A World War Two wreck in the Thames estuary is a ticking time bomb, an expert has warned, as it has not been dealt with 80 years after the vessel first sunk.
The SS Richard Montgomery was carrying 7,000 tonnes of explosives and weapons when it grounded on the sandbank close to the Isle of Grain in August 1944.
A rescue effort took place to try and unload the ship’s cargo but a crack appeared in its hull and only half of the explosives were salvaged.
Professor David Alexander of University College London told the Standard the ship remains a “serious threat” and in a worse case scenario it could explode creating a five-metre tsunami up the Thames.
The locals make light of this: there was a community radio station in Essex called Ship Full Of Bombs
If everybody had a surf board all across the UK,
then everybody’d be surfin’, surfin’ Thames estuary
This has been known of since it went down - you get the occasional flurry of news then all goes quiet again.
Until that 3KT bomb goes off :-)
Being a bit of an expert on underwater 'splosions, I’m going out on a limb here and staking my reputation to say Time bomb WW2 wreck in Thames Estuary won’t cause a five-metre tsunami.
