcohol but also munitions, and was sent from this harbor storage tank to a processing plant in Cambridge by a pipeline. The company may have been racing against Prohibition, which was passed the following day and effective one year later. The 50ft tall tank had leaked since being built 4 yrs earlier, and multiple components were too weak even by the standards of the time. Fermentation in the tank may have increased the pressure, as did a rapid increase in temperature caused by warm January weather and by a new shipment filling up the tank. 13,000 tons of molasses burst from a storage tank and flowed at 35 mph through the streets.
Oh, the African man cuts the sugar cane (Oh, molasses!)
He works in the sun and he works in the rain (Oh, molasses rum!)
Then he loads it up on a wooden ship
and he sends it off on a northern trip
Chorus:
Singing, oh molasses, oh molasses rum
Oh, molasses Old New England tea
It killed my grandpa, killed my pa
And it sure as Hell is killing me
Singing, oh molasses, oh molasses rum
When they fought the war for the colonies
They fought it over New England tea
When Old King George put a tax on it
the colonies nearly took a fit
In the time of the 1917 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 42
Molasses vat split clean in two
Two million gallons covered the bay,
26 people drowned in the flood that day
My grandpa he died cutting cane
My pa went down in the great brown rain
But I won’t go in a pool of blood,
no I won’t drown in a black-strap flood
Still, I’ll go down to molasses, oh molasses rum