President Woodrow Wilson had declared neutrality, but American rights to "freedom of the seas" were affected by British naval control of the Atlantic sea-lanes. Black Tom was only one of several homeland attacks in retaliation to the British naval blockade of Germany. These facilities had contracts for goods being sent to the Allies. A fter numerous claims of German espionage and violations of American neutrality, t he United States entered the war on the side of the Allies in April On the evening of the Black Tom incident, barges and freight cars at the depot were reportedly filled with over two million pounds of ammunition waiting to be shipped overseas.
The munitions at the depot included shrapnel, black powder, TNT, and dynamite. The Johnson Barge No. Given these incendiary devices, the Black Tom facility was not securely gated to safeguard the nearby civilian population from the potential of foul play. Shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, small fires on the pier were discovered and the eight guards on duty gave flight.
One of the guards, however, sounded the fire alarm alerting the Jersey City Fire Department. The fires gradually set off a succession of exploding shrapnel shells. After the terrifying a. Pieces of metal from the explosion struck the Jersey Journal building clock tower at Journal Square, stopping the clock at a. During the explosion, Jersey City residents took to the streets and gathered at the waterfront to witness the fireworks.
Emergency vehicles in the city responded to alarms without full comprehension of the emergency. Disruption in telephone service created an information blackout. Witcover also writes that Frank Hague , the Jersey City commissioner of public safety, was informed that Barge Johnson 17 "had tied up at Black Tom to avoid a twenty-five dollar towing charge--false economy, he noted.
Hague and Hudson County prosecutor Robert S. Hudspeth agreed that the presidents of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company and the Central Railroad of New Jersey had violated the twenty-four-hour time limit for storing dynamite and for keeping railroad cars with explosives at the terminal. The conditions at Black Tom had placed the civilian population in Jersey City and elsewhere in immediate danger. Accounts of the total number of fatalities differ, but it is known that a policeman, a guard at Black Tom, and the barge captain of the Johnson Barge No.
A ten-week-old infant was thrown from his crib. Hundreds of individuals were injured. The Black Tom depot, its freight cars, warehouses, barges, tugboats, and piers, was destroyed. He arrived in with a staff not of diplomats, but of intelligence operatives, and with millions of dollars earmarked to aid German war efforts by any means necessary. Von Bernstorff not only helped obtain forged passports for Germans who wanted to elude the Allied blockade, he also funded gun-running efforts, the sinking of American ships bringing supplies to Britain, and choking off supplies of phenol, used in the manufacture of explosives, in a conspiracy known as the Great Phenol Plot.
Pencil bombs were cigar-sized charges filled with acids placed in copper chambers; the acids would ultimately eat their way through the copper and mingle, creating intense, silent flames. If designed and placed properly, a pencil bomb could be timed to detonate days later, while ships and their cargo were at sea. Von Rintelen is believed to have attacked 36 ships, destroying millions of dollars worth of cargo. With generous cash bribes, Von Rintelen had little problem gaining access to piers—which is how Michael Kristoff, a Slovak immigrant living in Bayonne, New Jersey, is believed to have gotten to the Black Tom munitions depot in July of Photo: Wikipedia.
Along with two German saboteurs, Lothar Witzke and Kurt Jahnke, Kristoff is believed to have set the incendiary devices that caused the mayhem on Black Tom. But it took years for investigators to piece together the evidence against the Germans in the bombing.
Decades would pass, however, before Germany settled it. Now nothing remains of the munitions depot save a plaque marking the explosion that rocked the nation.
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