A little about me featuring a seemingly unrelated image.

Welcome to Southend-on-sea

Blast radius of the SS Montgomery.

I’ve rapidly come to realise there is no such thing as an opportune moment and I can’t be bothered to invent one. I’m Becky, I’m a freelance copywriter and copy editor, and that is the blast radius of the SS Richard Montgomery that I’m going to use as a narrative device.

I live in Southend-on-sea, Essex. It’s my adopted town (well, city now, thanks to an unfortunate incident), and people think the most noteworthy thing about the place is our pier.

I think the most noteworthy thing about the place is the SS Richard Montgomery. The US WW2 munitions ship that slipped anchor, drifted from the deep water harbour at the end of the pier, hit a sandbank and sank. With 1400 tonnes of TNT onboard. It’s still all down there. Fun fact, nobody knows whether it’s actually safe or not. It’s a question of the type of fuse and whether the cargo is fully waterlogged. Basically, if it is, it's all good.

Weirdly, I’ve found not many people actually know about it. Which I find concerning given the blast radius.

It’s been sitting there since 1944, so the three masts above waterline are dangerously close to breaking and need removing to prevent them dropping onto the wreck.

The wreck is actually closer to Kent, and they’ve put forward a proposal for exhibiting the masts. A sympathetic siting in a lagoon, a visitor centre, artist’s concept drawings. In short, they have a plan.

Southend has contested this. I don't know why. We don’t have a plan. We probably wouldn't have wanted them if Kent hadn't chirped up.

I don’t see why we did; we don’t do anything with what we already have. Like the princely Saxon burial in Prittlewell that’s on par with Sutton Hoo in significance.

Didn't know about that, did you? I’ll tell you what we haven’t done with the earliest Christian burial in the UK another time.