A Ship Wreck, A Rare Element and the Race for the Atomic Bomb

ByANDY FLEMING

The P and O Steamship “Somali” exploding after being torpedoed offshore between Seahouses and Beadnell off the coast of Northumberland, England during the Second World War on March 27, 1941 (photograph courtesy of Seahouses Lifeboats online).

Something different from my normal blog posts today; a mysterious story alledgedly concerning some of the most defining, momentous, top secret and yet simultaneously terrifying wartime events of the twentieth century.  Infact it's more of a request for information rather than a blog post, but it's also a bit of a roller-coaster ride with the potential to thrill!

On October 29, 2008, ITV/Tyne Tees Television in the north east of England broadcast an intriguing and mysterious segment during its nightly regional news programme, North East Tonight.  It concerned a fisherman from Seahouses, Northumberland who claimed that he had been given a batch of metallic ingots stamped "Tc" which he stated had been scientifically verified as the radioactive element Technetium and had been found by divers in a wreck.  What's more, he claimed that the ingots had originated at a nearby chemical plant that was taking part in a secret clandestine programme to build a British atomic bomb.

The stretch of the UK coast between Bamburgh and Beadnell in Northumberland has always been notorious in maritime circles due to its reefs, rocks and islands.  Indeed, most readers will have heard of young Grace Darling who in the early hours of the morning of September 7, 1838 during a storm, looked out from her bedroom window in the Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands and saw the devastating sight of the HMS Forfarshire, it's back broken resting on the rocks of Outer Farne Island.  Both her and her father became famous for rescuing thirteen sailors using a rowing boat, as the seas were too rough for the lifeboat to be launched.

The P and O steamship, The SS Somali.

However, the wreck in this story was not sunk by any act of nature but by a German Heinkel 111 bomber.  It was March 27, 1941 and World War II was being fought at full pitch.  British freighters from east coast ports were using the passage around Cape Wrath in north west Scotland to sail to the rest of the world, thus avoiding the German U-Boat threat in the English Channel.  This was also the chosen route of the P and O ship the SS Somali.

ICI Billingham photographed in colour from the air during World War II, one of the main locations involved in the Tube Alloys Project. Notice the extensive camouflage on Chilton House, the site's headquarters, designed as protection from German bombers.

The Somali was a large and powerful 6,810-ton passenger-cargo steamer built in 1930 and on this occasion it was destined for India.  It was carrying a general cargo but on this voyage had been asked to make an unscheduled stop at Middlesborough at the mouth of the River Tees close to the enormous Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) factory at Billingham, to collect some mysterious extra cargo.  An uneventful trip up the north east coast of England concluded with the dramatic bombing and sinking of the ship in one hundred feet of water just off the coast between Seahouses and the Farne Islands, Northumberland.  Apart from the fact, noticeable from the above photograph, that the ship sank following an extremely spectacular explosion (leading to claims in 1941 that the ship was carrying something in addition to its official inventory), memories of the Somali and its fate disappeared into the mists of time and history.

Samples of the shiny, grey transition metallic element Technetium, discovered in 1936.

That was until the ITV Tyne Tees mysterious news segment about the Somali's cargo and the real purpose of its voyage.  A fisherman, a certain Mr Currie from Seahouses, Northumberland made an amazing claim stating that the SS Somali, in addition to its general cargo, was carrying ingots or bars of the rare transition element technetium (atomic number, Z=43).  This element was originally discovered in 1936 at the University of Palermo in Sicily via it's isotope technetium-99. Technetium-99 is a gamma ray-free source of beta particles and is used in nuclear medicine for a wide variety of diagnostic tests. Long-lived technetium isotopes produced commercially are by-products of the fission of uranium-235 in nuclear reactors and are extracted from nuclear fuel rods.  And Mr Currie stated adamantly that the strange metal bars were made of technetium as the metallurgist he sent them to for laboratory analysis was none too pleased as technetium although not intensely radioactive is still an unpleasant and poisonous element. 

Although the ship's general cargo was destined for Hong Kong, the technetium ingots (presumable the beta-emitting isotope technetium-99) had been collected during its unscheduled stop at Middlesbrough and were on their way to India for an unspecified reason.  In addition to this, Mr Currie stated that he had been in receipt of some of these ingots which he had buried but have since been lost, stating that he thought they had been stolen by security officials working for the government.  He also stated in-vision that he had been warned by government officials to keep quiet about the whole subject of the SS Somali and its mysterious cargo and his telephone was being tapped.  This was because, claimed Currie, that the ship's nuclear cargo was one of the fission products of the UK governments top secret war time clandestine project to build an atomic bomb, a partially de-classified project called Tube Alloys.  And that wasn't all: his most controversial claim was that Britain was leading the way in the development of atomic weapons and indeed had designed the original atom bomb, finally built and used by the Americans.

Now to quote the late, great, NASA astronomer Dr Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".  And some of Mr Currie's claims are certainly extraordinary, however there are certain attributes about this whole affair that seem to be emitting smoke, and some of them quite copious amounts at that.  There is no doubt about the fact that the Somali was sunk by German aircraft near the Farne Islands in March 1941, and divers with whom the vessel is a regular and popular excursion have claimed to have seen gold/silvery metal bars within the debris field of the doomed vessel.  The wreck was relatively intact one hundred feet down in the North Sea until recently, but curiously its has quickly moved on the path to complete disintegration.

Mr Currie's claims about the ship calling at Middlesbrough were correct, and it's now public knowledge that the vast ICI factory and complex at Billingham on the north bank of the River Tees was involved in the Tube Alloys Project, with a fledgling reactor within the plant.  Indeed a nuclear reactor was in action at ICI Billingham right up to 1988 and when it was decommissioned the waste sent to Dounreay in Scotland created some controversy. Anyway, I digress: apparently, the names 'Tube Alloys' and Plutonium started to be used with increasing interchangeability within the project.  The nearest major docks to this factory were at the port of Middlesbrough.

The ICI factory at Billingham photographed employing its smokescreen defence in order to conceal it from enemy bombers. This was a classified photograph during the war and is marked 'secret', and it's not surprising considering its role in the Tube Alloys Project.

ICI Billingham already had the important strategic wartime role of producing synthetic nitrate fertilizer and also synthetic oil from coal used to make petrol and kerosene for the RAF's aircraft.  It was a huge firm employing tens of thousands of people and many of the nation's top nuclear scientists and physicists were drawn there to work on the Tube Alloys Project.  Infact, the factory was commissioned to produce three kilograms of Uranium Hexafluoride or 'Hex' by the government under the management of James Chadwick, the discoverer of the neutron.

Ultimately however, the Tube Alloys Project at Billingham and at a variety of other locations around the UK was wound up, its scientists joining Robert Oppenheimer and the Americans and Canadians running the Manhattan Project to build the US's first atomic and hydrogen fusion bombs tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945.  The first and thankfully the only uses of atomic weapons was at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.

"If the radiance of thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"

J Robert Oppenheimer, (1904-1967), Technical Director, the Manhattan Project, horrified on witnessing the forces he and his team had unleashed upon the detonation of the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico: see his interview below.

Those are the facts, and as usual in these cases of conspiracy some facts lead to a multitude of many more questions and claims.  For example, everything about this whole story has now been removed from the internet.  A Google search now reveals absolutely nothing about the SS Somali and technetium which is strange because until two years ago it revealed a website about Mr Currie's claims and the fact that a documentary about the whole subject was in the pipeline.  The domain name still exists but ends in a no access to site holding page.  Similarly the ITV Tyne Tees website turned up some details but not anymore.  The only reference to the whole affair still available in Search Engine enquiries is a conversation on the Yorkshire Divers Scuba Community Forums from members who understandably watched the programme, due to the health risks if there are still beta radiation emitting ingots on the seabed off Seahouses. And before you ask, nothing turns up on web-caching services such as the Way Back Machine. Oh, and Mr Currie himself seems to have gone silent.

The whole story is, or should I say was, surrounded by much declassified information that had been made available under the Ministry of Defence's fifty year disclosure rule.  Rumour has it on the internet that the story of the SS Somali and its mysterious cargo have been re-classified for another fifty years and the wreck has been systematically and officially destroyed.  This would concur with its internet details being taken down and the rapid decay in the state of the wreck.  With these thoughts and allegations by Mr Currie of him being tailed by security services I can't believe there's a conspiracy going on here!... or could there?  Your views and any further information about Tube Alloys and the British Bomb, technetium, the SS Somali or Mr Currie would be gratefully received by contacting me here.