Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror

by Richard Linthicum; Samuel Fallows; Trumbull White

Everywhere in the vicinity of the volcano pitiful scenes were witnessed—women tearing their hair in their grief and old men crying aloud at the loss of their beloved homesteads, while in the distance, in striking contrast, were the sapphire-colored Mediterranean, the violet-hued mountains of the Sorrento peninsula and the island of Capri in the tranquil sea.

The town of Bosco Trecase, on the mountain’s southern declivity, had been transformed into a gray island of ruin by the ashes from the crater of the volcano. Torrents of liquid fire, resembling in the distance serpents with glittering yellow and black scales, coursed in all directions, amid rumblings, detonations and earth tremblings while a pall of sulphurous smoke that hovered over all made breathing difficult.

While the inhabitants, driven before soldiers, were urged to seek safety in flight, fiery lava was invading their homes and the cemetery where their dead was buried. In about 48 hours after the eruptions began not a trace remained of Bosco Trecase, a city of 10,000 population. Several lads who were unharmed when the danger following the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius seemed most imminent subsequently ventured to walk on the cooling lava. They went too far and the crust broke under their weight. They were swallowed up before the helpless onlookers.

About the same time the village of Bosco Reale, to the eastward, became threatened, and the women of the village, weeping with fright, carried a statue of St. Anne as near as they could go to the flowing lava, imploring a miracle to stay the advance of the consuming stream. As the fiery tide persisted in advancing the statue had to be frequently moved backward.

Ottajano, at the northeast foot of the mountain, and 12 miles from Naples, was in the path of destruction and the scenes there when the first victims were unearthed were most terrible. The positions of the bodies showed that the victims had died while in a state of great terror, the faces being convulsed with fear. Three bodies were found in a confessional of one of the fallen churches.

One body was that of an old woman who was sitting with her right arm raised as though to ward off the advancing danger. The second was that of a child about 8 years old. It was found dead in a position which would indicate that the child had fallen with a little dog close to it and had died with one arm raised across its face to protect itself and its pet from the crumbling ruins. The third body, that of a woman, was reduced to an unrecognizable mass.

Other bodies which were found later caused such an impression among the already frantic population that the authorities did not deem it advisable to permit any more bodies to be identified for the time being.

Five churches and ten houses fell under the weight of ashes and cinders, which lay over four feet deep on the ground. Many were killed and injured.

One mile southward from the site of Bosco Trecase, on the shore of the Gulf of Naples, is Torre Annunziata, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, and the streams of lava having almost surrounded it the inhabitants deserted their homes in terror and fled to Naples and other points. This place was destroyed by an eruption in 1631. At the northern boundary of the town is a picturesque cypress-planted cemetery, and there the lava stream was halted and turned aside. It was as if the dead had effectually cried out to arrest the crushing river of flame, as at Catania the veil of St. Agatha is said to have stayed a similar stream from Mount Ætna.

The visit of the King and Queen of Italy and the Duke of Aosta to the town caused a rumor to be started by the excited people, and particularly among the panic-stricken women, that their presence had resulted in a miracle, and, singularly enough, shortly after the arrival of the sovereigns, and while the King and Queen were trying to console the people, repeating frequently, “Courage! Be strong!” the wind suddenly changed and the atmosphere, which up to that moment had been impregnated with sulphurous gas and suffocating fumes, cleared away and the sun burst forth. The stream of lava stopped its march, after having destroyed a section of the northeast part of the suburb.