New Dredging Beach Hazard

A new and rather novel hazard has arisen on our beaches, discovered when an off duty explosives expert walked by a man exercising his dog by Lower Marine Parade on the beach at Dovercourt (near Harwich) throwing for his retrieval what at first appeared to be a miniature Rugby football.

Two grenades found on a beach at Dovercourt in July

Amanda Lockey’s photographs of hand grenades exposed on Dovercourt Beach

On closer inspection, it was seen to be a hand grenade, a Second World War No. 36 Mills bomb, in good condition with little encrustation. An uncovering of what could have been a really explosive impact.

Altogether five such grenades have been discovered and dealt with by the bomb disposal team in the same area in the past five weeks. They are thought to have emanated from a sunken crate of such grenades, uncovered by port channel dredging, the partial cargo of a munitions ship that went down in the days of World-War-II.

With our dunes and cliffs now rapidly so rapidly eroding, similar ordnance may well appear uncovered, especially as uncleared mines long deeply buried, exposed after sixty years of internment.


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