Louis-Auguste Cyparis had a world that was fascinated with his story. The only survivor in a town completely leveled by a volcano. He was pardoned of all crimes against him and found fame by traveling around the country and telling his story. He eventually took on the stage name of Ludger Sylbaris which is the name he is still remembered by. He was referred to as “the man who lived through Doomsday” and “the Most Marvelous Man in the World.”
He ended up joining Barnum & Bailey’s circus becoming the first black man to ever star in the segregated show. Part of his act was to have him appear in a replica of the cell that he was imprisoned in when he survived the volcano. He died of natural causes in 1929.
The prison cell that saved his life can still be found today in the small town of Saint-Pierre. The city that was once the most important city of Martinique and considered “the Paris of the Caribbean” never recovered fully from the devastation. Some small villages have been built where the city once stood but today the population of the Commune of Saint-Pierre is only about 5,000.
Perhaps the most disheartening part of the story is that there was plenty of warning that the volcano was going to erupt. There were reports of rumblings from the volcano and people believed it was going to erupt. Many people even traveled to Saint-Pierre believing that the two valleys that rested between the mountain and the large city would protect them from the lava. Unfortunately, the devastation of the city was caused by pyroclastic flow which is a fast-moving current of hot gas and rock. There was no real understanding of this type of cloud or what it could do at the time of the Mt. Pelée eruption. The rocks and boulders move within the current at such speed that they will flatten trees and buildings in their path. The hot gases travel at such a rate of speed that they can incinerate living organisms instantly.