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The Wreck of The SS Richard Montgomery – a WWII Time-bomb?
SS Richard Montgomery
As we noted in a previous post, World War I munitions were pumped ashore on several New Jersey beaches by the US Corps of Engineers, when dredging to replace sand washed away by storms. A much more serious situation may exist with a partially submerged World War II Liberty ship, the SS Richard Montgomery, which ran aground on a sandbank and sank in 1944 in the middle of the Thames Estuary, a busy shipping lane serving the Port of London. An estimated 3,173 tonnes of high explosives remain on board the Richard Montgomery.
As reported by the BBC: The Wreck of The SS Richard Montgomery
Clear and Present Danger
3,173 tonnes of high explosives remain on board the Richard Montgomery. In theory, this is all quite safe, as the best environment to keep a bomb from exploding is cold water. If any of the chemicals leak, they can be diluted and washed away by the water pretty quickly. Another factor is that the tide has dug away a kind of crater around the ship and it is hoped that any bombs that fall out will come to rest in the crater.
The wreck is monitored by the Marine and Coastguard Agency, but no attempt has been made to remove the rest of its cargo. American help offers have twice been refused by the British government. Attempts in 1967 to remove cargo from another sunken ship, the Polish-built SS Kielce, resulted in an explosion causing a tremor that hit 4.5 on the Richter scale off the coast of Folkestone. After this, the policy of non-interference with hazardous wrecks has been reinforced.
Although the actual explosives on board the Richard Montgomery are not a major problem on their own, the detonators and the cluster bombs with detonators installed are. These are naturally more unstable and their prolonged exposure to the environment can lead to them going off. This may be enough to set the rest of the cargo off.
At this point it should be pointed out again that the explosives on board constitute a bomb on the kiloton scale. This is the power of a small atomic blast. Imagine a 300-metre-wide wall of water being blasted three kilometres into the sky. With the towns of Sheerness and Southend-On-Sea, not to mention the oil refineries of Canvey Island and Thames Haven, in close proximity, the effects of the blast would be catastrophic.
Hope it Goes Away
At the moment, this seems to be the strategy adopted by the government, like many administrations before it: hoping that the time-bomb will not go off on their watch, as the chemicals inside grow ever more unstable.
The wreck sits in the middle of the Thames Estuary, a busy shipping lane serving the Port of London, and the channel to the River Medway passes by the other side of the sandbanks. The wreck is marked with warning buoys and the Kent police are on standby, but is that enough? Many people remember when, in 1984, the MV Kingsabbey ran though Southend Pier. If a boat can miss spotting a large object such as a pier, it wouldn’t seem that implausible for one to disturb the wreck on a dark and stormy night.”
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