Located in the Medway are the rusting remains of a WW1 German U-Boat, UB-122.
The U-Boat was confiscated at the end of the Great War and was taken up the River Medway along with 25 other U-Boats to be scrapped on the Kent Coast in 1921.
SM UB-122 was a German Type UB III submarine or U-boat in the German Imperial Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine). She was commissioned into the German Imperial Navy on 4 March 1918 as SM UB-122.
She was built by AG Weser of Bremen and following just under a year of construction, launched at Bremen on 4 March 1918.
Like all Type UB III submarines, UB-122 carried 10 torpedoes and was armed with a 8.8 cm (3.46 in) deck gun. UB-122 would carry a crew of up to 3 officer and 31 men and had a cruising range of 7,280 nautical miles (13,480 km; 8,380 mi).
Marine archaeologist Mark Dunkley, the maritime designation adviser for English Heritage, told the Daily Mail:
‘What we still don’t know is exactly why or how UB-122 ended where it is. It’s likely it was being taken up the Medway estuary to be broken up for scrap. Perhaps in a storm it parted from its tow, the cable snapped, and the prevailing winds blew it to Hoo.
‘As to why it was left there, we can only speculate. It could have been too much of an effort to get to it, or perhaps it was a problem of navigation in how to get to it.
View the wreck on Google Earth : Click Here
