Shoes to Sea Mines – 20,000 Items Recovered During Preparations for the Arrival of the Royal Navy’s New Aircraft Carriers
AS PREPARATIONS continue at Portsmouth Naval Base to receive the Royal Navy’s new flagship, the 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, and her sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, it has been announced that thousands of tonnes of mud have been dredged from the harbour and its approaches. The work, which began two years ago, has led to the recovery of more than 20,000 artefacts, many dating back several centuries.
A number of the discoveries involved unexploded ordnance, finds that required immediate action. The recovery of an unexploded German SC250 bomb on the morning of 22 February 2017, for example, led to the closure of the harbour entrance. Personnel from the Royal Navy’s Southern Diving Unit 2 recovered the bomb from the dredging barge and transported it further out to sea where it was lowered to the seabed and destroyed in a controlled explosion.
Other ordnance uncovered during the removal of 3,200,000 cubic metres of sediment – the equivalent to 1,280 Olympic swimming pools – included a German sea mine, a British torpedo, four further large bombs and a wealth of bu…
