For reference, when the World Trade Centers North Tower collapsed in 2001, it registered a 2.3 on the Richter scale. Just outside of Jersey City, the island was a manmade rectangle of land, mostly built up from refuse and rocks in the New York Harbor. One of the barges was loaded with 50 tons of TNT. The incident also influenced public safety legislation. However, investigators were unable to determine whether the disaster was the result of safety violations by any of these officials. Without a formal intelligence service on the national level, the United States only had rudimentary communications security and no federal laws forbidding espionage or sabotage except during wartime,[3] making the connections to the saboteurs and accomplices almost impossible to track. The Black Tom explosion wasnt the only provocation. Vast quantities were stored in barges moored alongside a mile-long wharf, with one barge alone holding fifty tons of TNT and 25,000 detonators. He wanted to try to buy off some of the people in charge of the storing of ammunition to see if he could get some re-routed to Berlin. At 2:08 a.m on July 16, 1916, a munitions depot on Black Tom Island, in the Hudson River just off Jersey City, exploded. J.P. Morgan survived, but Muenter died soon after most likely from suicide.The most deadly of these acts of German-sponsored terrorism happened on July 30, 1916 just 3,000 feet from the Statue of Liberty. The worst disasters in N.J. history - nj.com The explosions, which occurred on July 30, 1916, in New York Harbor, killed four people and destroyed some $20,000,000 ($500 million in 2023 dollars) worth of military goods. In the days after the blasts, confusion reigned. The Black Tom explosion was an act of sabotage by agents of the German Empire, to destroy U.S.-made munitions that were to be supplied to the Allies in World War I. The Untold Story Of Espionage In New Jersey As Chad Millman points out in his book, The Detonators, there was a certain naivete at the timePresident Woodrow Wilson could not bring himself to believe that Germans might be responsible for such destruction. (Grants Pass, Or.) But in the aftermath of the catastrophic explosions on Black Tom Island, the agencies investigating sort of preemptively decided it wasnt the work of foreign saboteurs. [14] The explosion created a detonation wave that traveled at 24,000 feet per second (7,300m/s) with enough force to lift firefighters out of their boots and into the air. How Eyewitnesses Survived Explosion New York Times, July 31, 1916. Black Tom Island Explodes Explosions rocked the New York City region in the early hours of the morning of July 30, 1916. A 10-week old baby lost its life as well, being thrown from his crib in Jersey City. Some guards on the island sent for the Jersey City Fire Department, but others fled as quickly as they could, and for good reason: Black Tom was a major munitions depot, with several large powder piers. That night, Johnson Barge No. The Nazis paid little mind to this finding, and Germany would not settle the debt until 1979. Smoke billowing from the Black Tom explosion, a German sabotage . What happened to the Statue of Liberty in 1916? - Heimduo The Black Tom Explosion Forgotten History
