8. Anniversaries III, p. 881
9. Ibid., p. 883
10. Anniversaries II, p. 419
11. Uwe Johnson, Letter to Friedrich A. Denk, 22 February 1984. Michael Hamburger Archive, British Library
12. Anniversaries I, p. 40
13. Anniversaries III, p. 1177
14. Speculations about Jakob, pp. 169–70
15. Anniversaries I, p. 3.
16. Anniversaries III, p. 1060
17. Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea (trans. Robert Baldick) London: Penguin, 2001, p. 179
18. Uwe Johnson, untitled typescript numbered 211080 sh. I was sent a copy of this late and rather chaotic document by the Deutsches Literatur Archive at Marbach, where the Johnson papers where lodged before being moved to their present location at the Uwe Johnson Archive, University of Rostock.
19. Von dem Fischer un syner Fru. Ein Märchen nach Philipp Otto Runge mit sieben Bildern von Marcus Behmer, einer Nacherzählung und mit einem Nachtwort von Uwe Johnson, Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1976.
20. Uwe Johnson, “Nachwort”, Von Dem Fischer un Syner Fru
21. Ibid., p. 60.
22. Ibid., p. 63.
23. Ibid., p. 57.
24. Anniversaries II, p. 499.
25. Ibid., pp. 533–4.
26. Anniversaries III, p 881.
27. Ibid., p. 883.
30. “What is that thing?”: The SS Richard Montgomery and the “Caprice” of Bombs.
1. Uwe Johnson, “Ein unergründliches Schiff”, Merkur, 1979, H.6, pp. 537–550. Collected in Inselgeschichten, pp. 19–40.
2. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a new Modernity [1986], London: Sage, 1992.
3. “Welcome to Sheerness? Fury over sulky 40 ft mermaid mural that greets visitors to seaside town”, Daily Mail, 19 August 2015. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3203381/She-looks-like-wants-blow-Locals-Sheerness-left-furious-bizarre-grumpy-mermaid-mural-painted-welcome-visitors-seaside-town.html
4. Iain Sinclair, “Diary”, London Review of Books, Vol. 35 No. 9, 9 May 2013, pp. 38–9
5. David Cotgrove, cited in Jon Connell, “The Thames Timebomb”, Sunday Times, 27 August 1978
6. Frederick J. Lang & Terence Phelan, Maritime: A Historical Sketch and a Workers’ Program, New York: Pioneer Publications, 1943. Quoted in John M. Williams, S.S. Richard Montgomery: “Risk & Reality”, Volume 1, version 1.2., Benfleet: self-published, 2016
7. Connell, “The Thames Timebomb”
8. David A. Atkinson, Richard Anthony Baker & David F. Cotgrove, “The Explosive Cargo of the USS ‘Richard Montgomery’: A study into the developing hazard of a marine wreck in the Thames Estuary between Sheerness and Southend-on-Sea”, duplicated typescript published by Southend -on-Sea & District Chamber of Trade & Industry Ltd, 1972, Section 4.6
9. Atkinson, Baker & Cotgrove, “The Explosive Cargo of the USS “Richard Montgomery”, Section 4.7.
10. Williams, p. 19
11. Atkinson, Baker & Cotgrove, Section 4.4
12. Lloyds Register of Shipping, August 1944, photocopy in John M. Williams, S.S. Richard Montgomery: Risk & Reality, Benfleet: self-published, p. 74. This informative but unusually arranged document contains much that is drawn from David Cotgrove’s papers about the Richard Montgomery, which appear to remain uncatalogued and not easily available at the Essex Record Office in Colchester.
13. Extracts from legal acts with a bearing on the SS Richard Montgomery, prepared to inform Admiralty discussion with the Port of London Authority, 1952. Folder E 154 in NA. ADM 1/24082
14. J.W. Edwards, Assistant Mooring & Wreck Raising Officer, “Salvage Operations on “SS Richard Montgomery” at East Nore Sands”, NA. ADM 331/64
15. Port of London Authority Memorandum on responsibilities for the USS Richard Montgomery, Folder E 154 in NA. ADM 1/24082
16. “War Wrecks Replacing Coastal Mine Menace”, Lincolnshire Echo, 13 May 1946, p. 1
17. “S.S. Richard Montgomery”, a brief prepared by J.L. Bligh of the Admiralty’s Works and Salvage Section, and submitted on 16 July 1952, National Archives, ADM 1/24082
18. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998
19. Nearly twenty years later, it would be officially confirmed that the US War Shipping Administration had indeed sold the wreck to a New York salvage operator named Phillips, Kraft and Fisher, Inc on 24 April 1948. The deal, however, was rescinded on 14 December 1951 and the US Maritime Administration had no records indicating whether any work had been done by the company, which had by then disappeared without trace (the US Navy Supervisor of Salvage, who made enquiries throughout the US maritime community, could find “no one who had ever heard of this company”.) Typescript of USA report, NA. ADM 331/64
20. “Medway Wreck”, HC Deb 23 April 1952, vol. 499 cc21-2W
21. Bennett is said to have been in discussion with Sir Stephen McAdden, MP for Southend East, in David Cotgrove et. al, “The Exolosive Cargo of the USS ‘Richard Montgomery’”
22. Percy Wells M. P., letter to First Lord of the Admiralty, 18 June 1952, NA. ADM 1/24082
23. J.P.L. Thomas (Admiralty), “Private MemoDescribing Meeting with Lord Waverley”, dated 18 June 1952, National Archives, ADM 1/24082
24. “Note of a meeting held by the First Lord on Tuesday 22nd July [1952] with Lord Waverley to discuss the question of the ‘RICHARD MONTGOMERY’”, NA, ADM 1/24082.
25. Assistant Treasury Solicitor, note for Admiralty, 18 May 1949. NA, ADM 1/24082, file E 154
26. “Private Memo Describing Meeting with Lord Waverley”, NA, ADM 1/24082
27. “Note of a Meeting held by the First Lord on Tuesday 22 July [1952] with Lord Waverley [PLA] to discuss the question of the “Richard Montgomery”, NA, ADM 1/24082.
28. “Wreck of S.S. Richard Montgomery”, briefing document for the First Lord of the Admiralty, 1952, NA, ADM 1/24082
29. Undated PLA “Memorandum on the subject of the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery”, NA, ADM 1/24082. File E.154
30. “Notes of points of substance argued or established at meeting between First Lord and Lord Waverley at 10 a.m. Monday 22 July 1952”, NA, ADM 1/24082.
31. Ibid.
32. Note on JPL Thomas, private memo describing meeting with Lord Waverley, 18 June 1952, NA, ADM1/24082
33. This arduous process involved retrieving the original loading manifest, matching it’s inventory against the record of the bombs that had been successfully salvaged, and then seeking American help with understanding the codes used for various types of bomb. That this was a complicated matter is demonstrated by a letter dated 29 July 1952 by Lt. Col. A.W. Stoddard, of Officer Group No. 1, United States Army, 7 North Audley St, London W.1. See also H.J. Hawkins, A Proposal for Salvage of the S.S. “Richard Montgomery”,’ Explosives Research and Development Centre, Waltham Abbey, National Archives SUPP 6/948
34. Statement for Percy Wells, prepared by J. P. L. Thomas to be sent by the First Lord of the Admiralty, NA ADM 1/24082
35. “Town That Could Have Been Blown Up Any Day in the Past Eight Years: 3,000 Tons of Bombs in Shipwreck”, Sunday Dispatch, 11 May 1952, p. 5
36. “Anti-Spy Ring Round British Dockyard”, Sunday Dispatch, 18 May 1952, p. 1. Having been developed under the direction of Sir William Penney, said to have discovered his interest in mathematics while attending Sheerness Technical High School for Boys in the mid-Twenties, the device would be brought over by barge from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Shoeburyness and loaded aboard a redundant river class frigate HMS Plym, which was then moored at Stangate Creek, a few miles up the Medway from Sheerness. HMS Plym was later joined by the frigate Tracker and the aircraft carrier Campania, which had recently completed service as exhibition ship of the Festival of Britain, and set off on the eight-week voyage to the Montebello Islands, off the coast of North West Australia, where it would serve as the cradle of the 25 kiloton explosio
n produced on 3 October, 1952.
31. The Doomsday Shuffle
1. Desmond Wettern, “A Sunken Ghost Ship”, Daily Sketch, 28 April 1962, p. 6
2. Desmond Wettern, “Her Cargo- Bombs: Could She Still Blow Up?”, Daily Sketch, 8 May 1962, p. 13
3. David Lampe, “The Doomsday Ship”, Wide World, October 1964, pp. 224–229 & 286–290
4. Major A.B. Hartley, MBE, RE, Unexploded Bomb: A History of Bomb Disposal, with a foreword by the Rt. Hon. Herbert Morrison CH, MP, London: Cassell, 1958.
5. “Sheerness Would Be Wiped Out”, East Kent Gazette, 8 October 1964, p. 11
6. HC Deb 18 March 1965, vol. 708 cc321-2W
7. HC Deb 24 November 1965, vol. 721 cc489–60
8. Jack Griffiths MBE, Solicitor and Clerk of Sheerness Urban District Council, letter to Terry Boston MP, 22 December 1965.
9. “Bomb Ship: New Plea”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 18 March 1966, p. 6
10. “Notes on Meeting on 22 April 1966 between the Navy Department and the Sheerness Urban District Council to discuss the Wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery”, NA, ADM 331/64
11. NA, ADM 331/64
12. Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Report on the Wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, Southampton: MCA, March 2000, p. 25
13. ‘“Act Now on Danger Ship” Plea,’ Evening News, 20 November 1967
14. One of these questions was intended to establish unequivocally whether the cluster bombs were fitted with fuses that might have degenerated to produce highly dangerous and volatile azides, while another concerned the possibility of the “entire cargo” being detonated by the explosion of single fragmentation bomb. Letter from P.D. Jewitt, Shore Division (Naval), Ministry of Defence, to Lieut-Colonel R. H. Lee of the United States Army Standardisation Group UK, in London, 13 May 1966, National Archives, DEFE 69/525
15. “US Army and Navy Comments Regarding the S.S. Richard Montgomery”, National Archives, DEFE 69/525
16. “Loose Minute. Wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery”, National Archives, DEFE 69/525
17. Letters to DTI from Persad (26 November 1971) and H. N. Brunby (12 November 1971)National Archives, ADM 331 / 64
18. Sheppey Congregational Church, letter to the Minister of the Environment, 20 October 1971, National Archives, ADM 331/64
19. Norman Baldock, Chairman of governors at St George’s Church of England Middle School, Sheerness, letter to Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher, 28 October 1971, National Archives, ADM 331/64
20. Hydraulics Research Station, Wallingford, “Wreck of the S.S. Richard Montgomery off Sheerness: An Investigation into Proposed Schemes for Protecting the Wreck”, January 1971, National Archives ADM 331/64
21. “Combined Effort to Avert Thameside Flooding”, Times, 13 November 1971, p. 4
22. V. Marlow of the Board of Trade, letter to the Ministry of Defence, 10 March 1972. National Archives ADM 331/64
23. ”Effects of Detonation on Wreck of SS Richard Montgomery”, National Archives AVIA 37/916
32. Becoming Unfathomable: The Bomb Ship as “Murky Reality”
1. Uwe Johnson, Letter to Rudolf Augstein, 6 December 74, Inselgeschichten, p. 187
2. Ein englisches Tagebuch, pp. 31–2
3. Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age (trans. Eden and Cedar Paul), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951
4. The letter is here quoted from the English edition of Jurgen Habermas (ed.), Observations on “The Spiritual Situation of the Age” [1979] (trans. Andrew Buchwalter) Cambridge Mass & London: MIT Press, 1985, pp. 1–4
5. “‘Ein sicheres Versteck’: Uwe Johnson and England”, p. 96
6. Jurgen Habermas, Letter to the author, 6 January 2017
7. Uwe Johnson, Letter to Jürgen Habermas, 13 February 1979, Inselgeschichten, p. 188
8. Uwe Johnson, “Ein unergründliches Schiff”, Merkur 1979, H.6, pp. 537–550. This is the version republished in Inselgeschichten, pp. 19-40
9. Uwe Johnson, “Ein unergründliches Schiff”, Inselgeschichten, p. 20
10. Ibid., p. 26
11. Ibid., p. 21
12. Ibid., p. 21
13. Ibid., p. 21
14. Ibid., p. 22
15. Ibid., p. 22. Made by KPM (the Royal Porcelain Factory of Berlin) and inscribed, like the original Freedom Bell, with the promise “That This World Under God Shall Have a New Birth of Freedom” these 12cm-high porcelain bells are nowadays easily examined on eBay.
16. Ibid., p. 23.
17. Ibid., p. 24.
18. Anniversaries I, p. 19
19. “Ein unergründliches Schiff”, Inselgeschichten, p. 25
20. Ibid., p. 26-7
21. Ibid., p. 29
22. Ibid., p. 30
23. “Survey on Bomb Ship is Started”, Sheppey Gazette and East-Kent Times, 28 September 1978, p. 1
24. Ian Read, “Dive to Danger”, Kent Evening Post, 27 September 1978, p. 11
25. “The Thames Timebomb”, The Sunday Times, 27 August, 1978, pp. 4-5
26. John Cotgrove, telephone conversation with the author, 10 November 2016
27. Michael Thomas, text message, 11 November 2016
28. David A. Atkinson, Richard Anthony Baker & David F. Cotgrove, “The Explosive Cargo of the USS ‘Richard Montgomery’: A study into the Developing Hazard From A Marine Wreck in the Thames Estuary Between Sheerness and Southend-on-Sea”, Westcliff-on-Sea: Southend-on-Sea & District Chamber of Trade & Industry Ltd, 1972
29. Press release enclosed with letter to the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence by V.T. Steward, General Secretary of Southend Chamber of Trade, 18 April 1972, National Archives, ADM 331/64
30. Stephen Barlay, “New Hearts for Old”, Wide World, October 1964, pp. 278–231 & 294–295
31. Stephen Barlay, Blockbuster, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976, p. 132
32. “Ein unergründliches Schiff”, Inselgeschichten, p. 36.
33. Nick Barlay, Scattered Ghosts: One Family’s Survival through War, Holocaust and Revolution, London: I.B. Tauris, 2013, p. 170
34. David Cotgrove, quoted in John M. Williams, S.S. Richard Montgomery: Risk & Reality, Benfleet: Williams, 2016, p. 7
35. John Cotgrove, telephone conversation with the author, 7 November 2016
36. Lampe, “The Doomsday Ship”, p. 224
37. Sheppey Gazette, 21 August 1978, p. 1
38. Martin Collier, “Thames Timebomb, or Simply a Damp Squib?”, Sheppey Gazette and East-Kent Times, 7 September 1978, p. 3
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. “Ein unergründliches Schiff”, Inselgeschichten, p. 35
43. Ibid., p. 39.
44. Ibid., p. 36.
45. Ibid., p. 37.
46. Ibid., p. 38.
47. “New Fear for Bomb Ship”, Sheppey Gazette and North-East Kent Times, 31 August 1978, p. 1
48. Ian Read, “May the Bomb Ship Rust in Peace”, Kent Evening Post, September 28 1978, p. 16
49. Collier, “Thames Timebomb, or Simply a Damp Squib?”
33. Explosion: From the Richard Montgomery to the Cap Arcona
1. Renate Mayntz, email to the author, 1 November 2016
2. Man in the Modern Age, p. 21
3. Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existenz: Five Lectures, New York: Noonday Press, 1955, p. 104
4. Ibid., pp. 32 & 38
5. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), London: Routyledge, 2003, p. 110
6. The Great Explosion: Gunpowder, the Great War, and a Disaster on the Kent Marshes. See also Arthur Percival, The Great Explosion at Faversham 2 April 1916, unattributed pamphlet distributed by the Faversham Society, reprinted from Archaeologia Cantiana, Vol. C, 1985
7. D.G. Bond, “Two Ships: Correspondences between Uwe Johnson and Johann Peter Hebel”, The German Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 3, Focus: Nineteenth Century (Kleist), Summer 1991, pp. 313–324
8. Frauke Meyer-Gosau, Versuch, eine Heimat zu finden: E
ine Reise zu Uwe Johnson, Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014, p. 7
9. Rudi Goguel, Cap Arcona. Report über den Untergang der Häftlingsflotte in der Lübecker Bucht am 3. Mai 1945, Frankfurt am Main, 1972. Johnson describes his reliance on this book, which did not come out in time for him to include the episode in its proper place within the chronology of Anniversaries, in an interview with Manfred Durzak, quoted in D.G. Bond and Julian Preece, “‘Cap Arcona’ 3 May 1945: History and Allegory in Novels by Uwe Johnson and Günter Grass”, Oxford German Studies, 20, 1991, p. 150
10. Anniversaries III, p. 963. My quotations from Johnson’s account of the sinking of the Cap Arcona are from pp. 963–7
11. Benjamin Jacobs and Eugene Pool, The 100-Year Secret: Britain’s Hidden World War II Massacre, Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2004, p. 40
12. “Winter Holidays”, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 29 October 1935, p. 6
13. “Wandering Jews”, Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 27 March 1939, p. 1
14. Jacobs & Pool, p. 26
15. Robert P. Watson, The Nazi Titanic: The Incredible Untold Story of a Doomed Ship in World War II, Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2016, pp. 69-74
16. Ibid., p. 254
17. Daniel Long, “A Controversial History? An Analysis of British Attitudes and Responsibility in the Bombing of the Cap Arcona, 3 May 1945”, Available online at: www.southampton.ac.uk
18. Ibid., p. 967
19. D.G. Bond and Julian Preece tell us that the work mentioned by Goguel is Charles Webster’s The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, published in 1961, not 1956 as Johnson has it.
20. Terence McQullin, Royal Army Medical Corps (Oral History) 15540, recorded on 28 June 1995, Imperial War Museum, London
21. Jacobs and Pool, p. 172
22. Ibid., p. 102
23. Piet Ketelaar, ‘Oral History Interview’ 9725 recorded by Conrad Wood on 9/3/1987, Imperial War Museum, London
24. For my attempt to describe this “revivalist fable” as it unfolded in the late eighties, see my A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London [1991], enlarged edition, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 307-319
25. John Nurden, “Sheppey ‘bombship’ Richard Montgomery to have masts chopped off”, KentOnline, 28 May 2020
26. I take this phrase from Heathcote Williams, Boris Johnson: The Beast of Brexit A Study in Depravity, London Review of Books, 2016. As Williams also announced, “There’s a German word for people like Johnson: Backpfeifengesicht. It means ‘a face that needs to be punched’”. Heathcote Ruthven, “Back with a Vengeance”, Independent, 29 May 2016
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