KELP IS ON THE WAY: How American Kelp Helped Save the English Explosives Industry in World War I
Dr. Andrea Dragon Each of the hundreds of millions of shells Great Britain fired from thousands of field guns, howitzers and mortars during World War I contained two explosives: cordite, a kind of nitrocellulose (what Americans call smokeless powder) to propel the shell out of the artillery piece and send it flying toward the target, and TNT, the shell's high explosive payload to blow up the target on impact. In the early months of the war, the demand for cordite far exceeded the manufacturing capacity of Great Britain's explosives factories. To meet production demands, in October, 1914, the British Army contacted representatives from DuPont and its 1912 spinoff Hercules, who were the leaders of New Jersey's established explosives industry, and signed agreements with them to produce nitrocellulose and cordite, load it and TNT into shells, and ship them from New Jersey ports to the Western Front....