Now, I’m no explosives expert. But if I knew there were about 1,400 metric tons of explosives sitting at the bottom of the Thames Estuary, I’d want to fish them out as soon as possible. In any case, I’d definitely not want to leave them there for eight decades—then again, maybe that’s why I’m not an expert.

The U.K. government has taken steps to remove parts of the SS Richard Montgomery , a World War II-era cargo ship that sank in the Thames in 1944. In a written statement to Parliament, the U.K. Department for Transport reported that engineers successfully retrieved the ship’s three masts. According to the statement, the masts were removed after expert advisors warned in 2020 that their weight was putting strain on the deteriorating ship, raising the possibility of some unfortunate outcomes.…