page_title: Lundy
section_title: Wreck of Battleship Montagu
hierarchical_section_title: Lundy / History / Wrecked ships and aircraft / Wreck of Battleship Montagu
caption_attribution_description: English: British battleship HMS Montagu (1901) with heavy fittings remoed during salvage in 1906
context_page_description: Lundy is an English island in the Bristol Channel. It forms part of the district of Torridge in the county of Devon.
  About 3 miles long and ⁵⁄₈ mi wide, Lundy has had a long and turbulent history, frequently changing hands between the British crown and various usurpers. In the 1920s, one self-proclaimed king, Martin Harman, tried to issue his own coinage and was fined by the House of Lords. In 1941, two German Heinkel He 111 bombers crash landed on the island, their crews captured. In 1969, Lundy was purchased by British millionaire Jack Hayward, who donated it to the National Trust. It is managed by the Landmark Trust, a conservation charity that derives its income from day trips and holiday lettings. As of 2007, the island had a population of 28.
  As a steep, rocky island, often shrouded by fog, Lundy has been the scene of many shipwrecks, and the remains of its old lighthouse installations are of both historic and scientific interest. Its present-day lighthouses are fully automated, one of them solar-powered.
  Lundy has a rich bird life, as it lies on major migration routes, and attracts many vagrant as well as indigenous species.
context_section_description: Steaming in heavy fog, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Montagu ran hard aground near Shutter Rock on Lundy's southwest corner at about 2:00 a.m. on 30 May 1906. Thinking they were aground at Hartland Point on the English mainland, a landing party went ashore for help, only finding out where they were after encountering the lighthouse keeper at the island's north light.
  Strenuous efforts by the Royal Navy to salvage the badly damaged battleship during the summer of 1906 failed, and in 1907 it was decided to give up and sell her for scrap. Montagu was scrapped at the scene over the next fifteen years. Diving clubs still visit the site, where armour plate and live 12-inch (305-millimetre) shells remain on the seabed.
caption: HMS Montagu during the failed salvage attempts of the summer of 1906
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