In Popular Culture
The wreck is central to the plot of Stephen Barlay's 1977 novel Blockbuster, in which an extortionist threatens to blow it up, thereby causing serious flooding in central London, if his demands are not met. In Simon Conway's 2010 novel A Loyal Spy, terrorists plan to blow up the ship to coincide with a surge of high tide, thereby flooding London. The German writer Uwe Johnson, who lived in Sheerness between 1974 and 1984, published a short story (Ein unergründliches Schiff / An unfathomable ship) about the wreck in 1979.
The wreck also briefly features in the television drama Waking the Dead, in the episode "Walking On Water," as the dumping ground for a fishing boat containing three murdered women. Exterior shots were filmed at Leigh-on-Sea on the other side of the Thames Estuary.
The wreck also features in James Barrington's novel Timebomb in which a group of European terrorists, financed by a dissident Saudi, attempt to ram a speed boat, remotely controlled, loaded with semtex onto the wreck.
The explosion of the wreck, and a subsequent chain reaction of explosions of tankers and petrochemical installations, is the start point of Malcolm Rose's young-adult adventure series beginning with Jordan Stryker: Bionic Agent, where the eponymous 13-year-old hero is nearly killed by the blast and subsequently reconstructed by a secret government organisation.
The BBC TV series Coast features the wreck in episode 8 of series 2.
Read more about this topic: SS Richard Montgomery
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