Is This The World's Most Dangerous Wreck?

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In the event of an explosion, the nearby large town of Sheerness will be close enough to suffer direct effects of the shockwave and the tidal wave that follows. Experts have estimated that, should the ship explode, the cost of damages to Sheerness may be in the dozens of pounds.

To be fair, the Kielce exploded because the contractor had the bright idea of dismantling it with explosives. What could go wrong?

5:28 Brother, the SS Kielce blew up because the salvagers used explosive charges to "dismantle" her hull. It seems a little disingenuous to use that incident as an argument that old munitions blow up easily without telling your audience that these geniuses lit the fuse themselves.

The problem I have with "doing nothing" is that over time the problems seem to get worse not better, like initially you have the problem of explosives in a shipwreck, but over time you eventually have decaying explosives in corroded casings in a crumbling shipwreck, it seems like the problem gets more complicated the longer it is left.

Massive tidal wave my foot. It's sitting in fairly shallow water so almost all of the blast is going to go upwards and the biggest risk is that it'll cause millions of pounds worth of improvements to Sheerness.

As a matter of fact, Kielce was not sunk by German aircraft as shown in this video. It survived the war and sank in 1946 after a collision with the French steamer Lombardy. Fortunately, Lombardy didn't go down in the accident and even managed to rescue the entire crew of Kielce.

At one point innWWII if a Liberty Ship completed one trip it was considered worth the time and materials to build, anything more than one trip was a bonus.

Four of these Liberty ships still survive today and I've been on one that's in Baltimore that still sails on occasion

I grew up in the Medway area and a common topic of conversation at school was along the lines of "if the Montgomery explodes, the whole town will be destroyed by a tsunami and we'll all die. Cool!" We all kinda thought it was just an exaggerated urban legend so growing up and learning it's actually almost as dangerous as we always joked about is pretty interesting! Fortunately my family have all moved away from the area recently so at least we're not in danger anymore lmao

I have been sailing these waters for many years and there's always something of a thrill when passing by the wreck, I'll be sorry to see the masts go as they're such a charismatic sight, but I can understand why they have to go. The Medway is full of wrecks, a feature like this on HMS Bulwark - the dreadnought that blew up itself there in 1914 - would be good.

20ish years ago I worked on a container ship carrying aviation ordinance. At our lightest load during my two tours on her, we had 2.5 times the explosive weight still on the MONTGOMERY. It's either everything is fine, or its not my problem anymore.

I've seen a few videos about this ship but I enjoy your presentation style.

I used to work with a Naval clearance diver who had explored the wreck 20 odd years ago. Good news, things like machine gun bullets (wrapped in greased paper) were amazingly well preserved, looking almost like new. Bad news - the wooden packing crates had all broken up, leaving the munitions all jumbled together. (In a way that's good news, as they have already fallen down without incident, and can't go any lower until the hull breaks up). More seriously, a lot of the safety arming wires on things like mortar shells had corroded away so that's one layer of protection removed.

The balancing risk graphic is ingenious and well done in explaining the pros and cons of doing something or not.

As a young teenager in the 60s I used to go fishing off the end of Southend Pier. We knew about the ship of explosives and always wanted to be on the pier when it went off. Of course we had no idea about exactly how big the explosion would be - just thought it would be fun!

I would love to see a video about the Exxon Valdez.

I live 3 miles from this in Sheerness. We go about our daily lives but do get nervous when we hear about the SS Montgomery being touched. Some locals have paddle boarded out to it and I believe they got arrested and fined for their actions.

I've sailed past the wreck twice on a modest sized yacht and found it a buttock clenching experience. On one trip we moored up a little way off and by chance happened to meet an unnamed person who was in the process of carrying out a survey of the ship. He wasn't allowed to tell us anything about what he had found, but I "somehow" discovered that some of the cargo "had moved a bit" since the previous survey.

I have seen a few other videos on this wreck, but yours is by far the best and up to date. None of the other documentaries mentioned the Kielce.