Britain's underwater Timebombs

Why aren't we getting worried about the unknown tonnes of explosives dumped in our local waters?

Lying in the shallow water, its rusting masts home to resting gulls and warning signs, the USS Richard Montgomery paints a forlorn picture. But don’t let this sleeping giant fool you: this is a ship that still has the power to blow up the Thames estuary with the force of a small atomic missile. Still stuffed with a cargo of high explosives, the wreck of the Montgomery has been slowly disintegrating since it beached, its back broken, in 1944.

Salvage crews only removed half of the 6000-ton cargo before fleeing the unstable wreck, and while the detonators and explosives were kept on different decks for safety, the upper deck broke. Now both are in within the hull, and it seems nobody knows just what to do about it.

What should be done with it?

Since the Montgomery lies in one of our busiest shipping lanes, responsibility for its safety lies with the Ministry of Transport, and more specifically the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). Sitting on a sandbar at the crossroads between the Thames Estuary and Medway, and just a few hundred metres from passing traffic, what is being done about the boat? Should it be left to rot in peace, taken apart and moved, or just blown up in a controlled explosion to limit any unnecessary damage?

According to the MCA’s own Wreck Amnesty (2001) report: “ordnance from a maritime context would almost certainly have long passed its safe life and far from becoming inert in the water, many years spent under the sea might only serve to make them less stable and more unpredictable.” This statement suggests that removal of explosives - such as those on the Montgomery - is long overdue.

More bombs are discovered

The last report on the Montgomery was back in 2006. They found that the boat was still disintegrating, but no faster than was to be expected, and no recommendations were made to remove the explosives.

Perhaps more worryingly, they found even more bombs. The forward section of the ship, despite the claims of the 1944 salvage effort, was still full.

As the report told, “salvage of the forward section was only partial at best, as ordnance is stacked to a height of at least 7.5m in lower Hold 3 and 2.5m in upper Hold 2.” More bombs, more power – and of course, more risk during any removal operation. It’s estimated that if the cargo blew, the explosion could be one-twelfth the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The wreck of the Castilian

The Montgomery is not alone, sleeping fitfully on a sandbank. At least one other munitions wreck is publicly known. The SS Castilian, another WW2 ship, is wrecked off the coast of Anglesey, with a 500m exclusion zone enforced. It’s thought that unexploded bombs found on nearby Fydlyn Bay – which took the Royal Navy weeks to clear in 1987 – drifted from the wreck.

While wrecks can be easily cordoned, how do you seal off a dump whose contents have drifted dozens of miles across one of the UK’s busiest shipping channels? That’s the problem facing experts as they try to understand what is going on in the Beaufort Dyke. A trench 50km long by 3.5km wide, it’s been used for at least a hundred years by the British government as a dump for unused ammunition, bombs – even chemical weapons such as Sarin, mustard gas and phosgene shells.

A million tons of dumped weapons

What’s most worrying is the fact alluded to in an official report by the Fisheries Research Services – an arm of the Scottish Executive. The truth is, nobody knows what’s down there. Or how much is down there. What the FRS did do is locate the dumped arms using sonar, and found that it was now scattered across the Irish Sea, from Stranraer to the Isle of Man. The MOD admits that up to one million tons of material has been dumped there, though documents detailing the precise locations are thin on the ground. It’s not just drift that is causing bombs to be washed up on local beaches: there’s a distinct chance that these weapons have been dumped in entirely the wrong place.

Michael Fellows, a former Royal Navy diver whose company Fellows International specializes in removal of munitions, wars anyone not taking the threat seriously. “Most of the weapons dumped in the Beaufort's Dyke, they weren't designed to go under water. There are sporadic explosions two or three times a month, I should think, in the Irish Sea – popping off all the time.” When asked if the older weapons were gradually losing their resistance to water corrosion, he added: "Yes. They are getting old and they're liable to go bang."

For more info on the Montgomery and to find out more about boat trips to the estuary, go to www.bobleroi.co.uk

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