Kentish Express Ashford & District
WHY WRECK MASTS
The rusty barnacle-clad masts of the SS Richard Montgomery have stood guard at the entrance to the Thames Estuary for nearly 76 years. Since the American munitions ship sank off Sheerness towards the end of the Second World War the three masts have alerted vessels in one of Britain’s busiest shipping lanes to the danger which lurks below.
It was on August 20, 1944, that, loaded with explosives, the liberty ship slipped beneath the waves after dragging its anchor and breaking its back on a sandbank, spilling its deadly cargo onto the seabed. It still has 1,400 tonnes of bombs on board.
Now the Ministry of Defence is inviting contractors to hack off the masts in a £5 million operation to keep it safe following the latest findings of an underwater survey.
Although many residents on the Isle of Sheppey and across the water in Southend have felt uncomfortable living in the shadow of the ship, many more would be sad to lose the masts which are a popular talking point with tourists.
Veteran sailor Tim Bell from Minster said: “I can see the sense in cutting the masts down because they are starting to rust and could fall onto the deck below where there are still 2,000 cases of cluster bombs.
“But I will be sad to see the end of an era. The masts are a Sheppey icon. Generations of Islanders have looked at them from the seafront or taken boat trips around them. Soon there will be nothing to see.”
He added: “Whichever firm is picked, it is going to have to be very gentle with this one.”
Every year the government’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency commissions a survey to check how dangerous the deadly cargo is.
Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP Gordon Henderson said: “The overall situation has not changed. The non-intervention policy that has been in place for several decades under successive governments is still the best option.
“However, the wreck will continue to be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week and alternative options will be considered should deterioration of the superstructure make necessary a change in policy.”
David Alexander, professor of risk and disaster reduction at the University College London, is not so convinced. He said: “Not long ago, a half-tonne wartime bomb was found next to the railway at Milan central station. The discovery led to 50,000 people being evacuated and the station, and all routes around it, shut for 36 hours so they could remove the bomb.
“And that was just one bomb. The Montgomery is full of them - hundreds and hundreds of them. It is completely bizarre that they have left it all this time.
“There’s a sense among so many people who don’t understand the situation, that if you leave bombs long enough they neutralise themselves. But I just don’t think that’s true.”
Three areas have showed structural changes since 2016.
Deck plating around Hold 2 had dropped by 60cm; the bridge deck area had continued to collapse and a split in the deck in the rear section had subsided by 20cm.
Of 96 features checked, 22 had changed and the amount of objects scattered around the wreck on the seabed has increased from 66 to 72.
The Richard Montgomery was built in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1943 to take vital supplies to Europe and sailed across the Atlantic in convoy.
The best estimates suggest 13,500 bombs remain, packing an overall total of 1,434 tonnes of explosive. Estimates some years ago put the cost of clearing the wreck at £40 million - a figure now likely to be many times larger.
Professor Alexander said: “Controlled detonation of the cargo is out of the question. And building a sarcophagus, Chernobyl-style, over the wreck would probably cause structural collapse onto the bomb racks.
“Similarly, to build an 1,800-metrelong coffer dam around the wreck would disturb the stability of the ship’s superstructure. On the other hand, extracting the bombs and making them safe would take at least six