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The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster That Claimed 30,000 Lives

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As the author's son who accompanied him to Martinique to do the research for this book, I need to take some minor exceptions to the review (below) posted by one Marc Bernstein. Last Days is most certainly not a novel (as he labels it). The book identifies its sources on a chapter-by-chapter basis, most of them publications dating from 1902-1903, supplemented by our own field observations (we rejected quite a few of the contemporary descriptions as geographically or physically impossible, for instance). If the book happens to read like a novel, that was precisely my father's intent. But the characters are all historically authentic and their stories are well-researched and quite true.

We, and the publisher, were well-aware of the discrepancies in the spellings of some of the place-names. We used the spellings that appeared in the century-old English-language sources (George Kennan's 1903 use of AcierErather than Assier,Efor instance). Inconsistencies in spelling are a common occurence; drive, for instance, from France to Basel, Switzerland, and
even today you'll see the spelling BaleEon road signs on the French side of the border.

As for the explanations of vocanic phenomena, they were purposely kept nontechnical. The intent was not to tell the reader everything that is known today, but rather to examine what pockets of ignorance aggravated the 1902 disaster. One of the themes of this book is that scientific inquiry is driven by ignorance, and because at the time of the catastrophe very little was known about volcanoes, a lot of people began asking a lot of scientifically fruitful questions.

Length:: 4:15 Mins

"I believe it's clear, gentlemen, that we must reach a conclusion. And in my view, we have but two alternatives. We either organize an evacuation, or we do not. If we do, we create immense hardships not only for the forty thousand evacuated, but also for the seventeen thousand citizens of Fort-de-France who must cope with the presence of so many refugees. But if we do not evacuate, we create no more discomfort than Mother Nature herself has already delivered to the people of this fair city and the surrounding villages. If we do evacuate, many personal possessions will be looted or otherwise lost, and the civil upheaval will have effects that continue long after Mont Pelee has returned to slumber. But if we do not evacuate, St. Pierre's citizenry will be on hand to preserve their personal properties and possessions. If we do evacuate, we will need to provide food and public services in Fort-de-France. But if we do not evacuate, we will need to provide no greater a quantity of food and services here in St. Pierre. So, I ask you, gentlemen, is this really an issue?"
- Colonel Gerbault

Dr. Zabrowski paints a compelling picture that encompasses the policical, economic, cultural and social life and times of St. Pierre and Martinique a century ago. This amazing scientific book captures the reader much as you might expect of an intrieguing substantative novel. One's fund of knowledge is easily and enjoyablly advanced with regard to natural disasters, human behavior, history, etc. The scope of his research left no stone unturned to the point that one can almost imagine walking along the cobble stone streets in the St. Pierre of yesterday. Thunderous Mt. Pelee as well as the people and political characters come alive in living color. This author's ability to captivate is unequalled as he recounts scientifically and with historical accuracy these century old events. This would make a good movie. I will eagerly await more from Dr. Ernest Zebrowski.

At last we find a scientist who is able to portray history with a truly human face! The combination is so rare and exhilarating that upon completing this book one feels as if they've lost a close friend in the character of Father Mary. Zebrowski is able to bring him back to life for us and allow him to teach us a very valuable lesson in compassion for our fellow man. The spotlight is focused on an indifferent French government who chose to ignore the obvious signs of impending disaster and the heroic attempt of one man to avert it. A truly moving story with a moral lesson that should become required reading for children of all ages!

This review is unusual in that it compares two books that were published nearly at the same time and both deal with the same event: the devastating 1902 eruption of Montagne Pelée volcano on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

The first of these books is Alwyn Scarth's "LA Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelée, the Worst Volcanic Disaster of the 20th Century", the second is Ernest Zebrowski's "The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed 30,000 Lives", published just four months earlier. Both books mark the 100th anniversary of the eruption that virtually exterminated the town of Saint-Pierre along with nearly all of its inhabitants. Both fulfill an important mission: putting an end to the incredible amount and degree of misinformation veiling that tragic event to the present day.

The 1902 Montagne Pelée (commonly translated into Mount Pelée in the English literature) produced a phenomenon called pyroclastic flows (and/or surges), which had until then not been recognized by geologists - although today we know that they occur quite frequently. Just as I write this review (early February 2006), pyroclastic flows are spilling down the slopes of Mount St. Augustine volcano in Alaska. They were produced by nearly all the famous explosive eruptions in history, including Mount St. Helens (1980), Pinatubo (1991), Krakatau (1883), and Vesuvius (79 A.D.).

However, there was no common conscience of pyroclastic flows among scientists and people living on volcanoes in early 1902, when Montagne Pelée stirred and gradually came back to life. What was known at the time about volcanoes was limited to lava flows, ash falls, and tsunamis (the latter are rarely caused by volcanic eruptions). Often, eruptions were confused with earthquakes (which are a completely different geological process). So people in Saint-Pierre most worried about such things, and they had no means to know that Montagne Pelée held something else in store for them.

Many accounts about the 1902 events on Martinique blamed Governor Mouttet for the death of about 28,000 people in the eruption. Some writers accused him even to have posted troops on the roads exiting the threatened town to prevent the inhabitants from evacuating. Just the fact that Mouttet went to stay in Saint-Pierre the night before the tragic eruption says enough - he did not know, and there was no way of knowing, that the volcano would unleash a deadly pyroclastic flow the next morning.

Both Scarth and Zebrowski spend a lot of words and reasoning to clan the memory of Mouttet from these unjustified accusations. They do a lot of similar work concerning the vast amounts of contorted or false information regarding many other aspects of the 1902 events. There are, however, some significant differences between these two books.

Scarth has looked much more profoundly into the French sources of information, which Zebrowski - he himself admits in the introduction to his book that he is not too familiar with French - has done to a much lesser degree. Scarth's slightly higher degree of scrutiny does lead to a more precise result, which goes from the correct spelling of names (e.g., Mouttet's followup governor, whose correct name - as given by Scarth - was Lhuerre, not L'heurre as in Zebrowski) to the numbers of victims of the 1902 events: there were actually three eruptions in that year in the Caribbean that killed each more than 1000 people.

The first, on 7 May 1902, occurred on the island of St. Vincent, where the Soufrière volcano killed some 1560; only 18 hours later, Montagne Pelée snuffed out some 27,000 souls, and the same volcano killed another 1200 on 30 August that year. These numbers are those most likely to represent the real death toll - which is quite a few thousand less than those numbered by Zebrowski. Some of the most accurate scientific accounts of those events are cited in Zebrowski's bibliographic list but little of their information is used in his book. This is most notable in the case of T.Anderson and J.Flett (1903), who wrote a harrowing tale of the Soufrière (St. Vincent) eruption and witnessed one of the major eruptions of Montagne Pelée in July 1902. Interestingly, the most prominent scientist studying Montagne Pelée and its activity in that period was the French professor A. Lacroix, who is mentioned relatively briefly in Zebrowski's book. His monumental monograph "La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions" (1904) is not even included in the bibliography, which does, however, refer to the less known and somewhat controversial "La Montagne Pelée après ses éruptions", published by Lacroix in 1908.

We find less errors of this kind in Scarth's book. This is partly due to the fact that Scarth has close relationships to volcanologists who have worked, and are working, on the 1902 Montagne Pelée eruption and its effects. Some of them are French. Im am certain that Scarth has indeed read through at least large portions of Lacroix' "La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions". I know that book fairly well. It does not very much deal with the political and social turmoils preceding and following the eruption. But as for details concerning the eruption itself, and its tremendous effects on human beings and their environment, this is one of the most thrilling things to read - if one is familiar with French. Unfortunately, this makes it quite unaccessible to non-French readers, besides the fact that it is extremely difficult to find (Amazon France has a used copy "in correct state" offered for 995 Euros - more than 1000 US$)...

Without being too critical about the somewhat higher amount of flaws in Zebrowski's book, I find that in the end both Zebrowski and Scarth are definitely worth a read, also because they deal with very different details - so there is not all that much of a repetition there. Both do a precious effort to put things about the 1902 events into the right perspective. I hope that they will help to diminish the vast amount of misinformation currently in circulation.

Catania (Sicily, Italy), 3 February 2006

How could nearly 30,000 people be killed by a volcano unless they were not paying attention? The volcano had been erupting for a month, raining ashes on St. Pierre just four miles from the crater. There were earthquakes, mudflows, and birds dropping dead out of the sky. Yet in a weird twist of mass psychology, very few people evacuated. In fact, many actually moved into the city just before the catastrophe.

Part of this strange true story is told by the victims themselves though letters and cablegrams they sent in the weeks before the disaster. I felt I got to know some of the characters so well that their actions almost seemed reasonable! Almost. I'm sure I would have been inclined to evacuate if I had been living in St. Pierre in May of 1902.

The author has done a great job of bringing the many pieces of this story together. A lot of readers will be fascinated by the parts about the scientists and journalists trying to determine what was happening. Others will be intrigued by the political shenanigans. However, as a social worker, my favorite parts were the human stories of decision and indecision, love and conflict, and the ability of the human spirit to cope with adversity. A facinating book!

A friend gave me a copy of The Last Days of St. Pierre, so I figured I'd at least read the first chapter or so, even though disasters aren't usually my thing. WOW! WHAT A SURPRISE! I had a hard time putting this book down!

The first chapter begins with the personal journal of a sailor who passed some fifty miles from the volcano on the day of the disaster in 1902, then docked on another island to find the burned out hull of a large steamer that had escaped the eruption while 18 other ships sank. Then the scene shifts to Washington, New York, Philadelphia, and Paris, where the first sketchy reports of the disaster are arriving by telegraph. Then the preparations of the scientist and journalists who head off to Martinique to unravel the mysteries about what happened there. No reader can possibly stop here; you have to go on the Chapter 2.

Even though you think you know what's going to happen next, there is one surprise after another. And I found myself really caring about the many of the characters, trying to guess who will die and who will escape in time.

This true story is what I call a "MUST READ!"

I recently read Simon Winchester's "Krakatoa", and it put me to sleep. But here is a fascinating nonfiction book on a similar subject--a historic volcanic disaster--that doesn't seem to have gotten much promotion from its publisher, yet has all the elements that enthrall the reader-- tension, character development, suspense, surprise, substance... leading the reader to often gaze up at the ceiling and say "hmmm..."

The author has done a marvelous job of bringing alive characters that have been dead for a century. Fundamentally, however, this book is about ignorance-- how a lack of knowledge of natural geological processes led to some egregiously erroneous political decisions that sealed the terrible fate of 30,000 humans on the island of Martinique in 1902.

The author, however, does not insult the reader's intelligence, and your conclusions from this fascinating book will be your own.

This book is that rarity - a page turner about geological phenomena. I had no previous interest in or knowledge about volcanoes, but The Last Days of St. Pierre was hard to put down. The tragic history of Mount Pelee, its fatal eruption and horrific aftermath, come alive in the words of contemporary witnesses (and many who did not survive). I could see how Zebrowski must have identified with the adventurer-geologists who investigated the volcano after its initial eruption, for he describes their travels (and travails) vividly.

But this is not just a book for earth scientists. It deserves a wide general readership.

An exceptionally well written and documented book. Previously I had read accounts of this disaster, but none had the depth of Dr. Zebrowski's book on the total destruction of the city of St. Pierre and devastation of much of the Islands of Martinique and St. Vincent. He covers the human side of this tragedy with accuracy and compassion. Zebrowski has drawn from many sources and put the accumulated information into a very readable book. Anyone who likes to read about historical/scientific events should enjoy "The Last Days of St. Pierre".