(March 26, 2019) There is disagreement over how the influenza outbreak came to our shores. The website Boston.gov says that on Aug. 17, 1918, two sailors housed at Commonwealth Pier reported to sickbay.The website claims they were the first Americans stricken with what came to be known as the Spanish flu. By the end of that week there were 100 cases reported among the sailors stationed in Boston.

In September of that year, at Camp Devens, an Army base just outside Worcester, 45,000 soldiers were being trained for what turned out to be the last battles of World War I. Most of them would never make it to the killing fields of France. They had found their own killing fields without leaving Massachusetts. By the end of that month influenza had overwhelmed the Army hospital there. Deaths averaged 100 a day.

The Worcester Telegram wrote that there were 8,000 sick men looking for help at a hospital with the capacity to treat 2,000.

“Extra bodies, living and dead, were stashed in halls, corridors, and outlying buildings,” the newspaper wrote.

Everyone knew what was happening on the mainland. But that was the mainland. Nantucketers figured the fact that they lived on an island would provide a barrier to the worst of the Spanish influenza pandemic. And then one morning they realized it wouldn’t.


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