The WWII Wreck Packed With 1,400 Tons of Explosives — Untouched Since 1944

Three steel masts stick out of the sea off Sheerness — the grave markers of the SS Richard Montgomery, an American Liberty ship that has sat on the bottom of the Thames Estuary since August 1944 with fourteen thousand bombs still in her holds. One officer warned, in writing, that her anchorage would break her. He was overruled in two days; the ship broke exactly as he said. Eighty years later Britain's own surveys read like a countdown — the hull is splitting, the masts are coming down, and no one has a plan for the bombs. This is why nobody has ever gone back for them.