"The great walk recommended to the travellers was the Mount Pelé, from where the fairy-like sight embraced all the island, and where a fresh lake filled the volcano... In 79, in Pompéi also, the extinct crater of the Vesuvius, surrounded by plantations and country cottages, did not let suppose the catastrophe".
(Notes from a Traveler, Le Pélerin, 20th May 1902.)
Saint-Pierre the day before the eruption
Era of sugar to that of rum At the beginning of the XX century, Saint-Pierre and his 26000 inhabitants remains the greatest urban centre of Martinique. The economy is also flourishing there only formerly. The rich person inhabitants of the city, traders or owners of plantation, have to adapt to the deep consecutive upheavals with the abolition of slavery in 1848, and with the slump in prices of sugar at the beginning of the years 1880. Indeed, the prohibition of very advantageous milked blacks makes suddenly null and void the bases of the saving in plantation. From now on obliged to pay their workers, the sugar dwellings see to fly away their production costs and do not manage any more to support the increasing competition of the beet sugar on the metropolitan market. Result, much of growers go bankrupt and involve in their fall the most fragile commercial firms. But that does not prevent the majority of the great creole white families of Saint-Pierre from continuing to thrive. Helped by the rich person allowances whom they receive in 1848 for each slave that they had, they modernize their exploitations and give up the production of sugar to devote itself almost exclusively to that of rum. A product having the remunerative and not very greedy advantage of being in workers. Considerable investments are carried out and of the distillings built per tens, with of which some in full downtown area. The reconversion is a success. In 1900, Saint-Pierre becomes the first rum exporter in the world.
An animated political and social life
If the békée oligarchy succeeded in maintaining its economic capacity after the abolition of slavery, it does not go from there in the same way at the political level. Since 1871, the public school and especially the voting rights extended to the population of color deeply modified the local landscape. Increasingly marked tensions are done day between the new voters won over to the Republic, and the békés nostalgic ones of the slave period. The atmosphere is all the more heavy. Last days of Saint-Pierre
The volcano comes back to life
It is in this deplorable climate still reinforced by the fights of the first turn of the legislative elections, that the Pelée mountain awaking intervenes. Since the beginning of the year 1902, one notes the appearance increasingly frequent of fumerolles escaped from the volcano, and in April the movement accelerates. With the fume and the odor of suffers is added a seismic activity which shakes all the north of the island. The underwater telegraphic cables which connect Saint-Pierre to the Dominica and to the Guadeloupe are broken. At the top of the volcano, the dry pond fills of hot water and mud, that the eruption of May 5 precipitates in the valley Blanche, killing on its passage 25 employees of the Guerin factory, and causing a tidal wave in bay. Frightened and inconvenienced by the clouds of ashes which bury their communes, the inhabitants of the north of the island give up their houses to come to take refuge in mass in Saint-Pierre.
A underestimated danger and very close elections
In the city, one organizes oneself. The refugees are accomodated by charitable pierrotins or the priests who their open the doors of the churches. A scientific commission is setting-up to evaluate the gravity of the danger. Unfortunately volcanology is still at the time, an ignorant embryonic science of the phenomena of volcanic cloud, and they are especially flows lavas which are awaited and dreaded. Everyone agrees on the imminence of a major eruption, but the majority of the population, reinforced in this idea by the reassuring declarations of the authorities, hopes that the town of Saint-Pierre will be saved and decides to remain on the spot. It seems indeed improbable that the lava succeeds in reaching the city. Relatively far from the crater, the six kilometers which separate it from the volcano are traversed by deep valleys which one thinks that they will channel as in the past the volcanic lava. Consequently, only a few hundreds of inhabitants take the road of Fort-de-France. The more so as the local middle-class balks to leave its houses and its richnesses to the range of possible plunderers.
May 8, 1902, account of a catastrophe
From the 5 to May 7 the volcanic activity intensifies and the population takes fear
On May 6 the clouds are done denser. A thick layer of ash covers the city and penetrates in the dwellings. In the streets, it is silence, ash chokes the noise of the steps on the paving stones. With far, the grondements of the volcano become deafening. Mud flows continue to descend sporadically the slopes of Mount-Pelé, while the first volcanic clouds are observed side of the borough of the Preacher in the north of Saint-Pierre. The population of the city already worried since the events of May 5 and the destruction of the Guerin factory is gained by the panic. May 7 in the afternoon, the mayor telephones the Governor to ask for to him the sending of a military detachment intended to maintain the order. Fortunately, its request is not listened. At four hours, it is the Governor himself accompanied by his wife and some senior officials, who returns in Saint-Pierre to reassure the population. The reassuring official statement published by the scientific commission the evening of May 7 give assistance in this direction. The newspapers are party. With the drama day before, the newspaper "Opinion" does not hesitate to titrate: "Prêchotins, my friends, sleep quiet!" The tension falls down a little, but does not prevent the many faithful ones from being assembled in the churches to pray all the night.
Era of sugar to that of rum
From the 5 to May 7 the volcanic activity intensifies and the population takes fear
Letters sent to their close relations by pierrotins at the beginning of May 1902.
