In Deep Ship

The SS Richard Montgomery was an American Liberty Ship. The Vessel built in 1943 was used to carry cargo during the second world war.

In 1944 the ship left Hog Island Philadelphia on its final voyage. The ship was carrying 6, 127 tons of munitions. Its mission was to go to England where it would meet up with a convoy, then it would continue on to France.

Once the ship reached Southend it came under the authority of the Thames naval control.
The Harbour Master ordered the ship to berth about 2.5km of the coast of Sheerness.
On the 20th August 1944 the ship dragged anchor and ran aground on a sandbank.

On the 23rd August 1944 a local salvage company had the job of removing the cargo from the grounded ship, within a few days the ships hull cracked and its holds started to take on water, the salvage company continued operations for as long as possible, but after a few weeks had to abandon efforts.

The ship had now broken into two pieces and any salvage operations would be very difficult to carry out. In 1967 a Polish ship The Kielce which had sank in 1946 with a similar amount of ordnance on board exploded after an attempt to neutralise its dangerous load. This caused an explosion similar in force to an earthquake of a magnitude of 4.5, and made a 20ft (6m) crater in the seabed.Fortunately there were no fatalities but the authorities were very dubious about attempting this kind of operation again.

In 1973 the Maritime and Coastguard Agency placed an exclusion zone around the wreck, as there was still a large amount of unexploded ordnance on board the sunken ship.

Several assessments of the danger of the wreck have been made, the reports state that some 3000 tons of munitions are still on the sunken ship, containing about 1400 tons of highly explosive TNT.
One report by the BBC suggested that if the ship exploded it would throw a 1,000-foot (300 m) wide column of water and debris nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in the air and generate a wave 16 feet (5 m) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (pop. c20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast.

Assessments made in the last few years have stated that an explosion could potentially cause £1 billion pounds worth of damage. The ship has continued to deteriorate, and serious concerns are being made as to the stability of its load. With the proposal of an airport possibly being built in the Thames estuary a solution must soon be found to this explosive problem.