UNEXPLODED · public companion
Inside the broken holds
The wreck did not swallow one tidy number. It holds a wartime cargo assembled in thousands of bombs, cases, crates and components—some recovered, many left beyond reach.
Chapter 02 · Bombs · fuzes · bursters · eighty years underwater
Inside the broken holds
The wreck did not swallow one tidy number. It holds a wartime cargo assembled in thousands of bombs, cases, crates and components—some recovered, many left beyond reach.
Thousands of separate objects
Salvage was not a matter of lifting "the explosives" in one piece. Bombs, fuzes, fins and bursters were packed separately. Every case had to be reached, moved beneath a hatch, raised from the ship and transferred to a receiving craft.
The number everyone remembers
Later survey reports give 6,127 imperial tons carried, 2,954 tons salvaged and approximately 1,400 tonnes of explosive content remaining. The first two describe gross ammunition cargo. The last describes explosive material inside it.
A picture beneath the water
Over time, "1,400 tonnes" escaped from tables and became a public image: broken holds filled with bombs. Chapter 8 follows that number backwards through changing official reports and reconstructs what each figure was actually counting.
Evidence records
The full quantity investigation is told in Chapter 8, with the arithmetic and source genealogy.