The Worst Disasters in History

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Scary Interesting, and to two more of the Worst Disasters in History. The disasters in today's video are almost unthinkable today, but back in the day, things were different, and this led to countless and often pointless losses of life. As always, viewer discretion is advised.

[intro music] In the year 1620, a ship called the Mayflower carried more than 100 passengers and a crew of up to 50, across the Atlantic Ocean from England to the so-called New World. For Americans, the story of the Mayflower is taught in history classes across the country as a larger than life, symbolic manifestation of the spirit America was founded on. What tends to get lost in the story of the Mayflower, however, is that it was just one of countless ships carrying immigrants from Europe to America at the time.

In fact, as many as 20,000 people made this transatlantic crossing in search of freedom beginning in 1630, and many of them settled in what is called New England. This is a region today that includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Several years later, in 1635, yet another fleet began a voyage to the New World, bound for Boston.

One of these five ships, the James, carried 100 passengers, including Rev. Richard Mather, who was fleeing Europe after being suspended by the Church of England for how he dressed as a member of the clergy. The James was one of the two larger, heavier ships in the fleet, with the other being the 240-ton Angel Gabriel.

And because these two were larger, they were also slower, so the three smaller, faster ships made it to Boston well ahead of them. As these two ships enter the final leg of the voyage in the latter half of August 1635, they find out soon enough just how dire the consequences would be for lagging behind. Around the same time, in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a small ship called the Watch and Wait loaded up with the families of Anthony Thacher and his cousin, Joseph Avery.

Totaling 19 passengers plus 4 sailors, the Watch and Wait was making a routine ship south to Marblehead, Massachusetts, where the families would make their new home. And unfortunately, just like the James and the Angel Gabriel, the timing of their journey couldn't have been worse. Sometime around August 19th, the weather in New England began to change noticeably, as winds picked up and remained high for much of the following week.

Unbeknownst to the new residents, a major hurricane had formed in the Atlantic Ocean that was following the coastline northward. And the people of the east coast are no strangers to hurricanes these days, but these types of storms were completely foreign to those who emigrated to the New World in the 1600s. To that point, the main threats they faced were the brutally cold and bitter winters and the potential of encountering hostile Native American tribes.

A storm of the magnitude that was following the coastline toward New England, was an unimaginable danger none of them knew existed. And while the increased wind did provide some warning that trouble was on its way, no one knew to interpret as such, so no precautions were taken, and no preparations were made. Then, as August 25th, 1635 came to a close, the outer bands of the hurricane brought rain to much of New England.

And by a little after midnight on August 26th, the stronger areas closest to the eye of the storm made landfall in Rhode Island. These massive storms form over the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico, and tend to form between June and November of each year. As a low pressure area forms over these tropical and subtropical waters, warm ocean air is pulled up into the clouds to form another area of low pressure underneath.

As a result, air rushes upwards into the sky which creates clouds and thunderstorms. The storm will then gather more and more strength as air and water continue to feed its growth, and it will start to rotate, which causes dangerously high winds. This rotation also creates an area of clear weather in the very middle of the storm called the eye.

Being inside the eye of a storm might lead you to believe that the storm has passed, but in fact, at that point, it would only be about halfway across. And the most devastating rain amounts and wind speeds also lie closest to the eye. Today, we have a system that gauges hurricane strength, and based on wind speeds, a storm falls into one of five categories.

A Category 1 storm will have wind speeds of 74 to 95 miles per hour, or 119 to 138 kilometers per hour. While a Category 5 hurricane has wind speeds in excess of 157 miles per hour, or 253 kilometers per hour. As a result of this, the damage prediction assigned to a Category 5 hurricane is simply the word "catastrophic".

In any case, in the early morning hours of August 26th, the James and the Angel Gabriel both encountered some of the strongest parts of the storm. Worse yet, they were so close to making landfall, but by then, the ships found themselves trapped in the raging Atlantic Ocean. As conditions went from a few showers to violent thunderstorms, the Angel Gabriel sent many of its passengers on longboats to nearby Pemaquid, Maine.

There, they were welcomed into homes by residents to take refuge from the storm. Others, including the crew, remained on the ship which had dropped its anchor in preparation to ride the hurricane out. Not long after the areas around the eye closed in though, the wind and rough seas caused the anchor rope to snap, and the ship almost instantly crumbled into pieces.

This meant that everyone who remained aboard the ship was also instantly lost at sea. To the south, the captain of the James was desperately trying to make it to the Isles of Shoals in hopes of finding a cove for protection, but it encountered the same problem as its companion ship. The James was equipped with several anchors, but the storm snapped the thick, strong ropes attached to them like they were twigs.

The ship was then helpless to save itself as it encountered a 20-foot, or 6-meter storm surge, which is simply a rise in sea level produced by the energy of the hurricane. The fierce winds were also blowing the James toward land which was almost certainly destroyed like the Angel Gabriel. But just when it seemed like all hope was lost, the storm shifted and began to blow the ship back toward the ocean.

On board, the passengers celebrated this development as the crew carefully fixed a storm sail and managed to navigate the ship to the safety of Hampton Harbor in New Hampshire. As the storm continued further northward toward the Boston area, conditions began to get bad for the passengers of the Watch and Wait. They wouldn't be as lucky as those aboard the James, and shortly after the storm was over them, they were thrown into some rocky outcroppings.

On impact, the Watch and Wait almost exploded from the force of hitting the rocks, killing some of those on board instantly. Others were left in a desperate predicament, clinging onto the rocks for dear life before the ocean inevitably washed them out to sea. Anthony, however, by some miracle, made it to the safety shore and rode out the raging storm while completely exposed.

When the hurricane began to clear, he began to walk the beach of the island, looking at the wreckage of the ship that also carried his wife and four children, along with the Averys. He held out hope that he'd find them somewhere on the island, but he appeared to be completely alone. Then, just ahead, he spotted movement in some of the wreckage and ran toward it.

Struggling to free herself was Anthony's wife, Mary. Not only had she survived the storm and the impact, but she lived through being trapped along the shoreline for much of the predawn hours. This relief was then quickly followed by their desperate search to locate their children, but they'd never be found.

Of the 19 passengers and 4 crew, Anthony and Mary were the only survivors of the Watch and Wait wreck. And even worse, they were also then stranded on an island, completely unaware of where they were. Accounts vary, but sometime between 1 and 5 days after the wreck, a passing ship spotted the couple and rescued them.

In the aftermath of this storm, the devastation was so tremendous that records tell of damage that could still be observed as late as the 1680s. It's also estimated that hundreds of thousands of trees came down during the storm, which was so strong that it simply uprooted many of them. An accurate death toll was also impossible to compile, but there were at least 46 people who were estimated to have been killed in one bay alone.

More recently, the National Hurricane Center compiled all of the data and information provided in personal journals, letters, and records of the storm, and came to some staggering conclusions. Using a computer model, they were able to construct the likely path of the storm which shows a crushing direct hit on New England. After it blew to the northwest, it reached as far as Upstate New York before making a sharp turn to the east and heading back out into the Atlantic Ocean.

And at its peak, the storm is estimated to have been a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds up to 156 miles per hour, or 251 kilometers per hour. When it made landfall, it was likely a Category 3 storm, and storm surges also peaked at 21 feet, or 6 meters along the coast of Massachusetts. Meteorologists who study the storm also believe it was the strongest to ever hit north of North Carolina.

As a consolation for his great loss, Anthony was given the island he and his wife landed on. Today, it is known as Thacher Island. The Industrial Revolution that took place between 1760 and 1840, changed life in countless ways as machines, power sources, and new materials made work and production exponentially faster.

One industry that was particularly impacted by the rise of machines was construction. So much that was once done by hand was able to be completed using steam engines, which preceded the gas-powered engines that emerged out of the second Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. As you might imagine, while the use of machines made construction work much easier for the workers, it didn't do much to make the work any less dangerous.

In fact, for much of the 19th century in America, there were no safety measures or precautions in place at all. Today, industries like construction are highly regulated in terms of worker safety and protocol, but back then, the danger was so great on job sites that the construction companies just expected severe injuries and even a death toll by default with new projects. Construction workers would often even have to ensure they had all all their affairs in order before heading off to help with a new project, because the possibility of leaving behind a mourning family without a source of income, was so common.

It also seemed that the more ambitious a project was, the more danger it presented, and that was certainly the case for a job that was so notorious for threatening and taking lives that it became known as the Bloody Pit. This project's official name was the Hoosac Tunnel, and plans called for nearly 5 miles, or almost 8 8 kilometers of rock to be carved out of a mountain in Western Massachusetts to create a railroad tunnel. When it was completed, it would be the second longest tunnel in the world at the time.

And the reason it was so important was that the Hoosac Mountain Range formed a natural barrier between Boston and Upstate New York. Initially, the planned remedy was to dig out a canal using the Deerfield and Hoosac Rivers, but this was eventually scrapped in favor of building a railroad tunnel. Unfortunately, from its inception, the project was convoluted and met with significant opposition from those who saw it as a waste of time and money.

It quickly received the nickname "The Great Bore", and one supreme court justice at the time even remarked that the best use of the tunnel upon completion, would be to put lawyers inside of it and wall up both sides. A better plan, however, might have been to scrap the whole thing entirely. The project's beginnings are traced to the 1841 formation of the Fitchburg Railroad between Boston and Fitchburg, which was established by a paper mill owner named Alvah Crocker.

The project then changed hands a few times in the next decade, and construction finally got underway in 1851. And from the moment the first bit of rock was chipped away, the project seemed doomed. The owner couldn't keep anyone in the position of chief engineer long enough to bother mentioning that he was involved in a legal battle with another railroad company.

This company argued that the new tunnel would compete with one of its established routes. State funding then stopped when that was successful in its attempt to squash the tunnel's construction, and the project quickly went bankrupt. As a result, work stopped, too.

So, for two years, the Hoosac Tunnel project sat idle until the parent company defaulted on its loan. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts then took over, and with the project already well underway, the state had little choice but to complete it. One of the first things it did was send an engineer to Europe to research how countries were carving similar tunnels using nitroglycerin and compressed air to blast away large areas of rock.

In the years after construction resumed in 1863, the project moved along at a steady pace, but because worker safety was what it was at the time, it didn't advance without incident. By 1865, nitroglycerin was employed in the construction of the tunnel, and if you know anything about nitroglycerin, you might be totally unsurprised to learn that it certainly didn't make working conditions any safer. Like, for example, on March 20th that year, three workers had just planted a charge and were retreating to the safety of a bunker when the explosion went off before they could get there.

Two of the men were then buried alive under tons of rock, but the whereabouts of the man who set off the charge were unknown. Somehow, in the retrieval of the two bodies closest to the explosion, workers missed the man who triggered the blast, and his body decomposed under a mound of rock for more than a year. When he was found though, it was initially thought that he was buried as a result of the blast, but it was quickly determined that he did not die like the other two men.

Further examination determined that he had actually been strangled. So not only were workers getting into fatal accidents, but they quite literally also had to worry about being murdered by coworkers. A later investigation into this strange death yielded nothing, and the case remains unsolved.

Although workers just went with the theory that the man was killed by the angry spirits of the other two men who died as a result of his setting off the blast before everyone was safe. Two years later, in 1867, work began on what was called the central shaft which sat in between each of the tunnel's openings. Then, from the summit of one of the Hoosac Mountains, a 1,028-foot, or 313-meter vertical tunnel was drilled all the way down to the railroad tunnel, and this was done for several reasons.

First, it gave construction workers an extra point to work from, as both people and rock debris could be transported up and down the shaft. Second, it would provide the furthest reaches of the tunnel from either side with fresh air. And lastly, the shaft was a way to run power for lighting to the middle section.

At the mouth of this central shaft, high above the tunnel's construction, several different buildings were built, including an office, a storage space, and an area to house tanks of naphthalene gas, which is also simply called naphtha. Now, if you've ever had the misfortune of smelling mothballs, that's naphtha, and it has a variety of uses. It's a highly flammable gas and could be used to produce gasoline, which was its primary purpose at the Hoosac Tunnel job site.

By October 17th of that year, naphtha was a relatively new addition to construction work, and just the day before, it had been pumped into the tunnel to run lighting for workers in the middle section for the very first time. That afternoon, 17 men had just been lowered into the shaft via hoist to begin work, clearing debris from the most recent nitroglycerin blast. Moments later, and without any warning whatsoever, the naphtha ignited from a lamp that had been set down around 20 feet from the tanks at the summit.

An explosion then shot down the shaft toward the workers— four of which were fortunately close enough to the mouth to escape. And although they would survive the incident, all four of them had their clothing literally burned away. The other 13 men working at the 538-foot mark inside the unfinished shaft, were not so lucky.

The explosion sent debris and mangled construction equipment down the shaft on top of the men, and at the surface, all the buildings were completely engulfed in flames. The hoist, which was made of iron and thick timber, burned hot and fast, causing it to eventually collapse and disappear into the shaft in pieces. And as if the flaming chunks of debris falling weren't enough, there was also danger from below.

As part of the destruction of the summit, pumps that were responsible for preventing the shaft from flooding, were completely knocked out, and it quickly began to fill with water. Then, for the better part of two days, the platform with the mouth and all the buildings around it burned, making any rescue attempts completely out of the question. When the blaze was finally extinguished enough to approach the shaft, one of the men volunteered to be let down using a rope to see if he could get a visual on the other 13 inside at the time of the explosion.

This was no small feat either— the hoist wasn't just inoperable; it was gone, so the only way to lower him was by manpower. Conditions inside the shaft were also unknown, and if there was a fire still burning deeper down, it could make things inhospitable pretty quickly. So, before entering, the man actually took a moment to write out his own will.

When that was complete, he attached himself to one end of the rope and began the journey downward, having no idea what might await him. Once he reached a depth of about 600 feet, or 183 meters from the surface, he was finally able to get a visual on the destruction below him. The shaft was filled with water to around 100 feet, or 33 meters below him, and the top of the water was covered in debris from the hoist.

Seeing this, he quickly signaled to the men above him to begin pulling him back to the surface, but the shaft wasn't done threatening lives just yet. In all of the destruction, the upper part of the shaft is filled with naphtha. So on the way up, the worker nearly lost consciousness, and by the time he was pulled from the mouth at the summit, he was near passing out and possibly even death.

Several workers then rushed to him and began trying to keep him awake, and when he was recovered enough to speak, he could only whisper the words, "No hope. " about what he saw inside the shaft. One of the men lost that day was married with seven children, and another two left behind wives of their own.

The rest were younger and hadn't married yet, but that's not even the most tragic aspect of the incident. When workers were finally able to make it down the shaft to where the men were working several months after the explosion, they were stunned by what they found there. It was clear that some of the men survived the falling debris and rising water long enough to build a makeshift raft.

But since no further efforts were made to reach the area until that point, the survivors likely suffocated in their final moments as the fires raged above them. Incredibly, the tragedy at the central shaft did little to stall work as blasting and construction continued for another 7 years. Finally, the last 16 feet, or 5 meters of rock were removed on Thanksgiving Day in 1874 near the town of North Adams, and on February 9th, 1875, the very first train loaded with dignitaries and reporters entered the completed tunnel.

From the beginning, the tunnel was projected to cost around 2 million dollars. It would actually end up taking almost 25 years to complete and cost 21 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation, the same project today would cost around 600 million.

That is not the important figure, however, when it comes to the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel. The 13 men who were killed in the 1867 explosion were just a fraction of the total number of deaths that occurred there over the years of work. Accidents were frequent, and workers were constantly at risk of rockfalls, other explosions, and tumbles off of ladders and scaffolding.

Working conditions grew so bad that construction briefly stopped in 1865 when the thousand plus workers all went on strike and began burning buildings in protest. Things eventually settled and work resumed, but things were hardly safer. From start to finish, there were confirmed 135 men killed during the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel, but it's believed that it claimed closer to nearly 200.

The tunnel is still in operation today, with some calling it the most haunted place in Massachusetts. If you made it this far, thanks so much for watching. If you have a story suggestion, like one of these disasters or a strange disappearance, or even something true crime-related, I'd love to hear it, and you can submit it to the form found in the description.

Anyway, thanks again, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.