HMS Montagu (1901) - Salvage Attempts

Salvage Attempts

It quickly became apparent that the damage to Montagu was even worse than initially feared. Divers went over the side at daybreak and found that a rock had pushed the hull 10 feet (3 m) inward. Help arrived on the afternoon of 30 May 1906, but the ship settled in such a way that water rose and fell through the holes in her hull; within 24 hours her boiler rooms, steering compartment, starboard engine room, and forward capstan engine room, as well as other compartments, flooded, and she began to list to starboard. All moveable objects were secured and the port engine room flooded to stop the list from increasing. Sometimes only her upper deck was above water.

The Royal Navy had no experience of salvage and no salvage arm. They had been impressed by the Russian success in recovering major warships damaged at the Battle of Port Arthur and had studied a book by Frederick Young of the Liverpool Salvage Company, later to become Commodore Sir Frederic Young, the Admiralty's first Chief salvage Officer. The commander of the Home and Channel fleets Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson took charge of the operation with Young appointed as advisor. Not unnaturally as the officer in command, Wilson wanted to try his own ideas, many of which Young regarded as “wrong, impractical or both”. From June through August 1906, Montagu was lightened through the removal of her 12-inch (305-mm) and 6-inch (152-mm) guns, heavy machinery, parts of her boilers, heavy fittings, and some of her bow armour. Neither pumping nor attempts to blow water out of her machinery spaces using compressed air had any effect, and nothing that salvage experts tried succeeded in refloating the ship. Her sister ship HMS Duncan herself ran aground whilst trying to help the salvage effort.

Wilson’s final idea was to fill the ship with cork which Young predicted would block the salvage pumps and the “battleship was lost needlessly”. At the end of the summer of 1906, salvage efforts were suspended for the year, with plans to resume them in 1907. However, an inspection of the ship conducted from 1 October to 10 October 1906 found that the action of the sea was driving her further ashore and bending and warping her hull so that her seams were beginning to open, her deck planking was coming apart, and her boat davits had collapsed. The Liverpool Salvage Company was given full responsibility for partial salvage . A guard was put aboard to prevent looting; later, the guard was taken off and replaced by men in boats and ashore. By 1907, however, Montagu was in such bad shape that any hope of salvaging her was abandoned. The Western Marine Salvage Company of Penzance completed salvage of the wreck for scrap metal over the next 15 years.

Although diving clubs still visit the site of Montagu's wreck, all that remains there is armor plate plus a few live 12-inch (305-millimetre) shells on the sea bed. Four wooden panels from the captain's cabin are displayed in the Ilfracombe museum.

The Montagu Steps, which subsequently appeared on OS maps, were constructed adjacent to the wreck during the salvage.