[5]: 2000 survey, p21–22 [6][7] Richard Montgomery was laid down on 15 March 1943 under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull 1199, by the St. Johns River Shipbuilding Company, Jacksonville, Florida.

They had attempted to signal an alert by sounding their sirens, but without avail because the ship's chief officer neither reacted nor awoke Captain Wilkie, a failure which he was unable to explain.

A board of inquiry concluded that the anchorage the harbour master assigned had placed the ship in jeopardy, and returned the captain of Richard Montgomery to full duty within a week.

[5]: 2008 survey Because of the presence of the large quantity of unexploded ordnance, the ship is monitored by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and is clearly marked on the relevant Admiralty charts.

[5]: 2000 survey, p21–22  This comprises the following items of ordnance: One of the reasons that the explosives have not been removed was the unfortunate outcome of a similar operation in July 1967, to neutralize the contents of the Polish cargo ship Kielce, that sank in 1946, off Folkestone in the English Channel.

During preliminary work, Kielce exploded with a force equivalent to an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale, digging a 20-foot-deep (6 m) crater in the seabed and bringing "panic and chaos" to Folkestone, although there were no injuries.

[5]: 2000 survey, p21–22  Kielce was at least 3 or 4 miles (4.8 or 6.4 km) from land, had sunk in deeper water than Richard Montgomery, and had "just a fraction" of the load of explosives.

News reports in May 2012 however, including one by BBC Kent, stated that the wave could be about one metre (3.3 feet) high, which although lower than previous estimates would be enough to cause flooding in some coastal settlements.

Critics of government assurances that the likelihood of a major explosion is remote argue that one of the fuses of the 2,600 fused-fragmentation devices could become partially flooded and undergo the reaction producing copper azide.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said in 1998, "as the fuses will probably all have been flooded for many years and the sensitive compounds referred to are all soluble in water this is no longer considered to be a significant hazard".

[19] Julian Huppert, the co-chair of the Liberal Democrats committee on transport, disagreed, saying: "This report shows the ship's slow deterioration is continuing with the lethal cargo still on board", and "This must surely put an end to the bonkers idea of building an airport in the Thames estuary.

The SS Richard Montgomery was the subject of a plot line in season three of the BBC drama Waking the Dead from 2003, in the episode titled "Walking on Water".

In the Indian movie Vishwaroopam II, the SS Richard Montgomery is the target of an attempted terrorist attack using cesium weapons.