How long does it take to read Dark Tide?
The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
Stephen Puleo
Dark Tide by Stephen Puleo takes about 5 hours to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours
A weekend read
First published 2003. 273 pages, about 75,075 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 21 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 8 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window. "Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgorging its contents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outset traveled at 35 miles an hour. It demolished wooden homes, even the brick fire stateion. The number of dead wasn't known for days. It would be years before a landmark court battle determined who was responsible for the disaster. - Back cover.
Subjects: Floods, Alcohol industry, Industrial accidents, Molasses industry, Accidents, History
