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The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

On Jan. 15, 1919, an enormous molasses storage tank burst in Boston’s North End, and a 25-foot-high molasses flood surged through the streets at 35 miles per hour.

The molasses flood covered one of the densest commercial sections of Boston, with a busy port and a railway terminal.

In the end, the sugary tsunami killed 21 people, including 17 workers, and injured 150. It took months to clean up and recover all the victims. The molasses disaster also resulted in a lawsuit that set the stage for increased government regulation of corporations.

The Boston elevated twisted into new shapes after the molasses flood. Unknown author, Public Domain.

Molasses Flood

The tank, 50 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, contained 2.3 million gallons of molasses originally destined for use in a munitions plant.

The tank, though only a few years old, seemed shaky. People who lived and worked in the North End said the tank shuddered and groaned when the company filled it.

Shortly after noon, the tank collapsed with a thunderous roar. The ground shook, and witnesses said the rivets popping out of the tank sounded like machine gun fire.

The deadly ooze damaged the Boston Elevated Railway on Atlantic Avenue. It then tipped over a rail car and knocked buildings off their foundations. The molasses surge picked up a truck and threw it into Boston Harbor.

A small boy named Anthony di Stasio got caught in the molasses flood. According to a 1983 article in Smithsonian,

Anthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. He heard his mother call his name and couldn’t answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his four sisters staring at him.

Inside the Boston and Worcester freight terminal, the river of molasses poured through the doors and windows. It killed workers like trapped animals.

While outside, the wall of goo trapped some unlucky victims, hurled some into the air, flung some against freight cars and smothered still others.

Rescue and Recovery

The molasses was waist deep in the streets, and covered struggling forms trying to escape the sticky mass. People couldn’t tell the difference between men, women, children or horses. The more they struggled, the more the molasses ensnared them.

Over a hundred cadets from the training ship USS Nantucket, docked nearby, ran to the scene to rescue victims and keep onlookers away from danger. Then the Boston police, US Army soldiers and Red Cross personnel arrived and tried to make their way through the syrup to help those caught in it. Doctors and nurses set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building. Rescuers spent the next four days searching for victims. Finally, they gave up.

Months later, casualties of the molasses disaster washed up from Boston Harbor.

Hundreds of people helped the cleanup effort, and they tracked molasses all over the city. For months it seemed that anything a Bostonian touched was sticky: pay phones, T seats, sidewalks and subway platforms. The molasses even made its way into private homes, and some said it got tracked as far as Worcester. The harbor didn’t lose its brown tinge until summer.

Section of tank after molasses disaster explosion. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Wet Brown Hell

The Boston Evening Globe reported the boiling sludge buried scores of people inside ruined buildings, killing some and badly injuring others.

Fragments of the great tank were thrown into the air, buildings in the neighborhood began to crumple up as though the underpinnings had been pulled away from under them…

The explosion came without the slightest warning. The workmen were at their noontime meal, some eating in the building or just outside, and many of the men in the Department of Public Works Buildings and stables, which are close by, and where many were injured badly, were away at lunch.

The Globe then reported no one had a chance to escape once they heard the low, rumbling sound. Buildings seemed to crinkle as though made of pasteboard.

In the aftermath, local residents filed a class-action suit against the company, Purity Distilling Company. Purity claimed anarchists blew up the tank, but investigators found it was poorly constructed and never tested for safety. When filled, it leaked molasses. So the company painted it brown to hide the leaks. Neighborhood children brought pails to the tank and filled them with leaking molasses.

Cutting the tank with acetylene torch 3 days after the disaster. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Cutting the tank with acetylene torch 3 days after the molasses flood. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The lawsuit resulted in Purity paying $628,000 in damages, including $7,000 each to the families of victims. The trial set a precedent for expert witnesses, as engineers, metallurgists and architects testified. The molasses disaster also improved the government’s oversight of corporations. According to Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 2019 :

All the things we now take for granted in the business, that architects need to show their work, that engineers need to sign and seal their plans, that building inspectors need to come out and look at a project — all of that comes about as a result of the great Boston molasses flood case.

What Caused the Molasses Flood?

Nearly 100 years later, a new study found the cause of the molasses disaster: steel too thin and brittle to withstand the pressure of 2.3 million gallons of molasses. Ronald Mayville, a structural and metallurgical engineer, wrote in Civil and Structural Engineer Magazine that the steel was 50 percent too thin. Engineers should have known that in 1919, he wrote.

They didn’t know then that the steel didn’t contain enough manganese, which made it more likely to crack. The Titanic also used the same kind of steel.

For many years, North End residents said they smelled molasses on hot summer days.

And in 2016, Harvard University scientists concluded the molasses disaster would have killed fewer people had it happened in the summer. They figured the winter air cooled and then thickened the goo, making it harder to rescue victims.

With thanks to Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo. This story about the Boston molasses flood was updated in 2026. Featured image colorized by Chat GPT. Image of the tank before it ruptured: By The Bostonian Society – Acorns and Molasses, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45094389.

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How the Great Colchester Molasses Shortage Nearly Ruined Thanksgiving

Molasses played such a starring role in the colonial New England Thanksgiving that a shortage of it in 1705 forced Colchester, Conn., to postpone the holiday for a week.

That first Thanksgiving

The weather turned unusually frigid for the Connecticut Valley town that fall. In mid-October a terrible cold snap lasted for three days, followed by mild weather, and then a blast of even colder weather.

The river froze, a frigid wind blew and a storm blanketed Colchester under three feet of snow. Because the river rarely froze so early, the settlers hadn’t laid in winter provisions usually shipped from Norwich and New London.

Colchester then had only a handful of families. Founded in 1698 on land purchased from the Mohegan tribe, it was the northernmost town in the colony of New London. The settlers had only established the parish two years before that cold autumn, and they wouldn’t lay out streets until the next year.

Colchester relied on boats to deliver supplies along a tributary of the Connecticut River, 10 miles away.

Early Thanksgiving

In early New England, the Puritans replaced Roman Catholic feast days like Christmas and Easter with secular holidays like Training Day and Commencement Day. Thanksgiving days and Fast days had a religious purpose: to come together as a community for meditation and communing with God.

New England’s theocratic governments called for public days of fasting or thanksgiving in response to political or natural events. They could happen several times a year. And they were often local affairs.

In 1705, November 4 had been proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving. But as the day approached, Colchester had almost no molasses. Worse, nothing could be delivered on the frozen river to the settlement.

Why Molasses?

New England colonists used molasses imported from the West Indies because it didn’t cost as much as sugar. A byproduct of sugar refining, colonists used it in baked beans, brown bread and pumpkin pie. By 1750, colonists consumed an average of three quarts of molasses a year.

Blackstrap molasses

The English colonists had learned from the Native Americans about the pumpkin, called pompion, and adapted it to their own cuisine.

The pumpkin pie came to symbolize the New World bounty celebrated by Thanksgiving. By the time Colchester discovered its molasses shortage in 1705, pumpkin pie had been a well-established dessert for half a century.

Congregational Church, Colchester, Conn.

Pumpkins played such an important role in any feast that some 17^th-century Puritan ministers denounced them from the pulpit. They preached that Thanksgivings should be renamed ‘St. Pompion’s Day’ because of the gluttony they inspired.

But without molasses, the townsfolk of Colchester couldn’t make pumpkin pie. Nor could they have baked beans, molasses cake or sweetener for rum. The bottom line: No molasses, no Thanksgiving.

A Food Legend

And so Colchester’s town fathers postponed Thanksgiving because they couldn’t hold it “with convenience” on November 4. The Colchester town records describe how they came to solve the problem:

At a legal town-meeting held in Colchester, October 29, 1705, It was voted that WHEREAS there was a Thanksgiving appointed to be held on the first Thursday n November, and our present circumstances being such that it cannot with convenience be attended on that day, it is therefore voted and agreed by the inhabitants as aforesaid (concluding the thing will not be otherwise than well resented) that the second Thursday of November aforesaid shall be set aside for that service.

The tale of the Great Colchester Molasses Shortage became a food legend. Two centuries later, Rose Mills Powers wrote a poem about it for the July 1908 edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine:

Colchester housewives are glum and sad—
Colchester housewives who should be glad—
Baking and brewing for Thanksgiving day.
What is the trouble up Colchester way?
Answer the housewives with streaming eyes,
“No molasses for pumpkin pies!”
The sloop that fetches the precious freight,
Thanksgiving molasses, is late, is late,
And how can Colchester celebrate!

Colchester housewives are gay and glad—
Colchester housewives bake like mad.
No feast decreed by the governor, this,
But Colchester colonists shall not miss
Their dinner, though late by a week and a day—
The sloop’s in the harbor—Hurray! Hurray!
Thanksgiving molasses for all the town,
For pies of pumpkin so rich and brown;
Colchester folk at last sit down.

* * *

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society. Available as an ebook or in paperback from Amazon (click here).

This story was updated in 2025.

Image: Blackstrap molasses by By Badagnani – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4129522. Featured image of woman created by ChatGPT.

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How the South Hadley Canal Launched America’s Commercial Waterway Era

South Hadley, Mass., about 90 miles west of Boston on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River, was once the site of the first commercially navigable canal in the United States. Built in the late 18th century, the South Hadley Canal stimulated the expansion of the western Massachusetts economy in the early decades of the 19th century.

Westward Expansion

After English settlers arrived in Plymouth Colony in 1620 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1629/30), further arrivals from both areas began to migrate to Windsor (1633) and Hartford (1638) in Connecticut Colony. Motivated by a desire for fertile land and the fur trade, settlers then continued to push northward along the Connecticut River. Along the way they established several agricultural communities in the 17^th and 18^th centuries that included South Hadley and Montague in Massachusetts.

View of South Hadley from Mt. Holyoke

By 1790 these settlements had established trading relationships with regional and international markets as they moved away from subsistence economies. The principal exports of the settlers included agricultural goods (e.g., corn, grains), lumber, potash (e.g., for soap), and locally manufactured goods (e.g., brooms and tools). The settlers mainly sent their products to Hartford for transshipment to New York, Boston and Caribbean ports. In exchange the settlers received manufactured goods (e.g., textiles), some Hudson River goods (e.g., bricks) and West Indies commodities (e.g., molasses and coffee). However, as these exports moved down the southward flowing river by flatboat they encountered the Enfield Rapids above Hartford. This required goods to be unloaded and carried overland around the rapids and reloaded again. Not until 1829 did the Enfield Canal /Windsor Locks canal open to remove this obstacle.

Map of South Hadley and environs, with the canal circled in green

Meanwhile, as goods moved upriver the flatboats had to confront a series of falls, beginning around South Hadley. That required a similar offloading of goods before resuming river travel. A group of investors, named “The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on the Connecticut River,” sensed the area above South Hadley was sufficiently developed for further commercial gain. They therefore obtained a charter in 1792 to build canals at South Hadley and Turners Falls. Stock shares to local and Dutch investors would privately finance both canals.

Building the South Hadley Canal

Builders of the South Hadley Canal faced the daunting task of getting through hard rock terrain to bypass a 53- to 58-foot drop in the falls and its rapids over a 2.5 mile distance. They created a dam in the upstream end of the canal that allowed water to flow from the river into the canal to ensure navigation. To get the flatboats into the canal at the downstream (southern) end, they constructed an ingenious incline plane. Chains powered by two large waterwheels hauled the flatboats in a specialized cart up its ramp, 275 feet long and 20 feet wide. In less than 20 minutes, the cart discharged the flatboats into the canal. As returning flatboats arrived at the incline plane, the process of getting the flatboats back in the river was reversed.

Inclined plane used in the South Hadley Canal

Despite the difficulties, the canal was built in about three years. It opened on April 16, 1795, the first commercially navigable canal in the United States. It could accommodate flatboats that measured 16 feet long and 40 feet wide. Revenue came from the tolls and, increasingly over time, from the sale of water rights for individual usage. In 1805, various locks replaced the incline plane as the canal was deepened. The first year of operation yielded only $3,109 in revenue. Nonetheless, the canal made a profit, especially after the first steamboat (The Barnet) began towing flatboats in the canal in 1826. It remained profitable until 1847 when railroads began offering a cheaper alternative for freight traffic. Still, the canal continued in operation until it closed in 1862.

A Sister to the South Hadley Canal

In 1794 some of the original investors who had signed the 1792 charter decided to form “The Proprietors of the Upper Locks and Canals on the Connecticut River.” They intended to build the Turners Falls (Montague) Canal, roughly 25 miles north of the South Hadley Canal. The investors felt that they needed separate funds for this difficult undertaking. The Turners Falls Canal was also about 2.5 miles long and 20 feet wide. It opened in 1798 with 10 locks, an impressive achievement that bypassed the “Great Falls” and its rapids. It alsobecame the second commercially navigable canal on the Connecticut River. The canal made a profit until, like the South Hadley Canal, the railroads began to take over its freight business. It closed for navigation in 1856.

Not only did these canals open up a cheaper and more efficient way to transport goods to wider markets, but they also stimulated industrial activity. At first, both canals powered grist and sawmills through water rights. However, only the South Hadley Canal would later grant water rights for larger paper and textile mills.

As the first commercially navigable canals, they also inspired the opening of canals in Vermont. These were canals at Bellows Falls (1802), Sumner Falls (1810) and White Pine/Wilder Falls/Olcott Falls (1811). Thus, the South Hadley Canal – along with the others on the Connecticut River – demonstrated that major river obstacles could be successfully overcome for economic advancement.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena University near Albany, N.Y.

Images: Seal of the proprietors By Holyoke Water Power Company – Canal Park Committee Records, Digital Commonwealth, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79954851. Featured image created by ChatGPT. South Hadley Detroit Publishing Co., Publisher, and Copyright Claimant Detroit Publishing Co. South from Mt. Holyoke, South Hadley. Massachusetts United States South Hadley, ca. 1900. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016794237/.

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From Sugar Houses to the Sugar Trust: Boston’s Candy-Colored History

Colonial Boston had a sweet tooth, and sugar played an important part of the local economy during that time. Dozens if not hundreds of Boston artisans worked as independent sugar refiners inside sugar houses. These entrepreneurs, called sugar bakers, supplied coffee houses and tea rooms. Over time, they made Boston the center of candy making. Later, larger refineries were built and belonged to a powerful cartel in the 1880s.

Sugars (clockwise from top-left): white refined, unrefined, brown, unprocessed cane sugar

Early Sugar Bakers

Before the era of industrial refining, sugar was processed by small businesses called sugar bakeries. Boston had many of them. The early method of processing sugar involved boiling it in large copper pots called “coppers.” Sometimes sugar bakers used four or five pots in different phases of production. It was a thriving business.

Merchants like John Hancock imported raw sugar from the West Indies, where slave plantations grew sugar cane. Boston had a robust trade with them–part of the “triangular trade.”

The transatlantic triangle trade began with Europeans trading manufactured goods for enslaved people in Africa. Those captives were shipped to work on West Indian sugar plantations. New England merchants then supplied the plantations with commodities like dried fish and lumber, returning to North America with molasses and raw sugar. Notably, French and Dutch Caribbean sugar (from islands like Martinique and Saint-Domingue) was cheaper than sugar from the British West Indies.

In 1764, the Crown levied a tax on the importation of sugar and molasses from the non-British sources in the West Indies. Hancock criticized the tax, and the next year he entered politics by winning election as a Boston selectman. The sugar bakers likely supported Hancock.

Boston Sugar Houses

Ezekiel Cheever (1720-1793), an early Boston sugar baker, had a role in the American Revolution. Born in Charlestown, a descendant of Ezekiel Cheever, the colonial schoolmaster, he was appointed to protect the Boston Tea Party participants in 1773. During the war he worked closely with Gen. Henry Knox as Commissary of Artillery Stores (ordnance equipment). He was buried in Granary Burial Ground in 1793. Ezekiel’s brief biography can be found at the Charlestown Preservation Society.

There must have been several Ezekiels in the sugar business during that time! “How Sweet it is! A History of Sugar and Sugar Refining in the U.S.” by Virginia Mescher, states that Boston tax rolls show an Ezechiel Cheever, sugar refinery, in Charlestown from 1721-1766.

The book “Crooked & Narrow Streets of Boston 1630-1822,” by Annie Haven Thwing, mentions several sugar businesses such as that of Thomas Child, distiller and sugar baker at the corner of Essex and Kingston Streets in the 1730’s. “Opposite Franklin Ave was the sugar house of James Smith & James Murray which was used for Barracks by the British during the Siege,” she wrote.

Sugar bakers used a multi-step process to produce refined white sugar. Raw sugar from the sugar cane was purchased from Cuba. First it had to be washed to remove the molasses (which was sold for the rum trade), then crystallized, dried and formed into cone shaped “loaves.”

A sugarloaf

Boston’s many sugar houses spawned new businesses. In 1764, Dr. James Baker and Irish chocolatier John Hannon started the first chocolate factory in America. Their water-powered gristmill on the Neponset River became the Baker’s Chocolate Company. The Schrafft Candy Co. in 1861 introduced jelly beans and urged customers to send them to Civil War soldiers. Later, the company made boxed chocolates and started a chain of restaurants.

Sugar Refineries

Although independent sugar bakers continued to exist for several decades, larger refineries began to appear in the 1830s. The Boston Sugar Refinery was established on Lewis Street between Webster and Sumner in East Boston in 1834. Powered by a steam engine, it employed 80 people. This boiling and drying process was on a much larger scale than in colonial days. Later, South Boston’s Charles Hersey patented a drying machine called a granulator in 1871. The invention led to Boston’s success as a candy maker. You may remember Necco (New England Candy Co) wafers, Mary Janes and Squirrel Nut Zippers–all made in the Boston area.

The East Boston directory of 1852 listed 41 sugar bakers, most of them on Sumner or Everett Street. Many of them also appear in the 1850 census of East Boston where 38 sugar bakers, all born in Germany, lived at the same address. These men probably worked in one of the larger refineries and lived in nearby factory housing.

The Sugar Trust

In 1887 the Boston Refinery belonged to the Sugar Trust, a monopoly that took advantage of protective tariffs to control the market. Henry O. Havemeyer, a third-generation sugar refiner, formed the trust. Comprised of 17 mostly East Coast sugar refineries, it included four in Boston. The Sugar Trust had a 98 percent monopoly and was highly controversial for its predatory pricing, political influence and fraud. It even won a Supreme Court case in 1895. The high court ruled that the Trust did not violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which prohibited monopolies in trade and commerce. Thus, this sugar monopoly survived because the court considered refining a local activity and not subject to interstate commerce regulations.

Political cartoon showing an old woman labeled “Monopoly Tariff” sitting next to an old shoe labeled “Special Privilege”, around which a number of children are playing; they all represent a “Trust” and include the Sugar Trust.

Boston’s Edwin F. Atkins (1850-1926) was involved in the Sugar Trust and served as vice president and president after Havemeyer’s death in 1907. Atkins, a Boston businessman, managed Cuban sugar purchases for his family business, and he also managed the Bay State Sugar Refining Company. A 2023 Boston Globe article called him “The Sugar Baron of Boston”.

Another Bostonian, John Perrin Spaulding (1832 -1896), also had a role in the Sugar Trust. He had established the Revere Sugar Refinery in 1871 in Charlestown. Spaulding was also a philanthropist, an early benefactor of Helen Keller, and was known throughout Boston as the Sugar King. His Revere Refinery initially remained independent of the Sugar Trust, but Boston-based United Fruit (now Chiquita Brands International) absorbed and finally acquired the business.

The Revere Sugar Refinery.

Enter Domino

The Sugar Trust evolved into the American Sugar Refining Company. It then dominated the United States sugar industry for much of the 20^th century, and Domino became one of its brands.

By 1960 American Sugar Refining Company built a new plant in Charlestown to replace the one in South Boston. According to the Boston Globe in April 1961, “Commencing today, the American Sugar Refining Company rededicates itself to a brand-new era of service to Domino’s friends throughout Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all of New England.”

The Domino brand has since gone through many ownership changes, but you can still find that familiar yellow-and-white bag of sugar on grocery shelves.

Images: Sugarloaf By Petr Adam Dohnálek – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14669401. Kinds of sugar, By Romain Behar – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1219848. Boston Gazette ad By Boston Gazette – Boston Gazette, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12128308. And Puck cartoon Pughe, J. S. , Artist. Special privilege / J.S. Pughe. , 1908. N.Y.: J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2011647293/. Featured image illustration by Chat GPT>

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Seven Fun Facts About New England Schooners, the Forgotten Workhorses of the Sea

When Andrew Robinson in 1713 sailed his new boat around Gloucester, Mass., someone watching exclaimed, “There she scoons!” It’s a Scottish word meaning to skip lightly across the water, as a pebble, and it gave the name to the iconic New England sailing vessel, the schooner.

Though Robinson’s schooner may not have been the first-ever schooner, it was the first of Gloucester’s famous fishing fleet. The light, sturdy vessels that moved like scalded cats originated in New England in the early part of the 1700s. They evolved from the large ketches used by the Dutch a century or two earlier. Shipbuilders started adding topsails and making the aft mast taller — hence, the schooner.

Ships, Riding Low at Anchor, byt the Dutch painter Willem van de Velde the Younger, ca. 1670s

The schooner was that rare commodity that met the criteria “fast, cheap and good.” Schooners were seaworthy, durable and relatively cheap to build. They required only a dozen or so crew and could be adapted to many uses. Offshore fishermen depended on schooners, as did West Indies traders, Civil War blockade runners, pirates of the Caribbean, lumber and coal merchants, slavers evading the law and the Continental Navy.

The Schooner as Workhorse

With their iconic silhouette — sweeping masts, graceful lines and billowing sails — schooners were masterpieces of shipbuilding. Sailors of the Age of Sail often called them ‘the most beautiful thing ever made by man,’ a testament to their marriage of form and function.

But above all, they worked. Schooners were the 18-wheelers of their age—the salt-freight carriers of global commerce. They hauled the raw materials of an industrializing world: coal from Pennsylvania, spruce and pine from Maine, guano from Peru.

Schooners carried granite for East Coast roads and bridges, coffee from Brazil, African mahogany for fine furniture. They brought molasses north for rum, ice south for tropical cocktails and even entire pre-cut houses to the West Indies.

Specialized schooners emerged like tradesmen — white-painted ‘fruit schooners’ racing bananas from the Caribbean, clipper ships moving prospectors and gold rush supplies to California, fishing schooners without bowsprits for the fishermen’s safety.

Most were made in New England. Their stories could fill volumes, but here is a taste — seven fun facts about the New England schooner.

1. The schooner Wyoming was the largest wooden ship ever built.

The Wyoming put paid to the notion that bigger is always better. She was a giant, a football field-and-a-quarter long with six masts.

Built in 1909, its massive size and wooden hull proved troublesome. But she was too long for her bones. The sea twisted her planks apart and sailors had to pump out the seawater that constantly leaked in.

The Wyoming met her tragic end in March, 1924, when she anchored off Chatham, Mass., to weather a nor’easter. The ship, loaded with coal, sank east of the Pollock Rip Lightship, and all 13 crew members lost their lives.

Schooner Wyoming, 1917

The wreck remained undiscovered until 2003, when the American Underwater Search and Survey Company of Cataumet, Mass., found her. The Wyoming had shattered amidship, leading investigators to believe she struck the seabed and broke apart. Out of respect for the sailors lost, the exact location of the wreck has not been publicly disclosed.

Today there is a sculpture representing the Wyoming at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, site of the Percy & Small shipyard where the ship was built.

2. There were a lot of them.

No one seems to have come up with a count of how many schooners plied the seas in their heyday. But some random numbers provide a sense of their ubiquity:

Before the American Revolution, 500 schooners sailed from Connecticut to the West Indies. Most would have been built in Essex and the lower Connecticut River Valley — in Deep River, Chester, Old Saybrook, Lyme and Old Lyme. Stately old homes in those towns testifies to the wealth created by shipbuilding and trade.

Schooners crowded on a wharf in Boston Harbor

Between 1789 and 1936, over 4,000 schooners were registered in Connecticut Customs Districts.
Gloucester’s fishing fleet alone had more than 400 schooners by the 1880s. As many as 500 schooners showed up in the harbor during that time. From 1830 to 1900, the golden age of the Gloucester schooner, 3,800 Gloucester fishermen and 670 schooners were lost at sea.

3. Essex, Mass., and Maine dominated New England’s schooner business.

Though shipyards produced wooden boats throughout New England, two places made most of them: Essex, Mass., and Maine.

Essex built more schooners than any other city or town – 4,000 of them. Located just west of Gloucester, its shipyards filled the fishing fleet’s insatiable need for schooners.

Up north in Maine, shipyards built more than 4,000 schooners. Of all the vessels built on the East Coast between 1870 and 1899, half of the three-masted schooners came from Maine. Maine shipyards made another 71 percent of the four-masted schooners, 95 percent of the five-masted schooners and 90 percent of the six-mast schooners.

Today, shipbuilding in Maine happens at the Bath Iron Works.

4. The most famous American schooner was the America.

America defeated 15 British yachts in a race around the Isle of Wight on Aug. 22, 1851. That started the oldest international sailing competition, named after the winner.

She was very much an upstart. Rich New York yachtsmen built her to win races. Her revolutionary design influenced yacht racing for decades.

According to Sailing World, she was low to the water and widest far forward of other racing yachts. She had at most four sails, which let a small crew execute maneuvers quickly. Her masts were raked dramatically, her sails were made of tightly woven duck and her lead ballast was molded to the shape of the hull. For racing, her crew could fit her out with a tiller, more responsive than a wheel.

America

Her owners sold her immediately after winning the race. She changed hands several times until her owner abandoned her in a mudflat at Cowes, a seaport on the Isle of Wight. A shipwright restored her and sold her to a mystery buyer, who apparently gave it to the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. The Union captured her and used her in blockades. A controversial Massachusetts politicians named Benjamin Bulter then bought her in 1873 and restored her again. When Butler died in 1893, a group of Boston yachtsmen bought her and moved her to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Neglected, the once-proud America’s Cup winner ended up in the Annapolis city dump.

5. When steam eclipsed sail, schooners became windjammers.

In the 1930s, a man named Frank Swift of Bucksport, Maine, came up with an idea: Why not turn aging cargo schooners into dude schooners for tourists?

He began chartering schooners for summer sailing trips with campers. Then he chartered a small schooner called Mabel and took out ads for “Vacations under sail” in urban newspapers. By 1938 he had a fleet of three dude schooners, renamed windjammers. He sailed out of Camden, Maine, giving the town bragging rights as “the Windjammer Capital of the World.”

Victory Chimes

In 1954, Maine investors bought the Edwin and Maude, a schooner that had hauled cargo in the Chesapeake Bay. They renamed her Victory Chimes and repurposed her as a windjammer.

In 1984, Thomas Monaghan of Domino’s Pizza bought her and called her Domino Effect. In 1988, he refitted – and saved – her, using original techniques. She returned to Maine in 1989 and got her old name back.

Today, Victory Chimes appears as the windjammer on the back of the Maine state quarter.

6. The best schooner sailors come from Deer Isle, Maine.

Fishermen on Deer Isle today learn boathandling skills at an early age, and it isn’t unusual for a 10-year-old to have a boat. Back in the day, it was said, anyone who showed up at the New York Yacht Club and said he was from Deer Isle had a job crewing on a yacht.

Deer Isle seamen didn’t fish, though. The “Deer Isle Boys” went under sail to all parts of the world as professional mariners. Their reputation led to the New York Yacht Club recruiting crews from Deer Isle for America’s Cup races.

Lewis R. French

7. Many continued well into the 20^th century.

Schooners hauled commodities like wood, coal, fertilizer and grain until World War II.

During the war, the U.S. Navy bought the schooner Metha Nelson from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which used it for filming. The Navy had her converted and placed her into service in September 1943. Her job: to identify all ships trafficking in and out of Los Angeles.

In Gloucester, some fishermen still worked under sail power until 1960.

The Lewis R. French, launched in 1871 in Bristol Cove, Maine, hauled coal and lumber to her homeport of Vinalhaven, Maine. Then she hauled canning supplies to the sardine factories along coastal Maine – until 1972, still with no engine.

Image of Lewis R. French: By Raphodon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7424995

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The Story of Unfortunate Hannah Robinson

This story about Unfortunate Hannah Robinson is an excerpt from the New England Historical Society’s book, “Love Stories From History.”

In the years just before the American Revolution, Rowland Robinson could be seen galloping on his black stallion across his vast estate in Saunderstown, Rhode Island Colony. Tall, good-looking and an excellent horseman, Rowland often rode out to check on his property. He owned several flocks of sheep, dozens of Narragansett Pacers, grainfields, a herd of cattle, cheese houses, barns and slave quarters.

Detail from mural in Wakefield, R.I., “South County Life in the Days of the Narragansett Planters”

Rowland had a violent temper, an impulsive nature and some decided peculiarities. He liked to count his prized blanket cows, pure white from shoulder to hip. He wanted exactly one hundred of them in his herd, and he took pains to raise or buy exactly that number. Rowland always managed to keep ninety-nine. But once they reached a hundred, one would die or wander off, leaving him in constant pursuit of his hundredth cow.

One of the Eleven

He was a Narragansett planter, one of The Eleven. They were eleven wealthy families who owned vast Rhode Island slave plantations more like Virgina than New England. They were Updikes, Hazards, Babcocks, Gardiners. And they often married each other. Rowland himself had wed a Gardiner, Anistis.

He inherited the plantation from his father, William, the deputy governor of the colony. He had improved on it for his own children. Rowland wanted the best for them. They ate on silver porringers, sat on mahogany chairs and dressed in brocades and silks. He sent his daughters, Hannah and Mary, to Madame Osborne’s school in Newport. Madame Osborne would prepare them for balls and assemblies and, ultimately, a worthy husband.

Rowland’s oldest daughter, Hannah, was considered one of the great beauties of her age. Her loveliness was celebrated across the Atlantic and wherever New England ship captains sailed. She was tall and graceful, with a Grecian profile, a flawless complexion, hazel eyes and dark auburn hair that fell in luxurious ringlets. She could marry anyone—anyone Rowland wanted her. to marry.

Unfortunately, Hannah fell in love with a suitor Rowland hated. Her romance would drive a wedge between father and daughter and end in tragedy.

Wonderfully Beautiful Hannah Robinson

One day an old Quaker preacher saw Hannah and blurted out “Friend, thou art wonderfully beautiful.”

But Hannah wasn’t just beautiful; she was pleasant to people and kind to animals. A skilled horsewoman, she loved to ride her Narragansett Pacer. Sometimes she’d stop to sit on a rock overlooking the bay and watch the sails skimming along in the distance. She could see the forest of masts rising from Newport Harbor, the ships carrying her father’s cheeses to Boston and his horses and oats to the West Indies. Ships would arrive with molasses from the Sugar Islands and leave for Europe with good Rhode Island rum.

View of Newport Harbor, 1730. Courtesy Library of Congress

Sometimes Hannah was joined on the rock by a young man who taught dancing and French at Madame Osborne’s. His name was Peter Simons. Hannah had fallen deeply, madly in love with him. Sitting by the rock he would pick a little yellow wildflower called Everlasting Life. “They should call it Everlasting Love,” Peter said as he handed the flower to her.

His real name was Pierre Simonds. He came from an old Huguenot family that fled persecution in France. He had little money but exquisite manners, and he lived with his father in a house in Newport. Hannah knew her father would hate him. She feared Rowland’s rash temper, and she knew he never changed his mind once he made it up.

Crazy Harry Falls in Love

Rowland would have preferred as a son-in-law William Bowen, a young Providence doctor who had graduated from Yale. He was infatuated with Hannah. But when William asked Hannah to marry him, she let him down gently, confiding she was engaged to someone else.

Rowland once asked the military hero Colonel Harry Babcock to spend the night at his home. “So you want me to see Hannah, that I’ve heard so much of, do you?” replied Babcock. “Well, I will go, but don’t expect me to fall in love with her, as so many fools have done.”

The colonel was nicknamed Crazy Harry. As he and Rowland entered the sitting room, the colonel said loudly that he looked forward to seeing the prettiest woman in Rhode Island.

Hannah was in the room sewing. She stood to welcome her father and his guest. Her father introduced Babcock, and she extended her hand. He gently took it, gazed into her face and fell to his knee. Softly the colonel said, “Permit, dear madam, the lips that have kissed unrebuked those of the proudest queen of earth, to press, for a moment, the hand of an angel from heaven.”

Crazy Harry had no more luck with Hannah than William Bowen had.

Rowland began to grow suspicious. He didn’t understand why his daughter rejected so many suitors. Everyone else knew, but they wouldn’t tell him.

Courtship

In Newport, Hannah and Peter had many opportunities to spend time in each other’s company. But the time came for Hannah to leave Madame Osborne’s, return home and find a husband.

The lovers then had a stroke of luck. Hannah’s uncle, William Gardiner, hired Peter to tutor his children. The Gardiner plantation adjoined the Robinson farm, and their manor houses stood just two miles from each other. Hannah began to find reasons to call on her cousins. Hannah’s uncle sympathized with his niece, and he didn’t tell Rowland about her visits. He even encouraged them.

Hannah’s mother, Anstis, noticed her daughter’s frequent visits to her brother’s house. She asked Hannah about them. Hannah admitted she was seeing Peter. Anstis didn’t approve, and she tried for months to discourage her daughter’s relationship with him. But she finally realized Hannah was as stubborn as Rowland, so she reluctantly consented to the match.

Peter began to visit Hannah secretly at the Robinsons’ imposing manor house. It measured more than a hundred feet from end to end, with a massive center chimney and a steep gambrel roof. The Robinsons entertained often, and the dining room could accommodate a crowd. Hannah’s large bedchamber was above the dining room. In the evenings she put a signal light in her window, and Peter hid in the lilac bushes below. The lovers would then talk to each other and exchange messages.

The stratagem worked so well that Peter dared to come into the house. Up the stairway he crept and into Hannah’s room. But every night, Rowland came to her bedchamber to bid her goodnight. When the lovers heard his tread in the hallway, Peter hid in a large cupboard built into the wall.

Wretched Dancing Master

One night, Rowland Robinson unexpectedly stepped out of the front door. He was surprised to see a white paper flutter from Hannah’s window down onto the lilacs. He went over to the bush and raised his blackthorn stick. Peter jumped out of the bushes and ran away in the night. But Rowland recognized the young music teacher who worked for his brother-in-law.

Rowland was livid. He stormed into his daughter’s room and upbraided her for throwing herself away on a wretched French dancing master. Couldn’t she see the scoundrel was a fortune-seeker who only wanted her money? he thundered. He railed and ranted at his daughter, but she didn’t say a word.

From then on Rowland kept Hannah under close surveillance. He never let her go anywhere alone. If she walked, she was watched. If she rode her horse, a servant accompanied her. And if she thought about calling on a neighbor, Rowland immediately grew suspicious and forbade her to go, or else he followed her and brought her home. One day she left to visit an aunt in New London. Rowland saw a vessel leaving Newport heading in that direction. He suspected the wretched French dancing master was aboard, intending to rendezvous with Hannah. He rushed off to New London himself, arriving only a few hours after Hannah did. Rowland then forced her to come home immediately.

Hannah’s family and neighbors couldn’t help but notice her misery. Sympathetic to her plight, they helped the lovers by carrying their letters to each other.

Soon after the incident with Rowland in the lilac bush, Peter left the Gardiners. He found a new position farther away in Narragansett. Sometimes months went by without the two lovers seeing each other. Hannah grew thin and her complexion lost its rosy tint.

Finally, Hannah concluded the only solution was to elope with Peter. She had a helpful new ally who could help her escape her father’s scrutiny: Her friend from Hartford, Miss Belden, had come to stay with the Gardiners. She and Hannah’s uncle agreed to help.

Hannah Robinson Elopes

The Narragansett planters entertained on a lavish scale, and it wasn’t unusual for them to send party invitations to Boston, Newport and Providence. One day, Hannah’s mother’s sister, Mrs. Lodowick Updike, invited the Robinsons to a ball at their home, known as Smith’s Castle. The Updikes were only one town away in North Kingstown, and they would have felt snubbed if no member of the Robinson family attended their ball.

Smith’s Castle

Reluctantly, Rowland agreed to let Hannah and her sister go, but under the watchful eye of his servant Prince. The sisters would ride horseback the eight miles to their aunt’s house and spend the night.

Miss Belden and Uncle William sent a message to Peter, and they laid plans for the elopement.

Anstis knew of the plan but did nothing to stop it. Hannah’s sister, Mary, was kept in the dark.

On the morning Hannah left, she bid goodbye to her cook and to her maid. She asked them to care for her little dog, Marcus, and her cat, Felis. Then she hugged her mother and said goodbye, sobbing. She knew she might never see her again.

Fortunately, Rowland had left the house an hour earlier, called away unexpectedly on business.

Mary, Hannah and Prince mounted their horses and headed toward North Kingstown. In a dense wood along the way, they met up with a closed carriage. Peter jumped out and helped Hannah into the carriage. Mary cried and begged her not to go. Prince pleaded with her, too, knowing how Rowland would punish him for letting Hannah escape.

Hannah asked Prince to take good care of her horse, and the carriage rumbled off to Providence.

Hannah Robinson in Newport

Peter had a sister who sent along some clothes for Hannah. They arrived in the city hours later and were married by an Episcopal minister visiting from London. Local ministers would not have risked Rowland’s wrath.

When Rowland learned of Hannah’s elopement, he was incandescent with rage. He was angry with Hannah, furious with Peter and seething toward their accomplices. He offered a large reward to anyone who told him who helped them elope. And he announced he would not give Hannah so much as a halfpenny.

The newlyweds moved in with Peter’s father in a fine old two-story house on Bridge Street in Newport. Hannah and Peter lived there for several months until Peter found a job in Providence. They then moved to a modest house in that city.

Father Knew Best

Unfortunately, Rowland Robinson was right about Peter Simons. He had just wanted Hannah for her money after all.

Once Rowland disinherited his daughter, Peter began to neglect her. He took up gambling, and he didn’t come home at night. Then he started to disappear for weeks.

Anstis sent Hannah’s brother, William, to Providence to check on her. William brought her clothes and her little dog, Marcus.

Heartbroken, neglected and poor, Hannah began to waste away. William told his mother about Hannah’s decline. One day he said Hannah was so sick she couldn’t leave her bed.

Anstis then persuaded Rowland to let her send Hannah’s maid to her. She also pleaded with him to relent and to go see his daughter. He refused. Anstis noticed, though, that he would come home and wander abstractedly through the house until he saw Felis, Hannah’s cat. He would sit quietly in the room with the creature. Once Anstis saw him holding Felis to his chest and sobbing.

Prince noticed Rowland visiting the stable more often than he used to. He always patted Hannah’s horse as he left.

An Unexpected Visitor

Finally, Rowland softened. He told Anstis if Hannah agreed to disclose the names of the people who helped her elope, she could come home. Informed of his offer, Hannah wrote him an affectionate letter but refused to reveal her conspirators.

Then one day Rowland jumped up from dinner and rode his horse thirty-five miles to Providence, stopping overnight at Lodowick Updike’s. He found Hannah’s little house and banged his cane against the door. Her maid answered.

Hannah was too sick to leave her bed, the maid said. Rowland told the maid to ask Hannah who had helped her elope. The maid returned with the message that Hannah wouldn’t tell. Rowland turned around and rode home.

Several days later he mounted his horse and rode to Providence. Again he knocked on the door, again he demanded to know who had helped Hannah elope. Again Hannah refused to tell.

At home, Anstis took ill. Rowland was distraught. He rode again to Providence and rapped his cane on the door. When the maid answered it, he asked, “How’s Hannah?” Informed of her condition, he turned around and rode home.

His visits continued for several weeks. Then Miss Belden and William Gardiner learned about Rowland’s demands and Hannah’s condition. Miss Belden wrote to Hannah and begged her to reveal her name. William Gardiner rode to Providence to visit Hannah, and he said he would tell her father of his role in her elopement.

Free To Tell the Story

Released from her vow of secrecy, Hannah wrote to her father, offering to tell him the whole story. As soon as he got her letter, Rowland left for Providence.

When Hannah’s maid admitted Rowland to the house, he rushed to Hannah’s bedside. Shocked by her wasted appearance, he broke down in sobs. He knelt by her bed, held her hand and wept until he could regain his composure. Then Rowland rose, reached into his pocket and gave Hannah’s maid several gold coins. He told her to buy whatever Hannah needed, whatever would make her comfortable, and to prepare her for her journey home. Rowland never even asked who had helped her elope.

Rowland rode home and immediately arranged for Hannah’s rescue. The roads were rough, too rough to carry her in a carriage. Rowland had a litter at the manor, though, which wealthy people used to transport the sick. When he arrived home, he told his head farmer to select his four strongest servants. They were to take the litter on board his fastest sloop and to go to Providence as quickly as possible, by sail or by oar.

Tired and dirty, Rowland mounted a fresh horse the next morning. He took Prince with him and a horse for Hannah’s maid. Then they rode back to his daughter’s house in Providence to bring her home for the last time.

Hannah Robinson Goes Home

The sloop arrived at the wharf. Rowland and the servants spent the night in a tavern. The next morning, they went to Hannah’s house. They gently placed Hannah in the litter with her little dog at her feet. Then they began the long walk home. At nightfall they rested at Lodowick Updike’s house.

The Roger Mowry Tavern in P rovidence

The next day the sun rose on a perfect Indian summer morning. The entourage resumed its journey, eventually reaching the wooded spot where Hannah had abandoned Mary and Prince for Peter. Hannah began to cry.

On they plodded. When they reached the rock where Hannah used to sit and watch the bay, she asked them to stop. She sat and watched the ocean as she had as a girl. She spotted a yellow wildflower—Everlasting Life—and asked her maid to pick a sprig and pin it to her dress.

The view of Narragansett Bay today

The sun was setting, and they could hear in the distance cows lowing, an ax chopping wood and fishermen singing a roundelay. They were a mile from home, and Rowland told Hannah they should resume their journey or else the evening air would do her harm. But Hannah insisted on staying until the evening gun from Fort George boomed.

The party reached the Robinson manor house by moonlight. Hannah held a sad reunion with her sick mother. Rowland carried her to her bedchamber, where her family and servants surrounded her. A high fever and delirium set in, and they heard the cry of the whippoorwill, a sign of death. Hannah called to her mother, “Do you hear the death angel mother? He is out in the lilac.”

Unfortunate Hannah Robinson died the next morning, October 30, 1773.

Alone in His Grandeur

Peter Simons came once to the Robinson estate to pay his respects. In honor of his daughter’s wishes, Rowland treated him cordially. Simons then left for Europe and never returned to America.

Anstis Robinson died a month after her oldest daughter passed away. Mary died four years later. William got married and died at age forty-six. Rowland outlived them all, dying at the age of eighty-seven.

A woman who knew him well wrote in her diary, “Rowland Robinson was thus left alone in his grandeur, a man of violent passions, which was characteristic of the Robinsons, but of a noble, benevolent nature.”

In 1938, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a new watch tower at the site where Hannah Robinson watched Narragansett Bay. The rock and the tower, called the Hannah Robinson Tower, are now owned by Preserve Rhode Island and managed by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

Hannah Robinson Tower

The Robinson manor still stands, though part of it has been torn down. The Lodowick Updike house also stands, known popularly as Smith’s Castle.

The tale of Unfortunate Hannah Robinson was one of the great scandals of colonial New England.