EDDYSTONE’S DARKEST DAY
Events slated to mark 100th anniversary of munitions blast
An explosion at the Eddystone Ammunition Plant leads the April 10, 1917 Chester Times. Chester Rural Cemetery will hold a ceremony honoring those who died in the explosion on April 8, one of many county events this spring commemorating the U.S. entry into World War I.
EDDYSTONE >> In April 1917, as World War I raged, several explosions in an ammunitions factory rocked this riverside community, causing shock waves felt miles away and leaving 132 people dead. Some 52 were never identified. Others were identified only by the clothes they were wearing.
Some suspected German sabotage was behind the tragedy. But the cause of the disaster was never tracked down.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Eddystone Ammunition Company disaster, Eddystone Borough Councilwoman Beth Gross organized a ceremony called “We Remember” for Saturday, April 8, at Chester Rural Cemetery, where the unidentified victims were buried.
“Eddystone made all the Remington Arms rifles that went over to England,” she explained. “A lot of people were killed from the bullets. A lot of them were women and young girls who went to work and never came home.”
Baldwin Locomotive Company built the Remington Arms plant in 1915, where rifles were made for the English from 1915 to 1917. In that year, the factory made .300-caliber rifles for the United States government.
According to historians, at its full production, the plant manufactured 6,000 rifles a day, supplying almost two-thirds of all the rifles used by the American Army in France during World War I.
After then-President Woodrow Wilson called for involvement, the U.S. Congress
“We had but a minute to reach the door,” a survivor told the Chester Times, now the Delaware County Daily Times, “but many of us never got that far. Some were killed and others were injured by flying bullets.
declared war on Germany on April 2, 1917.
A week later, between 9:55 a.m. and 10:10 a.m., an explosion rocked the shrapnel shop in the F Building of the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation. It was there that about 40,000 loaded shells were stored.
This was followed by a series of smaller, quick, intermittent explosions followed by a large one in a building filled with black powder.
“We had but a minute to reach the door,” a survivor told the Chester Times, now the Delaware County Daily Times, “but many of us never got that far. Some were killed and others were injured by flying bullets.”
George Lewis of South Street, Philadelphia, was talking to a workman when the explosion happened. Lewis fell unconscious from a blow to his head and when he regained consciousness, the other man had dropped dead from a bullet in his heart.
Bodies flew into the air. Some people tried to jump from the building. One man said the only thing that saved him was he was buried under a pile of bodies.
Another survivor, Abe Weiss of Philadelphia, recalled, “I heard a slight explosion and began running. As I reached the door, a terrific explosion resembling thunder deafened me and when I woke up, I was in an ambulance.” The response was swift. All of the regional hospitals – Crozer, Chester, Taylor and Media – were packed as doctors and nurses rushed to aid as many as they could.
Multiple fire companies from as far away as Philadelphia rushed to the rescue. One firefighter had his leg shot off as he was hit by a bullet responding to the scene.
Nearby, the Eddystone Print Works was the first to react as enormous bolts of cloth were removed and sent to site.
“People came from everywhere to help, everywhere,” Gross said. “Just like in 9/11, it’s the American spirit, you just help, you don’t think, you just do. It makes you very proud.”
Physicians at the hospitals put out a call for blankets and residents in every section of Chester responded. Housekeepers nearby kept bringing hot water in all kinds of receptacles.
Cars kept streaming into where patients were being treated with sheets, blankets and cloth suitable for bandages.
Even hot soup and coffee were brought by restaurant operators and homeowners.
The scenes at the hospitals were horrific.
The Chester Times described Chester Hospital as corridors and side rooms lined with swathed forms, nothing visible of the person except for the tips of their noses. Intermittent screams of the suffering could be heard from the halls. Faces and bodies of the
victims were blackened as the powder had been blown into their flesh.
One victim, a 25-year-old woman, was badly burned to her head and face and suffered back injuries. Very limited in her speech, she repeated the word “Lulu” several times and it was guessed she was trying to tell others her name.
By 11 a.m., the hospitals were so full, Col. James A.G. Campbell announced the Chester Armory was to be made into a temporary hospital. Boy Scouts, National Guardsmen and members of the Red Cross arranged cots in the drill hall.
Outside, family members and friends clamored to find out the status of their loved ones. Lists were posted on the hospital doors of those inside. If a name was missing, the family then made their way to the morgue.
Many distraught tried to get into the patient facilities to search for their loved ones but only nurses and doctors were admitted.
William Taylor was one of those relatives as he frantically searched for his two sisters.
The Chester Times wrote he had tears in his eyes as he kept repeating, “I am afraid they have gone! I am afraid they are gone! They’ll not let me in to look for them!”
Thousands of calls for information flooded the Times’ office as a great crowd stood out front, where the bulletins were display.
The cause of the disaster was never clear. But three theories abound.
One was simply related to workplace conditions and the lack of safety protocol in early 20th century manufacturing. Several workers told investigators that the devices to shake black powder into the shells had been malfunctioning for some time.
Another theory was that it was deliberate - an act of German or Russian espionage.
According to a report of the National Fire Protection Association, Samuel M. Vauclain, the company president, said, “We are unable to account for it in any other way than the act of some maliciously inclined person or persons.”
The same report said a New Jersey woman alleged to have found a note at a Philadelphia train station that read, “All ready to blow up Eddystone. Send us help.”
Officials documented various acts of German sabotage in the United States from 1916 to 1917. Among its most notable was the Black Tom pier incident. In the
“All I know now is the remains of the people, the body parts are at Chester Rural (Cemetery). They dug up a big area and put the remains in caskets in there.”
— Eddystone Borough Councilwoman Beth Gross
summer of 1916, a New York City pier filled with a thousand ton of munitions to be sent to Britain, France and Russia caught fire and exploded with such strength the Statue of Liberty was scarred and the Brooklyn Bridge rocked. Within days, investigators determined Germans had precipitated the event.
Some tried to pin it on the Russian Leon Trotsky in a way to prevent the shells from reaching Alexander Kerensky during the Russian Revolution.
“At first they thought it was somebody else, then they thought it was the Russians because no Russian employees reported to work that day,” Gross said, adding that the accuracy of that is uncertain. “They never found out what happened with this.”
Fifty-five of the dead were never identified and they were interred in a mass grave, paid for by the Eddystone Ammunitions Company.
“All I know now is the remains of the people, the body parts are at Chester Rural (Cemetery),” Gross said. “They dug up a big area and put the remains in caskets in there.”
Yet, whether the deceased were identified or not, Gross concurred that all should be remembered, and that’s why at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 8, at the victims’ marker, there will be a public ceremony honoring those who died just as 12,000 did 100 years ago.
“It just gets you, it breaks your heart,” Gross said, as she said all members of the community are invited to participate in the “We Remember” remembrance.
“I hope it reaches everyone (to think) about people and service people,” Gross said. “When you’re in the service you never know what’s going to happen. These are just moms and young girls and some men who went to work and paid the ultimate price and gave their life.”