When the evening papers of May 8, 1902, announced the sudden annihilation of 26,000 people that morning at 8 o’clock at St. Pierre, Martinique, I went immediately to President Eliot. Knowing that I had been urging field study of volcanoes, he agreed that I ought to go to St. Pierre and wired Secretary of the Navy, William H. Moody, to arrange for transportation. Immediate financial support came to me from Alexander Agassiz, the National Geographic Society, and numerous friends; and my Harvard colleagues agreed to give my lectures.
I reported to the training ship Dixie in Brooklyn, where I found Captain Robert Berry, a stalwart Virginian, in command of a cadet crew. On board were I. C. Russell of Michigan, author of “Volcanoes of North America”; E. O. Hovey of the American Museum; Curtis, the maker of topographic models; R. T. Hill of the Geological Survey, and expert on Caribbean lands; and numerous other scientists, and newspaper correspondents.
The voyage to the West Indies was unique. On the navy cruiser were stores of food, tents, clothing, and medical supplies for the refugees and an oddly assorted passenger list; all assembled because of warfare against mankind by two utterly unknown volcanoes, Soufrière on the British island of St. Vincent, and Pelée at the north end of the French colony of Martinique. Geologists gave lectures to the crew on deck; and in turn, we learned about naval discipline and efficiency.
When we arrived at Fort de France, thirteen days after the terrific disaster, we were transported at once to St. Pierre on the naval tug Potomac. We landed and walked through the ruined sugar city, the streets puddled with molasses and rum. Thousands of dead were buried underfoot amid the rubble, for the day before our visit, there had been a second blast from Pelée, the 4,000 foot volcano smoking four miles away. This had thrown down what roofs remained after the first explosion.
We arrived opposite St. Pierre May 21, 1902, and saw a smoking, dusty line of ruins along the shore. Before we landed we were warned that if the tug’s whistle should blow we were to make for the boats. The dusty hill lay on our left like a gray snow landscape, not at all like a cone. The crater was a gorge in an ordinary mountain under clouds.
We wandered through the dreary ruin and found masonry completely destroyed and no visible large volcanic fragments. The streets were full of rubble, and everything was coated with green-gray powder. Roofs were gone, an occasional timber was burning, and bodies were still numerous in the shells of houses. We saw a baby in an iron cradle, a man face down in a tank, and a big man on his back in a deep baker’s oven. His flesh was shriveled and drawn away from his joints by heat. Elsewhere eight or ten bodies were crowded at the foot of a cliff.
3. Explosion cloud rising from Halemaumau during explosive eruption, May 13, 1924
4. Crag in lava lake, January 23, 1918