Fisherman nets a torpedo

FISHERMAN Robert Thomson thought he had stumbled on a monster catch after he felt a hefty tug on his net.

But the bite turned out to be more than he bargained for when a giant torpedo ended up being the catch of the day.

Robert, who was fishing near Port Seton in East Lothian, where he lives, bundled the 12-foot long device into his boat and waited anxiously for a bomb disposal team, with no idea if it would explode at any moment.

But luckily for the prawn fisherman it turned out that the torpedo, thought to date back to the 1970s, was not a live bomb – it was a dummy used as a practice device by the Royal Navy.

The 42-year-old said: "I go out daily on my boat, the Emma Jane, but on Monday I felt something huge tug on my net. I spent 45 minutes wrestling with it before pulling up a huge bomb.

"I bundled it into my boat and called the coastguard.

"It's not something you see everyday, but I wasn't too scared as I've pulled up ammunition before. Nowadays I find all sorts of things in the sea, including bits of plane, bits of submarine – all kinds of strange things. "

After calling for help, Robert waited patiently for a couple of hours until the Royal Navy's Northern Diving Unit arrived to dispose of the device, and they quickly revealed that it was a dummy mine.

Despite its harmless nature, the team of four, headed by Chief Petty Officer Lee Yates, destroyed it via a controlled explosion to avoid it causing a hazard to any other ship.

Officer Yates said: "When we heard of the 'bomb' we asked Mr Thomson to stay put because if he brought it into the harbour it could have potentially caused a lot of damage, but when we went out there we saw that it was a harmless practice mine.

"However, it wasn't advisable that Mr Thomson brought it aboard – if it had been real and it had exploded there wouldn't have been a fishing boat left.

"We usually find around 400 bits of ammunition of some sort every year, but it is unusual to find a torpedo.

"We put the device back in the water away from any service pipes and returned the following day to blow it up underwater.

"During the Second World War the Germans laid over 360,000 mines and we laid a few ourselves to protect certain assets, so there is a chance you could uncover something."