| The Black Tom Explosion of July 30, 1916 in Jersey City, New Jersey |
| On July 30, 1916 at 2:08 a.m., a major explosion with the power of an earthquake shattered the dark, Sunday morning quiet of Jersey City, New Jersey, to be followed by a succession of explosions which lasted for several hours and impacted areas as far as ninety miles away. The explosions occurred at Black Tom Island, a mile-long pier on a landfill connected to the Jersey City waterfront. Lehigh Valley Railroad Company owned the one-time island and filled in the marshland between Black Tom and the mainland for use as a work yard and warehouse area for the National Dock and Storage Company. But Black Tom had another more sinister function: it was a major munitions depot for materials manufactured by private industries in the American northeast and intended for transport to the Allied Powers of England, France, Italy and Russia at a time when America was supposed to be neutral. Prior to 1915, American industries were free to sell their materials to any buyer, but American rights to "freedom of the seas" were now affected by the blockade of the Central Powers by the British Royal Navy, and British naval control of the Atlantic sea-lanes resulted in the Allies being the only possible customers of American goods..goods which included munitions intended to kill Germans. It was reported that on the night of the attack, two million pounds of ammunition, shrapnel, black powder, dynamite and one hundred thousand pounds of TNT on the Johnson Barge No.17 were awaiting shipment to Britain and France, all stored in an insecure, ungaited facility not designed to safeguard the unaware civilian neighbors nearby. The eight guards on duty fled, but one of them sounded the fire alarm to the Jersey City Fire Department. The fires set off a barrage of shrapnel shells, and after the initial blast, the arsenal was ablaze. Residents of Jersey City, despite immediate danger, gathered in the streets and at the waterfront to watch the inferno. Accounts of fatalities differ, but at least seven people were thought to have been killed and several injured. Property damage was estimated to be over $20 million. The Black Tom depot and nearly everything on it was totally destroyed. The Statue of Liberty in the nearby waters was damaged by shrapnel and immigrants at Ellis Island were evacuated. In lower Manhattan across the river, windows were shattered in Times Square and reverberations from the blasts were reported from Hoboken to Bayonne and over to Staten Island and Brooklyn and even as far away as Philadelphia. A commission appointed to study the explosion questioned its origins and whether the fire began as a result of "spontaneous combustion" or employee carelessness or, of course, German sabotage. In fact, the mere accusations that German secret agents were involved devastated Jersey City's once- thriving German community. Woodrow Wilson was running for re-election as a peace candidate at the time, however, and acknowledging sabotage would have political ramifications and highlight the fact that Americans businesses, at this time of purported neutrality, were supplying arms to the Allies, so the whole affair was kept relatively quiet. Although eventually blamed solely on German agents, later investigations unearthed links between Black Tom and other conspiracies ranging from the Irish movement to the Indian Movement, and even to Communist agitators. Although officials at Black Tom were charged with "criminal and gross negligence", documentation supposedly later surfaced regarding German espionage, but no one was ever found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and no one was ever convicted. Even so, a postwar claims commission agreed to demands by the Lehigh Valley Railroad and other companies for reparations by Germany. In 1939, after seventeen years of squabbling, the German-American Mixed Claims Commission claimed Germany responsible of sabotage and ordered her to pay reparations of $50 million to all claimants. Germany refused to pay. After World War Two, Germany was forced to settle on a myriad of "outstanding war claims" that included the long ago Black Tom affair and they paid the claim... which had grown with interest to $95 million in 1979. Black Tom was not the only attack blamed on Germans retaliating against the British naval blockade of Germany. On January 1, 1915, the Roebling Steel foundry in Trenton, New Jersey was set on fire, and on January 11, 1917, a fire took place at the Canadian Car and Foundry plant in Kingsland. Both facilities had contracts for American goods being sent to the Allies to kill Germans and both were blamed on German saboteurs. The US entered the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917, after numerous claims of "German espionage" and "violations to American neutrality". |