Mont Pelee
Martinique is a beautiful tropical island located in the Caribbean. It officially belongs to France, but England has tried to take it over many times. Thousands of tourists visit it every year. lt has many beautiful beaches. It has a quite a few villages, the biggest of which have a population of about thirty thousand. In the center of the island looms a large volcano named Mont Pelee.
Mont Pelee was believed to be inactive but in 1902 it erupted. The animals in the town at it's base had been very restles the night before the eruption, dogs were howling , cats meowing. But no one took the warning seriously because the volcano was supposedly inactive. People went on with their lives but some time the next day Mont Pelee erupted. Toxic gasses swept over the town, killing everyone before the lava could even reach them. The gasses burned everyone's skin and lungs as they breathed it in. It melted the metal in over a hundred ships, sinking them. Over thirty thousand people were killed.
Out of the entire population of the town only one person survived, a prisoner who was being kept so far under ground that the gasses could not reach him. He was down there by himself without food for weeks. He was relieved of his jail sentence a week after he was discovered.
When I was in grade four we went to Martinique, and lived there for six months. We lived in another town, but we visited Mont Pelee a couple of times. Once we went on a submarine ride down to where all the ships had sunk. We could see the outline of the ships under many layers of coral. The ships had become homes for many beautiful species of fish.
You can search for more information on Mont Pelee at Yahoo
Here is another useful site on Mont Pelee Mont Pelee
Quiz
Created & last updated April 10, 2000 by Andrew