UNEXPLODED · public companion
The wreck Britain chose to watch
Leaving the ship alone never meant forgetting it. Divers felt through black water, sonar traced its changing shape, patrol boats guarded it and governments repeatedly faced the same impossible choice.
Chapter 03 · Divers · sonar · law · eighty years of decisions
The wreck Britain chose to watch
Leaving the ship alone never meant forgetting it. Divers felt through black water, sonar traced its changing shape, patrol boats guarded it and governments repeatedly faced the same impossible choice.
A blast felt through the seabed
In 1967 a cutting charge detonated ammunition inside the wreck of the Kielce off Folkestone. Buildings shook, windows broke and a crater opened in the seabed. Months later Britain accepted that Richard Montgomery could be salvaged—and decided that attempting it was more dangerous than leaving it.
Feeling through darkness
Divers descended through tidal, turbid water and found their way by touch. Later came side-scan sonar, multibeam maps, lasers and remotely operated cameras. Each new instrument revealed a different wreck, never the whole of it.
The safest course keeps moving
The masts were once maintained as warnings. Then deterioration turned those same steel landmarks into loads the decks could no longer safely carry. By 2017 an Expert Advisory Group was studying what had to happen next.
Evidence records
Read the longer decision history in Chapters 5–7.