President Wilson remarked of the incident that it was "a regrettable incident at a private railroad terminal", and Edgar E. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, two watchmen who had lit smudge pots to keep away mosquitoes were questioned by police but the police soon determined that the smudge pots had not caused the fire and that the blast had likely been an accident. Newspaper headline about the Black Tom explosion Immigrants being processed at Ellis Island had to be evacuated to Lower Manhattan. One contemporary newspaper report estimated up to seven deaths in the attack. Doherty, Lehigh Valley Railroad chief of police Joseph Leyden, and ten-week-old infant Arthur Tosson. There were four confirmed fatalities in the explosion: the barge captain, Jersey City Police Department officer James F. The damage to the Statue of Liberty was estimated to be $100,000 (equivalent to about $2,490,000 in 2021), and included damage to the skirt and torch. On the island, the explosion destroyed more than one hundred railroad cars, thirteen warehouses, and left a 375-by-175-foot (110 by 50 m) crater at the source of the explosion. Property damage from the attack was estimated at $20,000,000 (equivalent to about $498,000,000 in 2021). People as far away as Maryland were awakened by what they thought was an earthquake. The outer wall of Jersey City's City Hall was cracked and the Brooklyn Bridge was shaken. Some window panes in Times Square were shattered. Windows were broken as far as 25 miles (40 km) away, including thousands in Lower Manhattan. The explosion was the equivalent of an earthquake measuring between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter scale and was felt as far away as Philadelphia. įragments from the explosion traveled long distances: some lodged in the Statue of Liberty, and other fragments lodged in the clock tower of The Jersey Journal building in Journal Square more than 1 mile (1.6 km) away, stopping the clock at 2:12 am. The explosion created a detonation wave that traveled at 24,000 feet per second (7,300 m/s) with enough force to lift firefighters out of their boots and into the air. 17, which contained 50 tons of TNT and 417 cases of detonating fuses. A notable location for one of the first major explosions was around the Johnson Barge No. At 2:08 am, the first and largest of the explosions took place, the second and smaller explosion occurring around 2:40 am. Others attempted to fight the fires and eventually called the Jersey City Fire Department. Īfter midnight, a series of small fires were discovered on the pier. Jersey City's Commissioner of Public Safety, Frank Hague, later said he had been told the barge was "tied up at Black Tom to avoid a twenty-five dollar charge". All were waiting to be shipped to Russia. On the night of the Black Tom explosion, July 30, 1916, about 2,000,000 pounds (910,000 kg) of small arms and artillery ammunition were stored at the depot in freight cars and on barges, including 100,000 pounds (45,000 kg) of TNT on Johnson Barge No. Wrecked warehouses and scattered debris after explosion As a result, Imperial Germany sent spies to the United States to disrupt by any means necessary the production and delivery of war munitions that were intended to kill German soldiers on the battlefields of the Great War. Due to the blockade of Germany by the Royal Navy, however, only the Allied Governments were able to purchase American munitions. Until April 6, 1917, the United States was neutral in respect to World War I and its munitions companies earlier in the war could sell to any buyer. Black Tom Island is now part of Liberty State Park.īlack Tom was a major munitions depot for the northeastern United States. A 1 mi (1.6 km)-long pier on the island housed a depot and warehouses for the National Dock and Storage Company. Between 19, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which owned the island and causeway, expanded the island with land fill, and the entire area was annexed by Jersey City. By 1880, the island was transformed into a 25-acre (10 ha) promontory, and a causeway and railroad had been built to connect it with the mainland to use as a shipping depot. On January 26, 1875, an accidental explosion killed four. Being largely built up from city refuse, it developed a reputation as an unseemly environmental hazard. The island was artificial, created by land fill around a rock of the same name, which had been a local hazard to navigation. The term "Black Tom" originally referred to an island in New York Harbor next to Liberty Island. Black Tom Island, lying off Jersey City, 1915
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