Author signing book about terrorism on the Hudson – in 1916

JERSEY CITY – Former Hudson County resident Ron Semple will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4 at WORD bookstore, 123 Newark Ave., Jersey City, and sign copies of his new novel, “Black Tom: Terror on the Hudson.” Based on actual events, the book is about international sabotage and political machinations in the early part of the 20th century.
When terrorists obliterated the World Trade Center in Manhattan on 9/11, it was not the first time the area was visited by death and destruction. A century ago, there was an island known as Black Tom on the Jersey City waterfront. There in 1916, German saboteurs – including one from Bayonne – destroyed a huge railroad munitions depot, killing four, injuring hundreds, panicking millions on both sides of the river, and causing damage estimated at a half-billion dollars in today’s money.
Semple’s novel deals with events surrounding the 1916 terrorist attack. Much of the action takes place in Jersey City, Hoboken, Bayonne, Weehawken, and Union City, and involves the rise of the Hague organization, which dominated New Jersey Democratic politics for more than a generation, and the intertwined lives of the ordinary people of immigrant Jersey City in those extraordinary times.
For eight long years, the horrific events at Black Tom were said to be an accident, until Germany was accused of sabotage in 1924 by the Lehigh Valley Railroad. After decades of litigation, the railroad ultimately collected $50,000,000. Semple’s novel suggests there was a political cover up reaching from City Hall in Jersey City to the White House, designed to help re-elect Woodrow Wilson as president. With Wilson’s support, his old political enemy, Frank Hague, was elected mayor of Jersey City the following year.
Semple is a fifth generation Jersey City native and a longtime newspaperman. He was a reporter for the old Hudson Dispatch and city editor for another local newspaper before heading west to become editor, general manager, or publisher for four other newspapers during a 30-year career.
“Black Tom” will be published on Oct. 30 and distributed worldwide in paperback and as an e-book.