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Black Tom explosion
Black Tom pier shortly after the explosion.
Black Tom Island prior to the blast
Black Tom Island, lying off a Jersey City pier. 
View of the Statue of Liberty from the site of the explosion. The explosion caused $100,000 (circa $2 million today) worth of damage to the statue, and from then onward the torch was off limits to tourists. Black Tom was a major munitions depot for materials manufactured in the northeast. Prior to a 1915 blockade of the Central Powers by the British Royal Navy, American industries were free to sell their materials to any buyer, but by this time the Allies were the only possible customers. It was reported that on the night of the attack, two million pounds of ammunition were being stored at the depot in freight cars, including one hundred thousand pounds of TNT on the Johnson Barge No.17, all awaiting eventual shipment to Britain and France. It was obviously a tempting target. Future mayor Frank Hague, then commissioner of public safety, reported that he had been told that the barge had been "tied up at Black Tom to avoid a twenty-five dollar towing charge",[1] which would have been around $470 today. ExplosionAfter midnight, a series of small fires were found on the pier. Some guards fled, fearing an explosion; others attempted to fight the fires. Eventually they called the Jersey City Fire Department. At 2:08 a.m., the first and biggest of the explosions took place. Shrapnel from the explosion travelled long distances, some lodging in the Statue of Liberty and some in the clocktower of the Jersey Journal building in Journal Square, over a mile away, stopping the clock at 2:12 a.m. 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. Windows broke as far as 25 miles (40 km) away, including thousands in lower Manhattan. Some window panes in Times Square were completely shattered. The outer wall of Jersey City's City Hall was cracked and the Brooklyn Bridge was shaken. People as far away as Maryland who were awakened by it thought it was an earthquake. Property damage from the attack was estimated at $20 million ($377 million today). The damage to the Statue of Liberty was valued at $100,000 ($1.9 to $2 million today) and included the skirt and the torch. The arm has been closed to visitors ever since.http://www.historyplace.com/specials/writers/tom-island.htm Immigrants being processed at Ellis Island also had to be evacuated to lower Manhattan. Reports vary, but as many as seven people may have been killed, including:
Injuries numbered in the hundreds. Smaller explosions continued to occur for hours after the initial blast. AftermathTwo of the guards who had lit the smudge pots were immediately arrested. However, it soon became clear that the blast had not been an accident. It was traced to a Slovak immigrant named Michael Kristoff, who had served in the U.S. Army, but admitted to carrying suitcases for the Germans before America entered World War I. According to him, two of the guards were German agents. It is likely that the bombing involved some of the ingenious techniques developed by a group of German agents surrounding German ambassador Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, probably using the pencil bombs developed by Captain Franz von Rintelen. Although blamed at the time solely on German agents, later investigations in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen affair unearthed links between the Ghadar conspiracy and the Black Tom explosion. Franz von Papen is known to have also been involved in both. Later investigations by the Directorate of Naval Intelligence is known to have found extensive links to the Irish movement, the Indian Movement, as well as the Communist elements.[2][3] The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company sought damages against Germany under the Treaty of Berlin with the German-American Mixed Claims Commission. The commission in 1939 declared that Imperial Germany had been responsible and ordered damages. The two sides finally settled on $50 million in 1953. The final payment was made in 1979. Black Tom today
Melted bottle from Black Tom Explosion 
Detail from the commemorative plaque The plaque reads
A stained glass window at Our Lady of Czestochowa Catholic church memorialized the victims of the attack. History DetectivesThe August 11, 2008 episode of the PBS program History Detectives in one of its segments discusses the explosion and an empty artillery shell that may have come from the stockpile. Despite the item contributor family's story, a munitions expert reveals the shell was made two months after the Black Tom explosion. In 1924 the railroad company that owned all the stockcars storing the munitions sued the German government. The History Detectives segment underscores that despite this implication, the story oddly didn't get very much press. The special also states that Woodrow Wilson, running for re-election, definitely knew the explosion was sabotage and not accidental. However, Wilson was running on an anti-war platform and acknowledging the sabotage would have likely cost him the election. See alsoReferences
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