Mount Pelee is a stratovolcano, some 4582 feet in elevation and comprised primarily of pyroclastic rock, on the north end of the island of Martinique in the Lesser Antilles. It is best known for its eruption on May 8, 1902, which killed some 29,000 people--the most destructive eruption of the 20th century in terms of loss of life, despite the fact that the eruption itself was in fact much weaker than those of, for example, Mount St. Helens and Mount Pinatubo.

At the time of the 1902 eruption, the island of Martinique was a fairly wealthy French colony. The city of St. Pierre, located some three miles south of the volcano, had a population of considerably more than 20,000 at the time; Pelee had not erupted since 1851, and little damage from previous eruptions had been documented.

In the late spring of 1902, that began to change. The first (mostly harmless) eruptions began in late April, and continued with increasing intensity for the next several days. By May 3, ash had begun to accumulate around the volcano, and on the fifth a large mudflow occurred to the north of St. Pierre; despite this, however, the government of St. Pierre attempted to discourage its citizens from leaving. St. Pierre's population, in fact, increased significantly in the days before the eruption, swelled by refugees from the surrounding country.

Early in the morning of May 8, a series of very loud explosions were heard from the volcano, swiftly followed by a massive pyroclastic flow. This fluid-like cloud of superheated ash and gas covered the southeastern portion of Mt. Pelee within minutes, engulfing the town of St. Pierre and a number of ships at anchor off the island.

St. Pierre was destroyed almost completely. The combination of intense heat, lack of oxygen, and the sheer force of the blast destroyed or set afire almost all of St. Pierre's buildings and killed the vast majority of the town's population; of those in the city at the time, there were only two survivors. One survivor, at the time a prisoner in the town's jail, later capitalized on the experience as a circus attraction. Destroyed ships included the American liner Roriama and the British steamer Roddam. On the third of August in the same year, another pyroclastic flow covered the village of Morne Rouge, with similar results.

Besides the loss of life and destruction of property, Mt. Pelee's 1902 eruption is notable because of the growth of a large volcanic spine, a spire of solidified lava pushed out of the volcano's mouth by magma pressure. While impressive (around a thousand feet in height at its peak), the Pelee spine was short-lived, collapsing in mid-1903.

Other than the 1902 eruption, three episodes of Mt. Pelee's volcanic activity have been documented, all comparatively harmless; two eruptions were observed prior to the 1902 event, starting in 1792 and 1851, and one after, starting in 1929. Since 1932, the volcano has remained inactive.