SS Richard Montgomery Masts Removed in Thames Estuary

Eighty-two years on, the SS Richard Montgomery is finally losing its masts.

Resolve Marine started the operation on September 29, sending engineers and divers to cut and lift the Liberty ship's three remaining steel structures from the water near Sheerness, Kent. The £9.5 million project had been in the works since July, when the UK government confirmed the contract with the Florida-based salvage firm.

The wreck has sat on the Nore Sandbank since August 1944. Montgomery was at anchor when its hull shifted, dragging the ship onto the sand and breaking it apart. About half the ammunition cargo was recovered quickly; the rest, roughly 1,400 tonnes of unexploded ordnance, was left behind, and has stayed there ever since.

What makes the masts a problem isn't just their age. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the combined weight presses down on the ship's deteriorating deck structure, and any one of them could eventually fall into a hold. The underwater working platform built for this job lets specialists dismantle each section below the waterline under controlled conditions. The explosives themselves are not being touched.

Once cut free, the masts will go to the Historic Dockyard Chatham for conservation before going on public display in Kent. The exclusion zone around the wreck stays in place.

Resolve Marine director Sam Adams called it "a unique and highly specialized marine engineering project that requires meticulous planning, rigorous risk management and exceptional technical expertise." Annual surveys have been tracking the wreck's slow deterioration for decades: localized deck collapses, movement in the forward section. This is the most hands-on intervention the UK government has sanctioned yet.

The ship's location matters for traffic too. The wreck sits close to the Medway Approach Channel, one of the main routes into the Port of London and Thames ports upriver. MarineRadar data shows the surrounding stretch (covering the Thames Estuary and eastern English Channel approaches) recorded 205 unique devices in the past 48 hours, one of the highest readings in UK waters this week.