Mount Pelee Eruption (1902): The Destruction of Saint-Pierre

The eruption of Mount Pelee on 8 May 1902 destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique in a matter of minutes. A searing avalanche of volcanic gas, ash and rock swept over the town and its harbour, killing about 28,000 people. It was the deadliest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century and transformed scientific understanding of explosive volcanoes.

Background: the Paris of the Antilles

Saint-Pierre was the commercial and cultural capital of Martinique, a French colony in the Lesser Antilles. With its theatre, cathedral, botanical garden and busy harbour exporting sugar and rum, it was sometimes called the “Paris of the Antilles”. In 1902 it had around 26,000 to 28,000 inhabitants, plus visitors and refugees from the surrounding countryside.

The town lay about 7 km (4 miles) south of Mount Pelee, a volcano about 1,400 metres high. Pelee had produced minor eruptions in 1792 and 1851, but these had caused little harm, and most people saw the mountain as a benign landmark.

Warning signs

From February and March 1902 people noticed sulphurous smells and steam near the summit. In late April the volcano began to throw out ash, which fell on Saint-Pierre and killed birds and animals. Swarms of ants and venomous snakes driven from the slopes invaded the outskirts of the town, and dozens of people and animals were reportedly killed by snakebite.

On 5 May a torrent of hot mud and debris, a volcanic mudflow called a lahar, swept down the Riviere Blanche and buried the Guerin sugar works near the coast, killing at least 23 people and possibly many more. Panic spread, but many people from outlying villages moved into Saint-Pierre, believing it safer.

The colonial governor, Louis Mouttet, appointed a commission which concluded that the town was not in danger. A legislative election was due on 11 May, and political leaders and the local newspaper urged calm. Mouttet and his wife travelled to Saint-Pierre to reassure the population.

Some people did leave. Some families sent relatives to Fort-de-France, the colonial administrative centre on the south of the island, and a few ship captains chose to sail away as ash fell on their decks. According to well-known accounts, the Italian captain Marino Leboffe of the Orsolina left port on 7 May against the wishes of local merchants, saying that he would rather risk penalties than stay near the volcano.

Overall, though, the town was fuller than usual. Refugees from the countryside crowded into churches, warehouses and homes, and officials later estimated that the population of Saint-Pierre on the morning of 8 May may have been several thousand larger than normal. This is one reason why figures for the death toll vary.

What happened on 8 May 1902

On the morning of 8 May, Ascension Day, Pelee erupted violently at about 7:50 am. Part of the eruption column collapsed and a dense, glowing cloud of superheated gas, ash and rock rushed down the mountain’s southern flank toward the town. Its temperature has been estimated at several hundred degrees Celsius.

The flow reached Saint-Pierre in less than two minutes. It flattened walls, set fire to the town and boiled the sea in the harbour. Most of the 18 or so ships at anchor were capsized or set ablaze; the British steamer Roddam managed to escape, badly damaged, while the Roraima burned with heavy loss of life. Nearly everyone in the town died almost instantly from heat, gas and injuries.

The town burned for days. When rescuers from Fort-de-France arrived, they found a field of ruins. Governor Mouttet and his wife were among the dead.

The survivors

Only a handful of people in or near the town survived, and their exact number is uncertain. The two best-documented survivors were:

• Louis-Auguste Cyparis, a young man held in a stone prison cell with a single small opening facing away from the volcano. He was badly burned but was found alive after several days. He later toured with the Barnum and Bailey Circus as “the man who survived Doomsday”, sometimes under the name Ludger Sylbaris.
• Leon Compere-Leandre, a shoemaker whose house stood at the edge of town. He was burned but able to walk to safety.

Some sailors and passengers on ships in the harbour also survived, many with terrible burns. Later accounts of other survivors, including a young girl said to have hidden in a boat or cave, are less certain.

Later eruptions

Pelee remained active for months. On 20 May another flow swept over the ruins, killing some of those working in them. On 30 August 1902 a further eruption devastated villages on the eastern flank, including Morne-Rouge, killing an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 people.

From late 1902 a huge spine of solidified lava pushed up from the summit. This “tower of Pelee” grew to around 300 metres above the crater floor before crumbling in 1903. The eruption ended in 1905, and Pelee erupted again from 1929 to 1932, without the same loss of life.

The disaster coincided with the eruption of La Soufriere on the nearby island of Saint Vincent on 7 May 1902, which killed about 1,600 people.

Lessons for volcanology

The French geologist Alfred Lacroix led a scientific mission to Martinique and studied the eruption in detail. He described the glowing avalanches as nuees ardentes, “glowing clouds”, and his 1904 study became a founding work of modern volcanology. Such phenomena are now called pyroclastic flows, and the type of eruption that produces them from a collapsing lava dome is sometimes called Peleean.

The disaster showed that explosive volcanoes could kill far from their summits in minutes, and that warning signs such as ashfall, earthquakes and mudflows should not be dismissed. American volcanologist Frank Perret, who studied Pelee’s 1929-1932 eruption, helped establish a permanent observatory there. Martinique’s volcano observatory monitors Pelee to this day.

The tragedy is often compared with other great eruptions, such as Mount Tambora in 1815 and Mount Tarawera in 1886, but Pelee is unusual for destroying a single large town almost instantly.

Myths and facts

Myth: The election kept everyone in town. Political pressure to avoid panic before the 11 May election was real, and the governor did encourage calm. But the deeper problem was that nobody, including the scientists of the time, understood the threat of pyroclastic flows.

Myth: Cyparis was the only survivor. He was the most famous, but Leon Compere-Leandre and several people on ships also survived.

Timeline

• 1902, February-March: Fumaroles and sulphurous smells are reported on Mount Pelee.
• 1902, late April: Ash falls on Saint-Pierre; insects and snakes invade the outskirts.
• 1902, 5 May: A lahar buries the Guerin sugar works.
• 1902, 7 May: La Soufriere erupts on Saint Vincent.
• 1902, 8 May, about 7:50 am: A pyroclastic flow destroys Saint-Pierre.
• 1902, 20 May: A second large flow sweeps over the ruins.
• 1902, 30 August: An eruption kills over a thousand people in Morne-Rouge and nearby villages.
• 1903: The great lava spine on the summit collapses.

Why it matters

The destruction of Saint-Pierre was one of the worst volcanic disasters in recorded history. It revealed the deadly power of pyroclastic flows, gave volcanology some of its core concepts and showed the cost of ignoring a volcano’s warnings.