5/8/1902 - Paradise terrifically transformed in literally a handful of seconds, Mother Nature demonstrates her formidable powers in a truly horrific manner on the French eastern Caribbean island of Martinique, when after only rumbling since 1851, the active volcano, 4,583 foot Mount Pelee (Antillean Creole for "bald mountain" or "peeled mountain") explodes, destroying the beautiful town of Saint-Pierre (known at the time as "The Paris of the Caribbean") and taking the lives of approximately 30,000 people in the most devastating volcanic eruption of the 20th Century.
The Big Eruption
Rising out of the ocean due to volcanic activity over a period of 24 million years, the island of Martinique has a land mass of 421 square miles and sits upon a subduction fault where the Earth's South American Plate slides beneath it's Caribbean Plate. A part of the Caribbean's Antilles archipelago, it sits 280 miles to the northeast of the coast of South America and 435 miles to the southeast of the Dominican Republic. It's Atlantic Ocean side (or "windward side") consists of a mixture of coastal cliffs, shallow coral reefs and cays, with winds that make sea traffic extremely hazardous. On it's Caribbean Sea side (it's "leeward" coast), the winds are negated by the island's mass and the sea floor drops off dramatically from shore. The southern part of the island contains white sand beaches, while the northern portion of Martinique is extremely mountainous, made so by a series of mountains ("mornes") and volcanoes ("pitons"), the highest, stretching 4,583 feet above the sea, being Mount Pelee, a 400,000 year old, still active volcano that has erupted more than 30 times in the last 5,000 years.
Martinique
Mount Pelee
Sometime around 130 A.D., the Arawak people of northern South America become the first people to settle on the island, but in a preview of what is to come, they are decimated when Mount Pelee erupts in 295 A.D. Back for a second try, around 400 A.D. the gentle farmers repopulate Martinique, but are wiped out two centuries later when the cannibal warrior Caribs arrive from the coast of what will become the country of Venezuela. European interest in the island begins when Christopher Columbus charts it's location in 1493, and then comes ashore on his fourth voyage to the "New World," spending three days in the area resting and bathing his men, washing laundry, gathering fruit, and refilling water casks. Ignored for the most part by the Spanish, at the behest of Cardinal Richelieu, in 1635, the French trader, Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, and one hundred settlers, establish a colony on the northwestern portion of the island, where a fort is built at the mouth of the Roxelane River they name, St. Pierre. Shortly thereafter, they are warring with the Caribs until the island is completely subjugated by the French in 1658. At first exporting annatto (a fruit used to make dye and cheese), indigo, tobacco, cacao, and cotton, the colony becomes highly successful enterprise when it begins trading in sugar, rum, and molasses. Subsequent years will have the colony endure hurricanes, English (and a brief occupation during Great Britain's wars with Napoleon Bonaparte) & Dutch attacks, slave revolts, earthquakes, pirates (the most famous being the buccaneer Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts"), fire, and minor eruptions of Mt. Pelee (in 1792 and 1851). Despite the many calamities that assault the island, by 1888, Martinique has a population of 176,000 souls, with over 25,000 residing in St. Pierre, by then known as "the Paris of the Caribbean."
Carib Warrior
Roberts Pirate Flag - The AMH Signifies The Skull
Belongs To A Martinique Citizen
Providing a warning to the residents of the island as to what is coming (the volcano had been calm for two generations of St. Pierre residents), on April 23, 1902, Mt. Pelee begins a series of phreatic explosions (magma heating ground or surface water into super-heated steam) that send a light rain of cinders on to the volcano's southern and western sides while setting off seismic activity in the region. The volcano sends more rock and ash clouds into the air on the 25th and 26th, but because little damage is done by the ash fall, public authorities are not worried by Mt. Pelee's demonstration. On the 27th, as the ugly smell of sulfur reaches St. Pierre (four miles away), a number of hikers make their way up the volcano and report that the Etang Sec ("Dry Pond') crater at it's top has filled with water, forming a lake 590 feet across that is being fed by a steady stream of boiling water coming out of a 50 foot high cone of volcanic debris. The 30th of the month sees two local waterways, Riviere des Peres and the river Roxelane, swelling out of their banks due to fallen boulders and trees from the volcano clogging their courses, while the villages of Precheur and Sainte-Philomene are covered in a steady rain of ash. Each eruption seemingly more powerful than the last (the explosions now are occurring every five to six hours), on May 2nd, at 11:30 p.m., the volcano produces a violent eruption that produces loud explosions, earthquakes, and sends a huge pillar of black smoke into the sky, and below, farm animals begin dying from hunger and thirst as their water and food supplies are contaminated from all the falling ash that now covers the entire northern portion of Martinique (the sharp knives at the local newspaper, Les Colonies, indefinitely postpone the May 4th picnic they have planned to take place on the slopes of Mt. Pelee). On May 3rd, winds blow the ash cloud away from St. Pierre, and the city receives a brief respite. The following day however, the ash fall is back and intensifies, becoming so dense that communications are cut off between St. Pierre and the Precheur district, and small boats are unable to navigate along the coast causing many citizen to flee the city, filling the local steamer lines to their full capacity. As a new week begins on May 5th, the activity of the volcano appears to decrease, but at around 1:00 in the afternoon, the sea suddenly recedes 330 feet and then rushes back, flooding parts of St. Pierre while a new, large cloud of black smoke is expelled westwards out of the volcano. On Mt. Pelee, one wall of the Etang Sec crater collapses, sending a wave of boiling water and mud (known as a lahar) into the Blanche River that destroys the Guerin sugar works and buries 150 people beneath 200 to 300 feet of muck. The eruption also sends a horrifying array of poisonous gigantic centipedes, pit vipers, and biting ants down the hill, where they savage much of the livestock in the area and kill at least fifty people. Filling St. Pierre with more refugees fleeing the wrath of the volcano, in the night, the city is plunged into darkness when the atmospheric disturbances caused by Mt. Pelee's eruptions knock out the city's electricity. The following day, loud noises can be heard coming from deep within the volcano.
City Theater
St. Pierre Harbor Area
Mt. Pelee
The day before doom, there is actually a belief in St. Pierre that nothing major will come of Mt. Pelee's eruptions despite the clouds of ash expelled now being streaked with volcanic lightning and it's crater glowing reddish orange in the night. All the local newspapers downplay the threat the volcano poses, and showing the citizenry all is well, notables such as Governor Louis Mouttet (he will appoint a commission to decide whether evacuation is necessary, and based on the opinion of a local high school science teacher, it is decided that the residents of St. Pierre should stay so that they can vote in the island election scheduled to take place on the coming Sunday for the French Chamber of Deputies, and decision made, troops are actually sent out to keep people from fleeing St. Pierre for the island's other large city, Fort-de-France, the Martinique's capital) and his wife Marie Henriette Helene de Coppet (thankfully for them, their three children are left back in Fort-de-France), Les Colonies newspaper editor, Andreus Hurard, the local high school's science professor, civil engineer Gaston Landes, Monseigneur Gabriel Parel (acting head of the local Catholic parish while it's bishop is in France), St. Pierre Mayor, Pierre Rodolphe Fouche (along with his wife), civil engineer, William Leonce, and Lt. Colonel James Gerbault (an artillery officer) put on brave faces for the populace. And when news is received that the volcano La Soufriere has erupted on the nearby island of Saint Vincent (95 miles away from Martinique), it is believed that the pressure building up inside Mt. Pelee has been relieved with the explosion (the lesson that should have been learned is the toll the eruption takes on the residents of the island, killing roughly 1,500 individuals). Representing the United States of America due to a mix-up that sees the post he was promised in Batavia, Java, assigned to another diplomat, also staying in the city despite the danger are Consul General Thomas Prentis (a former sharpshooter from Vermont during the Civil War), his wife, Clara "Louisa" Prentis, and their young daughters, Louise Lydia and Christiana Hazel, along with Vice-Consul Amedee Testart Grosval. More wary though is Captain Marina Leboffe of the Italian barque Orsolina out of Naples. Witnessing the violent machinations of Mt. Pelee, which remind him of Mt. Vesuvius back home, Leboffe leaves port with only half the sugar cargo he has been consigned to carry loaded into his vessel, a decision that enrages the St. Pierre shipper and port authorities that threaten the captain with arrest, and leaves sixteen ships in the harbor. In the evening, Mt. Pelee's tremors seem to subside.
Mouttet
The Prentis Family
At 4:00 in the morning of Ascension Day, Thursday May 8, 1902, Mt. Pelee begins rumbling again and emits a dark cloud of ash and fiery cinders that trade winds push out to the west of Martinique. As dawn begins to break, at 6:30 a.m., the Quebec Line's passenger steamship SS Roraima (built in 1887 and captained by G. T. Muggah) drops anchor 900 yards off in St. Pierre's harbor as passengers and crew line it's rails watching the volcano erupting, there are 68 souls on board and she is the largest vessel in port. A short while later, the British passenger steamship SS Roddam anchors close inshore, becoming the 18th ship in port, while eight miles out at sea, west of the ruins of the Guerin sugar factory destroyed by the Monday wave of mud, the repair ship Pouyer-Quertier sets about fixing a trans-Atlantic cable, broken in one of the earthquakes the volcano sets off. The morning is clear and sunny, and despite the volcano, the air of St. Pierre is filled with the sound of church bells ringing and the singing of voices celebrating the anniversary of Jesus Christ's ascension to Heaven ... a Christ that will soon be joined by thousands and thousands of St. Pierre souls.
Suddenly, shortly after 7:52, just as the night shift telegraph operator in St. Pierre sends out a volcano update to Fort-de-France stating that no new activity has taken place on the volcano, Mount Pelee massively erupts in a huge roar that can be heard everywhere on the island (and 800 miles away at Maracaibo, Venezuela). With a blinding light brighter than lightning, the mountain tears itself apart sending from one rent at it's top a huge black mushroom cloud that rushes up into the sky, darkening the sky above in a radius of 50 miles (Mass just beginning in Fort-de-France, the darkness that suddenly descends on Martinique's capital is so deep that objects only a foot away from churchgoers eyes can not be discerned), while a second rent opens in the side of the mountain that shoots out a massive horizontal, ground hugging pyroclastic surge of rock fragments, magma particles, super-heated steam and fiery gases that exceeds temperatures of 1,967 degrees Fahrenheit and travels at an estimated speed of 100 mph ... a hurricane of death and destruction that takes roughly only a minute to reach St. Pierre. Nowhere to run, the catastrophic cloud covers the two-mile length of St. Pierre, destroying everything it touches as steel is turned into melted pretzels, concrete walls three to four feet thick are torn apart as if they were made of paper, and the roofs of homes and businesses disintegrate, thousands of casks of rum on the harbor's quay explode and create burning rivers of booze; everything combustible catches fire, animals and people included. Depending on where they meet death, the residents of the city perish from the cloud's shock wave, inhalation of hot gases, deep burns, are crushed by volcanic boulders or under collapsed buildings. With only a few exceptions, by 8:02 in the morning, the city of St. Pierre and it's citizens are all gone.
The Volcano Explodes - Painting
Mt. Pelee Eruption
The Destruction Of St. Pierre
CS Grappler
Harbor Disaster
Wreck Of The SS Roraima Before She Goes Under
Freeman
SS Roddam After
Responding to the cataclysm, eight miles out to sea, the CS Pouyer-Quertier witnesses St. Pierre's destruction but is powerless to do anything about attempting to give any succor to the city, and instead finds itself battling red-hot stones and ash that begin pelting the ship, which with difficulty, heads further out into the Caribbean (the vessel will eventually be able to participate in local relief efforts, taking to the safety of Fort-de-France 450 survivors of the eruption from the village Le Prechuer). Communications with the outside world cutoff, the secretary-general of the colony, and acting governor in Mouttet's absence, Georges L'Heurre, at noon orders the French cruiser Suchet (under the guidance of Commander Pierre Le Bris who will be promoted to captain for his actions during the rescue mission) to make the run from Fort-de-France up to St. Pierre. The warship arrives off St. Pierre at 12:30 in the afternoon and finds the port still in flames. Twice, longboats are sent towards shore, but have to turn back due the fires and heat coming from the devastated city, and it will not be until 5:00 p.m. for relief to get ashore (during this period the cruiser also picks up the handful of survivors while attempting to put out the fires aboard the doomed SS Roraima ... in various relief efforts, the Suchet will bring over 1,200 Martinique residents to the safe haven of Fort-de-France). But only briefly as fires and horror at what they discover force them back too. Reporting what they have found the world soon learns that St. Pierre is no more. Responding to the tragedy, President Theodore Roosevelt asks Congress that $500,000 be appropriated for emergency relief efforts on the island and sends the cruiser USS Cincinnati (in Santo Domingo), the converted freighter Dixie (from San Juan, Puerto Rico), and the navy tug Potomac (also out of Puerto Rico) to Martinique with Army rations, medical supplies, and doctors. Responding to the emergency, assistance will also be provided by Canada, the United Kingdom, the Vatican, Russia, Denmark, Japan, Italy, Germany, and of course France.
Suchet
St. Pierre Ruins
St. Pierre Rum Factory
U.S. Consul Building After
The most amazing survival story though belongs to a 27-year-old convicted felon, Louis-Auguste Cyparis (some accounts have his name as being Ludger Sylbaris, the stage name he will later use). A notorious, husky trouble-maker known to the St. Pierre police as "Samson," the night before Mt. Pelee erupts Cyparis gets plastered and gets into a brawl in which he cuts a friend's head open with a cutlass (in some stories he kills his friend). Taken into custody by the authorities, he is thrown into a solitary confinement cell built of stone that is partially underground, faces out to sea, and has no windows, for ventilation there is only a narrow slit in the top of the enclosure's door. Built around 1660 and once used for storing munitions, it is the most secure area in all of St. Pierre. Waiting for a guard to bring him his morning meal, on the morning of the 8th, Cyparis suddenly experiences a rumble in the earth, a flash of light through the grate, then darkness as ash begins swirling into his cell, with the heat becoming so severe that though his clothes don't catch fire, he suffers deep burns that will bleed on his hands, arms, back and legs. He survives by holding his breath as long as possible during the initial wave of super-heated air hitting his cell and by urinating on his clothes and stuffing them into the ventilation slit. Once the worst is over, the felon begins calling for help ... help that finally arrives three days later when a relief party moving through the blasted city finally hears his cries and digs him out of his cell. Amazed at finding an actually survivor within the city, Cyparis is brought to Fort-de-France where his wounds are treated, and because of the ordeal he has endured he is granted a pardon for his previous crimes. Suddenly a celebrity with a tale the world wants to be told about, he is signed up to tour (using the stage name Ludger Sylbarus) with the "Greatest Show On Earth," the Barnum & Bailey Circus, becoming the previously segregated entertainment giant's first black star. Billed as both "The Man Who Lived Through Doomsday" and "The Most Marvelous Man In The World," his acts consists of Cyparis stepping out from a replica of his cell (the real thing still exists and is visited by hundreds of tourists every year), a recounting of Mt. Pelee's explosive horrors, and bringing gasps from the audience, shucking his shirt to show off his heat-scarred back. Every day since 5/8/1902 a blessing to be alive, the former Martinique hoodlum dies of natural causes on Martinique at the age of 54 in 1929.
The Cell
Cyparis Postcard
Circus Poster
Sadly, despite it's disastrous eruption, the volcano isn't done with St. Pierre or Martinique's residents after the 8th of May. Lessons still to be given, believing the mountain is no longer a danger, relief workers pour into the area just in time for Mt. Pelee blowing up again on May 20th ... an explosion that knocks down most of what remained of St. Pierre (the city will never be fully rebuilt or be repopulated) and kills over 2,000 more souls. Still not satisfied with the toll it has taken, though of less intensity, the mountain erupts again in August, this time hammering the villages of Morne Rouge (800 deaths, sadly, among the community's casualties is Father Mary, the heroic priest of Notre Dame de La Delivrande, that remained at his post during the volcano's May eruptions, giving shelter to the region's survivors, including helping to treat the wounds of Cyparis before he is sent on to Fort-de-France ... only steps away from the entrance to Morne Rouge's stone church, he is caught by another death cloud from Mt. Pelee and dies in agony two days later), Ajoupa-Bouillon (250 deaths), Basse-Pointe (25 deaths), and Morne-Capot (10 deaths), along with causing a tsunami that causes damage to the fishing village of Le Carbet ... to date the last fatalities caused by the volcano.
Downtown - Rue Victor Hugo After The First Eruption
St, Pierre Devastation
Exploring The Ruins
Before the eruptions finally end in 1905, the mountain provides scientists the opportunity to study a living spine of lava in the process of mountain building which geologist Angelo Heilprin will describe as being grander than the Matterhorn, the Domes of Yosemite, the Mexican volcano Popocatepetl, and the Grand Canyon ... a wonder that will be known as "The Needle of Pelee" or "Pelee's Tower." Beginning in October of 1902, an obelisk-shaped tower of rock, a lava dome, starts building up out of the Mt. Pelee's Etang Sec crater. With it's cracks glowing from inside the tower, with steam escaping from it's summit, eventually reaching a maximum width of roughly 500 feet that stretches roughly a 1,000 feet into the air, the rock formation grows at a rate of around 50 feet a day, and in five months will basically attain the same volume as the man-made Great Pyramid of Egypt. A prisoner of the laws of gravity, the spine will finally become unstable and collapse into a pile of rubble in March of 1903. Lessons learned, quiet for over a decade, when the volcano becomes active again on September 16, 1929, the Martinique authorities are quick this time to evacuate the region based on the mountain's rumbles, which go quiet again at the end of 1932. To date, no more eruptions have taken place, but seismic activity has begun again at the volcano site in 2019 and 2020, with 4,544 individuals now living in the St. Pierre region.
St. Pierre Still Smoldering
Looking Down On The Ruins Of St. Pierre
The Tower
May 8, 1902 ... the world blows up for the residents of St. Pierre, Martinique.
Present Day Madness
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