Black Tom Island
The term "Black Tom" originally referred to an island in New York Harbor next to Liberty Island. The island received its name from a local legend of an African American resident named Tom. By 1880, a causeway and railroad had been built connecting it to the mainland for use as a shipping depot. Between 1905 and 1916, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, which owned the island and causeway, expanded the island with landfill, resulting in the addition of the entire area to the limits of Jersey City. The area contained a mile-long pier that housed the depot as well as warehouses for the National Dock and Storage Company.
Black Tom was a major munitions depot for the northeast. Prior to a 1915 blockade of the Central Powers by the Royal Navy, American industries were free to sell their materials to any buyer, but henceforth the Allies were the only possible customers. It was reported that on the night of the attack, two million pounds (1 kiloton) 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. Jersey City's Commissioner of Public Safety, Frank Hague, reported he had been told the barge had been "tied up at Black Tom to avoid a twenty-five dollar towing charge" (US$534 in 2012).
Read more about this topic: Black Tom Explosion
Famous quotes containing the words black, tom and/or island:
“In night when colours all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light;
The eye—a watch to inward senses placed,
Not seeing, yet still having power of sight—
Gives vain alarums to the inward sense”
—Fulke Greville (1554–1628)
“New York state sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the workhouse. And they got no windows in the workhouse. You know, in the old days they used to put your eyes out with a red-hot poker.”
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)
“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)