A Historical Novelist Goes Digging in Martinique

Heatstroke, motion sickness, exhaustion, bloodthirsty insects, and having to be escorted off a mountain by gendarmes were just a few of the privations I suffered while researching my latest novel ISLAND ON FIRE on the island of Martinique. To be blunt, conditions were bad—constant 100° temperatures and 99% humidity—but the results more than made up for the hardships. What I discovered while exploring the city of St. Pierre were pieces of the past, evidence of lives suddenly cut short by the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902: a button, shards of pottery, broken porcelain, pieces of exploded bottles, the remnants of a flower pot, a destroyed tea set. The past comes back to life in a terrifying fashion in St. Pierre, Martinique.

St. Pierre, Martinique, once called the Paris of the West Indies was totally destroyed on May 8, 1902.

Pottery shards are all that remain from someone's ruined tea set. 

An old button dug up near the Rue Levassor made of natural material, either horn, ivory, bone, or possibly even wood, carved from the tagua nut which was used extensively until WWI.

Saint Pierre was once the most important cultural, financial, and administrative city in the French West Indies. But on the morning of May 8, 1902, it was completely destroyed when Mount Pelée erupted at approximately 8 am, sending out a pyroclastic flow that killed more than 30,000 people in five minutes and reduced the city to rubble. Today, the city has been largely reclaimed, but it will never recover the same vibrancy and prominence it had at the turn of the last century.

The Rue Victor Hugo after the erupton.

As I unearthed each item I was well aware the object had once belonged to an individual, and that it played some part in that person’s life. That's the poignancy of discovering the past: you have the chance to connect to someone who lived centuries ago, and who died by a catastrophic act of nature. When I discovered a button or various shards of pottery, I was perhaps the first person in over 100 years to touch these items. That's sad given the fate of the people of St. Pierre. When they died they had no way of telling future generations their story. I considered that my mission: I went to St. Pierre in order to tell their story.

A selfie taken in the ruins of "America's Pompeii".
Note the modern-day graffiti on the Roman-style columns are still doing the job they were designed to do, which is to provide a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below.
The graffiti says: "Madinina: Death" (Madinina is the old Carib name for Martinique.)

     

In many ways, St. Pierre is "the Pompeii of the Americas" because it resembles Pompeii by the cataclysmic manner in which the city was wiped off the face of the earth. Almost like an atomic bomb. The city and all its inhabitants were decimated by the release of the volcano's pyroclastic flows, those supercharged gases from deep inside the earth. Among the rubble was a once-vibrant theater, a hotel, fashionable stores, a Chamber of Commerce, the barracks, the jail, a psychiatric hospital, one of the first of its kind, the lighthouse, the fort, all the beautiful homes, all of it was reduced to rubble in the span of five minutes.

It wasn't even a question of outrunning the lava, with the pyroclastic flows traveling at a rate of 500 mph (700 km/hr) at temperatures of 1,830 degrees F (1000 degrees C) the people were asphyxiated almost instantaneously and incinerated within seconds. There was no chance of escape. Also called a nuée ardente, a pyroclastic flow is comprised of hot ash, lava fragments, and fiery gases ejected by explosion from a volcano, flowing downslope at tremendous speeds. It all happened so fast, the residents of St. Pierre had no idea their end would be so violent, yet so brief.

St. Pierre, Martinique before it was destroyed in a volcanic eruption.

As you meander through the ruins, only a few elements of the city’s former life are still visible: a few retaining walls, spigots, iron gates, the remains of fountains and staircases.

The remains of a public fountain located on the Rue Levassor built in 1850.

An old spigot is all that remain of a fresh water fountain in the mental asylum.

     

The damage was extraordinary, and what is even more surprising is that the ruins have been left largely untouched since 1902. The entire town is a vast archaeological dig. While there, I visited all the major sites where the action of my novel takes place. I would pick a location and dig down only several inches to see what the earth would reveal. In every single case I unearthed something from the past. I will take you on a virtual tour of this extraordinary town that was obliterated by a volcanic explosion, yet has managed to come back from the dead.

Shards of tiles that have been buried for more than 100 years.

The remains of the city engineer's building, on the Rue Levassor

Ruins of the fort cathedral on the north side of town.

The isolation chamber in the mental asylum

The ruins of the theater, probably what would have been the orchestra pit.

Remains of the mental asylum.

Inside a destroyed warehouse in the Figuier Quarter

On the Pont Roche, the oldest bridge in St. Pierre that is still being used for cars!

An inside look inside one of the isolation rooms in the mental asylum. This is a restraining chair. Built in 1839 as a public and private institute for the mentally insane, the asylum was one of the first in the world to offer hydrotherapy to its patients using water from the nearby Riviere Roxelane, and they even record some successful cases.

Standing in the ruins of the fort cathedral. People live in close proximity to the crumbling remains of old St. Pierre, as if having volcanic ruins in one's backyard is the most natural thing in the world.

Rue Mont au Ciel, in the fashionable mulatto quarter of St. Pierre. Until the 1990's this passageway was still covered with rubble from the eruption of 1902.

The fountain at the entrance of the St. Pierre theater, where the opening scene of my novel takes place.

The original cobblestoned Rue Levassor that runs parallel to the Riviere Roxelane, where I found so many artifacts. At the end of this street is where the mental asylum and the Engineering building are located.

The ruins of St. Pierre from 1902.

The ruins today. The biggest difference between today and then is the growth of new vegetation.

     

My adventure in St. Pierre left me exhilarated and humbled at the same time. It is breathtaking to stumble upon buried objects, yet so humbling to know these people died by an act of God so powerful, so terrifying, that only one person was left to tell the tale. If I learned anything from my experience, it is to never take anything for granted. Especially the gift of life. If a once-beautiful, thriving French town can be reduced to rubble in five minutes, it shows how fragile, precious, and fleeting life is. Perhaps that is the takeaway from St. Pierre: to live each day as if it is your last.