00:00Justine, what is this latest update?
00:02So Chloe, the second of the three steel masts have now been removed by crews on the water.
00:08Like you said, work started last week and the first mast was removed on Sunday.
00:14The masts are being removed as the hull of the shipwreck is continuing to deteriorate
00:18and the removal is being funded by £9.5 million from the government.
00:23The diving and the cutting work is being led by the dive supervisor, Jason Murphy.
00:27The diving team is made up of seven people, five of which are ex-Armed Forces personnel
00:33and they are the ones cutting the 82-foot tall masts from the wreck.
00:37And you can see that they are really large masts and I went down to the shipwreck last week
00:45and Jason told me a bit about how they are getting these huge masts out of the water.
00:49Because of the visibility, you don't see a lot.
00:53Probably, I think we had about a foot of visibility this morning, which is quite good for us.
00:59So a lot of it is done by feel, so when we're looking for items to cut, it's done by
01:04feel.
01:04And we've also got a sonar, so I can actually see what's on the seabed and I can see where
01:10the diver is.
01:11And I can assist him to get where he needs to be to do the work that he needs to
01:15do.
01:16Well, as you say, they are pretty big there. They're not going to fit in any old museum.
01:20So what's happening to them now?
01:22So once all three have been removed, they're going to go to the historic Chatham Dockyard,
01:26where they can be preserved and restored properly.
01:30The Department for Transport want the masts to go on display somewhere locally
01:34so that people can learn about Kent's maritime heritage.
01:37And the MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Kevin McKenna, has launched a petition
01:41asking the authorities to allocate one of the masts for the Isle of Sheppey.
01:45But no decision has been made as of yet.
01:47And as I mentioned just before we had our conversation, it's still full of explosives.
01:53It must be still worrying for people. What is the heritage of that?
01:57So, you know, the ship was built in the USA in 1943 as part of the Allied war effort at
02:04the time.
02:05And it did sink off the coast of Sheerness in 1944 when it was carrying around 7000 tonnes of explosives.
02:13And half of the cargo at the time was removed.
02:16But like you said earlier, 1,400 tonnes still remain on the ship.
02:22And the government has said that, you know, the risk of a major explosion from the remaining munitions would be
02:29remote.
