T. A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant explosion

Explosion site

Approximate location of explosion

The T. A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant explosion, sometimes called the Morgan Munitions Depot explosion, began at 7:36 p.m. on October 4, 1918 at a World War I ammunition plant operated by the T. A. Gillespie Company, in the Morgan area of Sayreville in Middlesex County, New Jersey. The initial explosion, generally believed to be accidental, triggered a fire and subsequent series of explosions that continued for three days. The facility, one of the largest in the world at the time, was destroyed along with more than 300 surrounding buildings, forcing the evacuation and reconstruction of Sayreville and neighboring South Amboy. Nearly a century later, explosive debris continues to surface regularly across a one-mile radius.^[1][2]

T. A. Gillespie

T. A. Gillespie Company, a subsidiary of the American Shell Company, was loading shells for overseas military action during World War I. After the war, the company was renamed Gillespie Motor Company in 1919, merged to form Gillespie-Eden Corporation in 1920, and disappeared sometime after 1923.^[3]

Damages

Damage to the plant was estimated to be US$18 million^[4] and the US Government paid US$300,000 in insurance to area residents, respectively equal to approximately $300 million and $5 million in 2012 dollars. According to a 1919 government report, the explosion destroyed enough ammunition to supply the Western Front for six months, estimated at 12 million pounds (6 kilotons) of high explosives.^[1] (The plant started production just three months earlier, and the war itself ended just one month after the explosion.) While hundreds of detonations were spread over three days, the totality of the event ranked as one of the largest man-made non-nuclear explosions in history. The strongest individual blasts, from exploding railcars of Gillespie ammunition, broke windows as far away as Manhattan and Asbury Park, more than 25 miles distant.^[5]

Casualties

Government authorities declared martial law following the accident, forcing the evacuation of Sayreville, South Amboy, and Perth Amboy, whose combined populations totaled approximately 62,000. The death toll for the accident is unclear, since employment records were destroyed by the explosion and since ammunition workers were uninsurable; but it is assumed to be over 100 persons, with hundreds more injured.^[1][4][5] The unidentified remains of 14 to 18 workers were buried in a mass grave on Ernston Road in what is now Old Bridge Township.^[6] Evacuated and homeless persons were more susceptible to the severe influenza pandemic that struck a few weeks later, and the area's death toll from the outbreak was high.^[1][7][8]

Coast Guard involvement

Among many others involved in rescue operations were a number of United States Coast Guardsmen stationed across the Raritan River in Perth Amboy. Twelve received Navy Crosses for their heroic actions in the aftermath of the explosion, and two died in the effort. The award citations indicate that during the conflagration, they risked death when they relocated a train loaded with TNT that was threatened by the fire. One Navy Cross recipient was Joseph Stika, who later became a Vice Admiral.^[9]

Legacy

The explosions scattered thousands of shells and components over a wide area, more than a mile in radius. As late as 2007, unexploded ordnance from the facility was still being found in the surrounding area. On June 7, 2007, ordnance was found at Samsel Upper Elementary School while workers were grading an area for a playground. Explosive Ordnance Disposal experts from the US Army were called in to remove the material.^[2] Previously, in 1994 and again in 1997, the discovery of shells near Sayreville's Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School spurred cleanup operations by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which collected and disposed of a combined total of 5,080 pieces of ordnance.^[1][10]

Local historians compiled detailed histories about the explosions for a 1994 television documentary^[11] and a 2012 book.^[12]

The sports teams of Sayreville War Memorial High School are named the Sayreville Bombers, recalling the town's World War I ammunition plants and many World War II veterans.^[13]

See also

• Black Tom explosion (1916)
• Kingsland explosion (1917)
• South Amboy powder pier explosion (1950)

References

External links

• Archival photos of victims and damaged locations (subscription required)
• Rediscovering the Ruins of a Catastrophic WWI Explosion Everyone Forgot
• Ernst Memorial Cemetery, location of the tomb of the unknown dead
  • Lost in Jersey – Images of the memorial headstone