The eruption of Mont Pelée, Martinique, 1902

A collection of loose gravure prints measuring approximately 190 x 125 mm, captioned in ink on the backs of the prints.
The great tragedy which overtook the island of Martinique and razed St Pierre in May 1902 is made more poignant by what we know of the city and its people before Mont Pelée erupted. Lafcadio Hearn spent some time on the island shortly before the disaster and gives a description which tallies with accounts given by other visitors:
'St Pierre is the quaintest and prettiest withal among West Indian cities - all stone-built and stone-flagged, with very narrow streets ... the architecture is that of the seventeenth century and reminds one of the antiquated French portion of New Orleans ... the inhabitants are fantastic, astonishing - a population of the 'Arabian Nights'. It is many-coloured, but the dominant tint is yellow ... straight as palms, and supple and tall, these coloured women and men impress one powerfully by their dignified carriage and easy elegance of movement ...', (Hearn 1902).
Renowned equally for the beauty of its architecture and the spirit and liveliness of its people, it also had a certain reputation for moral laxity among the other West Indian islands and inevitably there came suggestions of divine punishment after the all-encompassing destruction of St Pierre:
'St Pierre has always had a reputation in the West Indies, as being a very gay city in which morals, among some sections of the population, were very lax. The lower classes of the coloured people had become increasingly irreligious, and we are told that scenes of a sacrilegious nature were seen during the recent carnival which ... is observed just before Lent ... the fact remains that the destruction of St Pierre has been of a most extraordinary nature, strongly reminiscent of that of the City of the Plains'. (Bell 1946).
Hesketh Bell was at the time Administrator of the neighbouring island of Dominica and his book gives a good description of the sequence of events which led up to the final catastrophe. Mont Pelée had been inactive for nearly a century, its dormant crater in fact filled by a lake, but a certain amount of activity had been noticed in the preceding months, a seismologist sent from Paris stating however, that should the volcano erupt St Pierre stood in little danger. The first intimations that this might not be so came to Hesketh Bell on the afternoon of May 4 when he heard 'a mysterious booming sound, just like the firing of guns at sea'. On May 5 reports came in that La Soufrière in St Vincent was also showing signs of activity (which volcano was to kill 2000 people in the same year), and that flashes of flame were issuing from Mont Pelée. The next day, news of the disaster and loss of life became more concrete, followed by loss of telegraphic contact with Martinique. It was not until May 9 that Hesketh Bell learnt the full extent of the destruction:
'I was dressing for dinner, just now, when I suddenly heard a terrible cry rise almost simultaneously from all parts of the town. A moment later my orderly rushed in exclaiming 'Oh, Sir! The whole of St Pierre has been destroyed today and everyone is dead!' ... The whole of St Pierre seemed to be enveloped in dense black smoke through which masses of flames shot up to a great height. The whole city, which is about the size of Eastbourne, seemed to be nothing but a gigantic furnace. The fall of hot dust and ashes was so thick, even far out at sea, that it was quite impossible for the ship to approach the shore'. (Bell 1946, pp. 55-56).
The loss of life throughout the island was enormous, and estimated at 30,000 in all. There were few survivors, one being a prisoner, who was incarcerated in an underground bomb-proof magazine. It withstood the effects of the great cloud of gas which belched out of the side of the mountain and enveloped the city. This man, under the stage name Ludger Sylbaris, later travelled with Barnum & Bailey's circus as 'the man who lived through Doomsday'.
The photographs in this collection may possibly have been taken by a member of the American National Geographic Society Expedition which visited the island shortly after the tragedy.
A set of ten postcards 'Saint-Pierre, Martinique, avant la Catastrophe', published by Benoit Jeannette, has been added to this collection. They have been catalogued as Y307E/34-43.

Unless restrictions apply, the collection is open for consultation by researchers using the Manuscripts Reading Room at Cambridge University Library. For further details on conditions governing access please contact mss@lib.cam.ac.uk. Information about opening hours and obtaining a Cambridge University Library reader's ticket is available from the Library's website (www.lib.cam.ac.uk).

Includes index.

A catalogue of the collection can be found on ArchiveSearch.

This collection is available on microfiche: South America/Caribbean, fiche number 4.

good condition.

Some fine photographs of St Pierre before its destruction can be seen at Y307A/63-70.

For two brief personal accounts of St Pierre see: Hearn, Lafcadio (1902), 'Two years in the french West Indies', New York: Harper; Bell, Henry Hesketh (1946), 'Glimpses of a governor's life', London: Sampson Low. A full scientific account of this and other eruptions that occurred in the West Indies in 1902 can be found in: National Geographic Society (1902), 'The national geographic magazine', Vol. 13.

This item collection level description was entered by NE and MJC using information from the original typescript catalogue.

Unknown