ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, ANNIHILATED BY A VOLCANO.
BY TRUMBULL WHITE.
=Fifty Thousand Men, Women and Children Slain in an
Instant--The Island Capital Obliterated--Molten Fire and
Suffocating Gases Rob Multitudes of Life--Death Reigns in the
Streets of the Stricken City--The Governor and Foreign Consuls
Die at their Posts of Duty--Burst of Flame from Mount Pelee
Completes the Ruin--No Escape for the Hapless Residents in the
Fated Town--Scenes of Suffering Described--St. Pierre the
Pompeii of Today--Desolation over All--Few Left to Tell the
Tale of the Morning of Disaster.=
Behold a peaceful city in the Caribbean sea, beautiful with the
luxuriant vegetation of a tropic isle, happy as the carefree dwellers
in such a spot may well be, at ease with the comforts of climate and
the natural products which make severe labor unnecessary in these
sea-girt colonies. Rising from the water front to the hillsides that
lead back toward the slopes of Mount Pelee, St. Pierre, metropolis of
the French island of Martinique, sits in picturesque languor, the blue
waves of the Caribbean murmuring on the beaches, the verdure-clad
ridges of the mountain range forming a background of greenery for the
charming picture. Palms shade the narrow, clean, white, paved streets;
trade goes on at the wharves; the people visit in social gaiety,
dressed in white or bright-colored garments, as is the fashion in
these islands, where somberness seldom rules; all the forms of life
are cheerful, light-hearted, even thoughtless.
Suddenly a thrall of black despair is cast over the happy island. The
city of pleasure becomes one great tomb. Of its 30,000 men, women and
children, all but a few are slain. The Angel of Death has spread his
pall over them, a fiery breath has smitten them, and they have fallen
as dry stubble before the sweep of flame. A city is dead. An island is
desolate. A world is grief-stricken.
And what was the awful power of evil that robbed of life 50,000 in
city and neighboring villages almost in a moment? It was this
verdure-clad Mount Pelee, their familiar sentinel, in the shade of
whose sheltering palms they had built their summer resorts or found
their innocent pleasures. It was this shadowing summit, now suddenly
become a fiery vent through which earth's artilleries blazed forth
their terrible volleys of molten projectiles, lava masses, huge drifts
of ashes, and clouds of flaming, noxious, gaseous emanations to
suffocate every living thing. Nothing could withstand such a
bombardment from the exhaustless magazines within the vast chambers of
the planet, no longer kindly Mother Earth, benign in the beauty of
May-time, but cruel, relentless, merciless alike to all.
St. Pierre and the island of Martinique are no strangers to
destructive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In August, 1767, an
earthquake killed 1,600 persons in St. Pierre. In 1851 Mount Pelee
threatened the city with destruction. St. Pierre was practically
destroyed once before, in August, 1891, by the great hurricane which
swept over the islands. The harbor of St. Pierre has been a famous one
for centuries. It was off this harbor on April 12, 1782, that Admiral
Rodney's fleet defeated the French squadron under the Comte de Grasse
and wrested the West Indies from France.
St. Pierre was the largest town and the commercial center of the
island. It was the largest town in the French West Indies, and was
well built and prosperous. It had a population of about 30,000. It was
divided into two parts, known as the upper and lower towns. The lower
town was compact with narrow streets, and unhealthy. The upper town
was cleaner, healthier, and handsomely laid out. There was in the
upper town a botanical garden and an old Catholic college, as well as
a fine hospital.
Mount Pelee, the largest of the group of volcanic mountains, is about
4,400 feet high. It had long been inactive as a volcano, although in
August, 1851, it had a violent eruption. It is in the northwestern end
of the island, and near the foot of its western slope, fronting the
bay, St. Pierre was built.
The Consuls resident at St. Pierre were: For the United States, T. T.
Prentis; Great Britain, J. Japp; Denmark, M. E. S. Meyer; Italy, P.
Plissonneau; Mexico, E. Dupie; Sweden and Norway, Gustave Borde. There
were four banks in the city--the Banque de la Martinique, Banque
Transatlantique, Colonial Bank of London, and the Credit Foncier
Colonial. There were sixteen commission merchants, twelve dry-goods
stores, twenty-two provision dealers, twenty-six rum manufacturers,
eleven colonial produce merchants, four brokers, and two hardware
dealers.
The whole area of the island, near 400 square miles, is mountainous.
Besides Mount Pelee, there are, further south and about midway of the
oval, the three crests of Courbet, and all along the great ridge are
the black and ragged cones of old volcanoes. In the section south of
the deep bay there are two less elevated and more irregular ridges,
one running southeast and terminating in the Piton Vauclin, and the
other extending westward and presenting to view on the coast Mounts
Caraibe and Constant.
The mountainous interior is torn and gashed with ancient earthquake
upheavals, and there are perpendicular cliffs, deep clefts and gorges,
black holes filled with water, and swift torrents dashing over
precipices and falling into caverns--in a word, all the fantastic
savagery of volcanic scenery, but the whole covered with the rich
verdure of the tropics.
The total population of the island was reckoned at 175,000, of whom
10,000 were whites, 15,000 of Asiatic origin, and 150,000 blacks of
all shades from ebony to light octoroon.
Martinique has two interesting claims to distinction in that the
Empress Josephine was born there and that Mme. de Maintenon passed her
girlhood on the island as Francoise d'Aubigne. At Fort de France there
is a marble statue of the Empress Josephine.
It was just before eight o'clock on the morning of Thursday, May 8,
1902, that the lava and gases of the crater of Mount Pelee burst their
bounds and bore destruction to the fated city. Within thirty seconds
perhaps 50,000 persons were killed, and the streets of St. Pierre were
heaped with dead bodies, soon to be incinerated or buried in the ashes
that fell from the fountain of flame. Within ten minutes the city
itself had disappeared in a whirling flame vomited from the mountain,
though for some hours the inflammable portions of the buildings
continued to burn, until all was consumed that could be. The volcano
whose ancient crater for more than fifty years had been occupied by a
quiet lake in which picnic parties bathed, discharged a torrent of
fiery mud, which rolled toward the sea, engulfing everything before
it. The city was no more.
St. Pierre was destroyed, not by lava streams and not by showers of
red-hot rocks, but by one all-consuming blast of suffocating,
poisonous, burning gases. Death came to the inhabitants instantly. It
was not a matter of hours or minutes. It was a matter of seconds. They
did not burn to death. They died by breathing flame and their bodies
were burned afterward. It is not merely true that no person inside the
limits of the town escaped, but it is probably a literal fact that no
person lived long enough to take two steps toward escape. These facts
will go on record as the most astounding in the history of human
catastrophes.
The manner of the annihilation of St. Pierre is unique in the history
of the world. Pompeii was not a parallel, for Pompeii was eaten up by
demoniac rivers of lava, and lava became its tomb. But where St.
Pierre once stood there is not even a lava bed now. The city is gone
from the earth.
The half-dead victims who escaped on the Roddam or were brought away
by the Suchet, talked of a "hurricane of flame" that had come upon
them. That phrase was no figure of speech, but a literal statement of
what happened.
When the first rescue parties reached the scene they found bodies
lying in the streets of the city--or rather on the ground where
streets once were, for in many places it was impossible to trace the
line between streets and building sites--to which death came so
suddenly that the smiles on the faces did not have time to change to
the lines of agony.
That does not mean death by burning, though the bodies had been
charred and half-consumed, nor does it mean suffocation, for
suffocation is slow. It can mean only that the bath of burning fumes
into which the city was plunged affected the victims like a terribly
virulent poison when the first whiff of the gases entered their lungs.
There were many of the victims who died with their hands to their
mouths. That one motion of the arm was probably the only one that they
made before they became unconscious. Others fell to their faces and
died with their lips pressed into the earth. There was no time to run,
perhaps no time even to cry out, no time to breathe a prayer. It was
as if St. Pierre had been just dipped into an immense white-hot
furnace and then set out to cool. Mount Pelee went sputtering on, but
that made no longer any difference. In the city all life was destroyed.
Every combustible thing was burned. Animal bodies, full of moisture,
glowed awhile and then remained charred wrecks. Wood and other easily
combustible things burned to ashes. On the ground lay the bodies,
amidst heaps of hot mud, heaps of gleaming ashes and piles of volcanic
stones. That was all.
That St. Pierre and the strip of coast to the north and south of it
were burned in an instant was probably due to the first break in the
mountain coming on its western side and immediately above them, though
the direction of the wind may have had a little to do with it. In this
way one can understand how the mountain resort of Morne Rouge, where
about 600 people were staying, escaped annihilation. Rocks and dust
and boiling mud fell upon it, no doubt harming it, but they did not
destroy it, for it was out of the pathway of the first awful blast.
For days after this most awful of blasts, beginning indeed immediately
after the first explosion, Mount Pelee continued sending down lava
streams in many directions. They filled the ravines and followed river
courses and made their way to the sea. They did great destruction, but
most of the inhabitants in their course had some chance at least to
escape.
From Le Precheur around the northern end of the island, to Grande
Riviere, Macouba, and Grande Anse, directly across the island from St.
Pierre, the lava was flowing. Great crevasses opened from time to time
in the hills. The earth undulated like waves. Rivers were thrown out
of their courses by the change in land levels. In some places they
submerged the land and formed lakes. In other places they were licked
up by the lava that flowed on them and turned them to steam.
Constant rumblings, thunder and lightning storms made the surroundings
so terrible that many persons actually died of fright.
The West Indian newspapers printed just before the day of the great
eruption, and received in foreign countries after the catastrophe,
serve to give a graphic picture of the situation in St. Pierre as it
was before the outer world knew of the threat of danger. To them, and
the letters written and mailed to foreign correspondents before the
fatal day, we owe the clear idea of what was going on.
The Voice of St. Lucia, printed at Castries, had this story on May 8
of the days preceding the destruction of St. Pierre:
"Mount Pelee began to show signs of uneasiness in the last days of
April. On the 3d inst. it began to throw out dense volumes of smoke,
and at midnight belched out flames, accompanied by rumbling noises.
Flames were again visible at half-past five o'clock the next morning,
and similar noises were audible. At the foot of Mount Pelee are the
villages of Precheurs and Ste. Philomene. The inhabitants were thrown
into great consternation by the sights and sounds, and especially by
the darkening of the day by volumes of thick smoke and clouds of
ashes, which were falling. There was an exodus from all over the
district.
"St. Pierre was on the morning of May 3 covered with a layer of ashes
about a quarter of an inch thick, and appeared as if enveloped in a
fog. The mountain was wrapped in the smoke which issued from it. The
greatest anxiety prevailed, and all business was suspended.
"A very anxious morning was passed on the island May 4. Thanks,
however, to a sea breeze, the situation appeared better at eleven
o'clock, but as the breeze died away at sunset, ashes again began to
fall, and the mountain and its environs presented a most dismal
spectacle, causing much alarm as to what the night would bring forth.
Nothing happened, however, and on Monday morning May 5, although
everything was not quite serene, the aspect was decidedly encouraging.
Less excitement was visible.
"At about nine o'clock on the morning of the 6th a private telegram
came from Martinique, stating that the Plissonneau family had
chartered the steamer Topaze, one of the boats of the Compagnie
Girard, and had started for St. Lucia. At about eleven o'clock the
Topaze arrived with Mrs. Plissonneau, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Plissonneau
and three children, Mrs. Pierre Plissonneau and child, and others.
"They report that at noon on Monday a stream of burning lava suddenly
rushed down the southwestern slope of the mountain, and, following the
course of the Riviere Blanche, the bed of which is dry at this season
of the year, overwhelmed everything which obstructed its rush to the
sea. Estates and buildings were covered up by the fiery wave, which
appeared to rise to a height of some twenty feet over an area of
nearly a quarter of a mile. When the torrent had poured itself into
the sea, it was found that the Guerin sugar factory, on the beach,
five miles from the mountain and two from St. Pierre, was imbedded in
lava. The burning mass of liquid had taken only three minutes from the
time it was first perceived to reach the sea, five miles away.
"Then a remarkable phenomenon occurred. The sea receded all along the
western coast for about a hundred yards and returned with gentle
strength, covering the whole of the sea front of St. Pierre and
reaching the first houses on the Place Bertin. This created a general
panic, and the people made for the hills. Though the sea retired
again, without great damage being done ashore or afloat, the panic
continued, intensified by terrible detonations, which broke from the
mountain at short intervals, accompanied with dense emissions of smoke
and lurid flashes of flame.
"This was awful in daylight, but, when darkness fell, it was more
terrible still, and, at each manifestation of the volcano's anger,
people, in their nightclothes, carrying children, and lighted by any
sort of lamp or candle they had caught up in their haste, ran out into
the dark streets, wailing and screaming, and running aimlessly about
the town.
"The mental strain becoming unendurable, the Topaze was got ready, and
the refugees hurriedly went on board and started for St. Lucia. In the
afternoon the gentlemen of the party, having placed their families in
safety, returned by the Topaze to Martinique.
"In the meantime, telegrams were being sent from Martinique, imploring
that a steamer be chartered to bring away terrified people from St.
Pierre. But the superintendent of the Royal Mail company, at Barbados,
would not allow one of the coasting boats, the only steamer available,
to go to Martinique. At a little before five o'clock in the afternoon
cable communication was interrupted and remains so."
Martinique mails, forwarded just prior to the disaster, arrived in
Paris on May 18. The newspapers printed a number of private letters
from St. Pierre, giving many details of events immediately preceding
the catastrophe. The most interesting of these was a letter from a
young lady, who was among the victims, dated May 3. After describing
the aspect of St. Pierre before dawn, the town being lit up with
flames from the volcano, everything covered with ashes, and the people
excited, yet not panic-stricken, she said:
"My calmness astonished me. I am awaiting the event tranquilly. My
only suffering is from the dust which penetrates everywhere, even
through closed windows and doors. We are all calm. Mama is not a bit
anxious. Edith alone is frightened. If death awaits us there will be a
numerous company to leave the world. Will it be by fire or asphyxia?
It will be what God wills. You will have our last thought. Tell
brother Robert that we are still alive. This will, perhaps, be no
longer true when this letter reaches you."
The Edith mentioned was a lady visitor who was among the rescued. This
and other letters inclosed samples of the ashes which fell over the
doomed town. The ashes were a bluish-gray, impalpable powder,
resembling newly ground flour and slightly smelling of sulphur.
Another letter, written during the afternoon of May 3, says:
"The population of the neighborhood of the mountain is flocking to the
city. Business is suspended, the inhabitants are panic-stricken and
the firemen are sprinkling the streets and roofs, to settle the ashes,
which are filling the air."
The letters indicate that evidences of the impending disaster were
numerous five days before it occurred.
Still another letter says:
"St. Pierre presents an aspect unknown to the natives. It is a city
sprinkled with gray snow, a winter scene without cold. The
inhabitants of the neighborhood are abandoning their houses, villas
and cottages, and are flocking to the city. It is a curious pell-mell
of women, children and barefooted peasants, big, black fellows loaded
with household goods. The air is oppressing; your nose burns. Are we
going to die asphyxiated? What has to-morrow in store for us? A flow
of lava, rain or stones or a cataclysm from the sea? Who can tell?
Will give you my last thought if I must die."
A St. Pierre paper of May 3 announces that an excursion arranged for
the next day to Mount Pelee had been postponed, as the crater was
inaccessible, adding that notice would be issued when the excursion
would take place.
An inhabitant of Morne Rouge, a town of 600 inhabitants, seven
kilometers from St. Pierre, who was watching the volcano at the moment
of the catastrophe, said that there were seven luminous points on the
volcano's side just before it burst.
He said that all about him when the explosion came, there was a
terrible suction of air which seemed to be dragging him irresistibly
toward the mountain in spite of all his resistance. The volcano then
emitted a sheet of flame which swept down toward St. Pierre. There was
no sharp, distinct roar of explosion as when a great cannon is fired,
but only awful jarring rumblings.
He thought that the entire outburst that did all the work of havoc did
not last more than thirty seconds. Then there was complete darkness
for ten minutes, caused by the dense volumes of sulphurous smoke and
clouds of dust and shattered rocks. The entire country all about St.
Pierre was turned into a chaotic waste. All the trees were either torn
up by the roots or snapped off, to lie level with the ground.
The outlines of the town but imperfectly remained. The tangle of
debris was such that after the rescuers came, it was with difficulty
that the course of streets could be followed.
In spite of the horrible surroundings, and the universal wave of human
sympathy which had been evoked, looting began almost as soon as
relief. As soon as it was possible to land, ghouls began to rob the
bodies of the victims. The monsters plied their nefarious trade in
small boats. Skimming along the shore they would watch for an opening
when troops and rescue parties were elsewhere, then land, grab what
they could, and sail away again.
The United States government tug Potomac, while on her way to Fort de
France with supplies from San Juan, Porto Rico, overhauled a small
boat containing five negroes and a white man. Something in the
appearance of the men excited the suspicions of the commander of the
Potomac, Lieutenant McCormick, and he ordered them to come on board.
When they were searched, their pockets were found to be filled with
coin and jewelry. Rings in their possession had evidently been
stripped from the fingers of the dead. Lieutenant McCormick placed
them all under arrest, and later turned them over to the commander of
the French cruiser Suchet for punishment.
Thus it was that no detail of grewsome horror was lacking to make the
shocking tale of the destruction of St. Pierre complete.
The hour of the disaster is placed at about eight o'clock. A clerk in
Fort de France called up another by telephone in St. Pierre and was
talking with him at 7:55 by Fort de France time, when he heard a
sudden, awful shriek, and then could hear no more.
"The little that actually happened then can be briefly, very briefly
told," says W. S. Merriwether, the New York Herald correspondent. "It
is known that at one minute there lay a city smiling in the summer
morning; that in another it was a mass of swirling flames, with every
soul of its 30,000 writhing in the throes of death. One moment and
church bells were ringing joyful chimes in the ears of St. Pierre's
30,000 people--the next the flame-clogged bells were sobbing a requiem
for 30,000 dead. One waft of morning breeze flowed over cathedral
spires and domes, over facades and arches and roofs and angles of a
populous and light-hearted city--the next swept a lone mass of white
hot ruins. The sun glistened one moment on sparkling fountains, green
parks and fronded palms--its next ray shone on fusing metal,
blistered, flame-wrecked squares and charred stumps of trees. One day
and the city was all light and color, all gayety and grace--the next
its ruins looked as though they had been crusted over with twenty
centuries of solitude and silence."
St. Pierre was a vast charnel-house. Skirting for nearly a league the
blue waters of the Caribbean, its smoking ruins became the funeral
pyre of 30,000, not one of whom lived long enough to tell adequately a
story that will stand grim, awful, unforgotten as that of Herculaneum,
when the world is older by a thousand years.
St. Pierre was as dead as Pompeii. Most of her people lay fathoms deep
in a tomb made in the twinkling of an eye by the collapse of their
homes, and sealed forever under tons of boiling mud, avalanches of
scoria and a hurricane of volcanic dust.
Over the entombed city the volcano from a dozen vents yet poured its
steaming vapors in long, curling wreaths, that mounted thousands of
feet aloft, like smoking incense from a gigantic censer above the bier
of some mighty dead.
Such was the disaster which burst upon the hapless people of the
island of Martinique, while almost at the same moment a sister isle,
St. Vincent, was suffering a kindred fate. Similar in natural
conditions, these two little colonies of the West Indies, one French
and one English by affiliation, underwent the shock of nature's
assault and sank in grief before a horror-stricken world.
Transcriber's Note
There are some inconsistencies in the chapter subheadings between the
Table of Contents and chapters themselves; these have been left as
printed.
There is some variation in factual information--for example, the amount
held in the Mint. These occurrences have all been preserved as printed.
There is some variable spelling; this has been repaired where there
was an obvious prevalence of one form over the other, but is otherwise
left as printed. There is a reference on page 112 to "gambling hells",
which seems to be a genuine term, although it could be a typo for
"gambling halls". Since there is no way to be certain, it has been
preserved as printed. Archaic spelling has been preserved as printed.
Typographic errors in punctuation and spelling (omitted or transposed
letters, etc.) have been repaired. Hyphenation has been made
consistent where there was a prevalence of one form over the other.
The following errors have also been repaired:
Page 18--John amended to James--"Former Mayor James D.
Phelan"
Page 47--aids amended to aides--"It was not without a
struggle that Mayor Schmitz and his aides let this, ..."
Page 93--omitted word 'he' added, for sense--"Kanaka
Pete chased the man he had marked ..."
Page 160--omitted 0 added to tabular entry for
Connecticut.
Page 317--damage to the bottom of the page has left one
word partially obscured. From the visible letters and
available space, the word is most likely 'gradually',
which has been used in this e-text.
Page 372--Callas amended to Callao--"... producing a new
bay at Callao; and in several mountains ..."
Page 373--XXXII amended to XXXI--"CHAPTER XXXI."
Page 382--XXXI amended to XXXII--"CHAPTER XXXII."
Page 401--omitted word 'if' added following 'as'--"It
was as if St. Pierre had been just dipped ..."
The frontispiece illustrations have been moved to follow the title
page. Other illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they
are not in the middle of a paragraph.