With a coastline home to two of Britain's most important historic shipping lanes – the River Thames and the English Channel – there's little surprise there's a vast number of wrecks sitting on the seabed around Kent.

Shipwrecks have an air of mystery and curiosity surrounding them which are unique.

Often they are yarns of daring acts but the stories of these tragedies and the great loss of life which accompany them have been passed down as folk tales for generations.

Each wreck has its own story not just of what happened to make the vessel sink but also the human cost, the acts of bravery in adversity and for some, the lingering danger they still pose today.

About 8,500 years ago the Straits of Dover were breached to form the British Isles as the land broke away from mainland Europe.

Since then, British history –particularly in Kent and the rest of south east England – has been dominated by its maritime connection to trade, defence against invasion, migration and empire building.

The exact number of wrecks off the Kent coast is not known but it's likely to be in the region of more than 10,000.

Records from the National Record for the Historic Environment record at least 100 medieval wrecks, 500 from the 16th and 17th centuries and some 2,000 from the 18th century alone.

Here are some of the stories of Kent's shipwrecks and the secrets of what lies beneath the waves.

Dover Bronze Age Boat (1600BC)

Possibly one of the earliest shipwrecks is on display at the Dover Museum and dates back to the Bronze Age in about 1600BC.

The vessel is only 12 metres long but is internationally significant and contained a host of important archaeological evidence about human life three and a half millennia ago.

It was discovered in 1992 during exacavation to revamp the A20 through Dover during redevelopment works.

The boat was unearthed in a silted up channel and shows much more than just a tale of a shipwreck but proves how much the geography of our part of the world has changed in the last 3,500 years.

HMHS Anglia, Folkestone, 1915

Originally built as a steamship ferry taking passengers across the Irish Sea, she was converted to a hospital ship when the First World War broke out in 1914.

On one fateful voyage through the Channel on November 17, 1915 the ship struck a German mine just outside Folkestone harbour.

The ship was full of 400 injured troops, nurses and doctors returning from the battlefields in France and Belgium and had set off from Calais.

She sank within 15 minutes with the loss of 134 people as dozens of boats from Folkestone desperately tried to recover survivors.

HMHS Anglia was officially declared as a war grave three years ago.

HMS Hermes, Dover, 1914

Many wrecks have the subject of plundering attempts – illegal under the Merchant Shipping Act and other laws which mean any finds on wrecks have to be declared to the Receiver of Wreck.

HMS Hermes is just one of the ships which have been targeted by thieves taking items illegally.

She was built in 1890 as a protected cruiser but converted to become an aircraft ferry and depot ship before the First World War.

The Hermes was hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat in the Straits of Dover on October 31, 1914.

She went down with the loss of 44 souls.

In 2014, two men from Sandgate admitted plundering wrecks off the Kent coast – including a German submarine, 19th century merchant ship and an East India Company vessel – taking treasure worth an estimated £250,000. A bronze cannon was among their vast haul.

Tudor ship, Tankerton, exact date unknown

The rare wreck is archaeologically significant as it gives a rare insight into shipbuilding from the Tudor era and is the only known surviving medieval shipwreck in the south east.

Of course, the period's most famous shipwreck is the Mary Rose – which sunk as she left Portsmouth in 1545 – but the Tankerton wreck, unearthed in April 2017 in the mudflats off Tankerton, near Whitstable, has many hidden secrets.

A huge archaeological dig started to excavate the wreck in 2018 and experts believe the ship dates to the late 16th or early 17th century.

Experts believe she was used for ocean-going trade voyages as the remains of a galley were found during the dig.

But the truth in exactly what the ship was used for and life on board lies in the personal possessions which have been found and being analysed.

The reason for it being abandoned in the mud off Tankerton is thought to be because of the area's links to the production of copperas – a mineral formed as pyrites decompose in the air and used for dying clothing due to the green colour it gives off. It was also used to make ink.

Whitstable and Tankerton were home to at least six copperas houses some 400 years ago.

Tests on the tree rings in the wood, which was found preserved in a layer of clay under the ground, reveals an oak plank with a felling date of 1531. The other samples have been given an estimated date of the 16th century.

Goodwin Sands, multiple wrecks

It could be dubbed the wreck graveyard of Kent with an estimated 2,000 ships scattered on the bottom of the sea.

The sandbank located a few miles off Deal has claimed many ships over the years including four naval vessels during the Great Gale of 1703.

The nine-day storm battered the east coast of England with dozens of ships perishing. In Kent, the navy lost the Restoration, Mary, Stirling Castle and Northumberland with a combined loss of 1,082 men.

Due to the perilous hazard to ships of the shallow sands, light ships were stationed to warn captains of running aground on the shifting sands.

But even these light ships were not immune.

The South Goodwin Lightvessel suffered two casualties. One vessel was bombed and sunk by the Germans on October 25, 1940. Its replacement LV90 came a cropper on November 27, 1954 when the cables to her two sea anchors snapped in a storm.

One crew member was rescued but seven died.

LV90 can still be seen at low tide and the last South Goodwin Lightvessel was towed away in 2006.

It is not just ships of the sea which have been buried in Goodwin Sands, but kites of the skies too.

A German Dornier-17 bomber was found remarkably in tact when its remains were salvaged from the sands in 2013.

The Dutch trade ship the Rooswijk was discovered by a diver was subject of a major archaeological project in 2017.

Nobody survived when the vessel – which sailed for the Dutch East India company – hit the bottom of the seas off Deal on January 8, 1740.

She had been carrying a precious cargo containing silver ingots and coinage bound for the Dutch colonies in south east Asia.

SS Richard Montgomery, Sheerness, 1944

No consideration of Kent's shipwrecks would be complete without mentioning the county's most famous and potentially most controversial one.

The SS Richard Montgomery, built in Florida and launched in 1943, carries one of the deadliest payloads of munitions making the wreck one of the least explored.

Yet it is still one of the most discussed wrecks and one which we know almost everything and still nothing about.

Scientists have argued back and forth about the potential repercussions of a controlled explosion with some ruling the move out entirely as other studies have suggested it would "break a few windows in Sheerness".

Best estimates about the ship suggest there are 13,500 bombs with a combined total of 1,434 tonnes of TNT.

The exclusion zone surrounding the Montgomery remains as much in place today as it ever was and its masts are still visibly poking out the of water as a lurking reminder of the scale of its potential destruction.

She sank on the sandbank just off Sheerness but despite a salvage operation in the following days, broke apart and was deemed too dangerous to carry on.

It is estimated it would cost £40 million to excavate and clear the wreck but the risks of setting it off the would cause untold devastation and carnage to a vast swathe of north Kent.

Experts believe in a worst case scenario it could send a column of water 3km into the air and create a five-metre high tsunami across the Isle of Grain... and then catch fire.

Speaking to KentOnline last August, professor of risk and disaster reduction at the University College London David Alexander said: "It would be an underwater explosion - albeit a very shallow one. Would that generate a tsunami or would the water act as a barrier and mitigate the blast?

"The other scenario is a 3,000 metre high column of water, debris, sand and steel, and a five metre tsunami which would then wash across Grain.

"If that were to happen, tsunamis are capable of catching fire.

"After the Japanese earthquake the entire coast was on fire after the tsunami because oil caught fire and then floats on the water, while still ablaze.

"If that went up the Thames goodness knows what would happen."

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