Now, I’m no explosives expert. But if I knew there were about 1,400 metric tons of explosives sitting at the bottom of the Thames Estuary, I’d want to fish them out as soon as possible. In any case, I’d definitely not want to leave them there for eight decades—then again, maybe that’s why I’m not an expert.

The U.K. government has taken steps to remove parts of the SS Richard Montgomery, a World War II-era cargo ship that sank in the Thames in 1944. In a written statement to Parliament, the U.K. Department for Transport reported that engineers successfully retrieved the ship’s three masts. According to the statement, the masts were removed after expert advisors warned in 2020 that their weight was putting strain on the deteriorating ship, raising the possibility of some unfortunate outcomes. But approximately 13,700 explosive devices on the ship are still very much at the bottom of the Thames Estuary.

“The vessel was starting to lean and deteriorate, so they could see some of the structures around the mast starting to collapse,” Nolan Conway, an architect with the marine salvage firm Resolve Marine Group, who was contracted for the initiative, told CBS News. “The fear is the masts could have fallen onto the cargo itself, causing it to detonate.”

K. with some 7,000 tons of ammunition onboard. The plan was for the ship to anchor near the town of Sheerness after passing through the Thames Estuary, but the ship dragged its anchor and ran aground on a sandbank.

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