21/09/2026
When the masts disappear, will we still remember?
For generations of Islanders, the SS Richard Montgomery has simply been there.
Its masts breaking the horizon off Sheerness. A familiar sight from our beaches and coastline, pointed out to children by parents and grandparents, usually accompanied by some version of the same extraordinary story:
“That’s the ship full of explosives.”
But this week, that familiar silhouette began to change.
The first of the Montgomery’s three masts has now been removed.
From the windows of Dockyard Church, where this photograph was taken, we have looked out towards the wreck for generations. Today, there is a little less of it to see.
The SS Richard Montgomery was an American Liberty ship carrying around 7,000 tons of mu*****ns when she grounded on the Nore sandbank on 20 August 1944. Much of her cargo was successfully removed, but the ship broke apart before the operation could be completed, leaving an estimated 1,400 tonnes of explosive material still within the wreck.
More than 80 years later, those masts became something nobody in 1944 could have anticipated: part of the Sheppey landscape.
They made an otherwise invisible piece of history visible.
And perhaps that's why the removal of the first mast has made us think about something else.
Do we know the Montgomery so well because of her remarkable story or because, all these years later, we could still see her?
Because beneath the waters surrounding Sheppey, the Medway and the Thames Estuary lie many more wrecks.
Ships lost to war. To storms. To collision and accident. Merchant vessels, naval ships and working boats. Some involved extraordinary acts of bravery and tragedy. Others simply disappeared beneath the water and, slowly, from everyday memory.
The wonderful illustrated map we've shared here gives just a glimpse of them.
Their masts no longer interrupt our horizon.
There is nothing to point to from the beach and say, “Do you know what happened there?”
And yet their stories remain part of the maritime history of this Island.
As the Montgomery's familiar outline gradually disappears from our view, perhaps this is the perfect moment to look beyond our most famous wreck.
Because the history beneath our waters is far greater than the history we can see above them.
Over the coming weeks, we're going to delve into some of those other wrecks and the stories lying beneath the waters around Sheppey.
The Montgomery may be the one we all know. But she certainly isn't the only one worth remembering.
📷 The changing view of the SS Richard Montgomery from Dockyard Church, Sheerness, following the removal of the first mast.
