Blimey!

Let’s suppose you are a fisherman and that you are sailing close to a busy cross-Channel lane off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne in East Sussex and you spot something floating on the water’s surface. Blimey - it’s a torpedo!

This is what happened to fisherman Peter Storey earlier in the week who, not knowing whether the torpedo was live or not, bravely tied a rope round it and brought it ashore into shallow water. Later, the Royal Navy Bomb Disposal team comes along and finds that the erxplosive charge had corroded and that the torpedo posed no threat to shipping.

Mr Storey was a brave man for he had no knowledge of explosives and one hopes that there is some sort of reward for removing something that may have been dangerous in a busy shipping lane.

On the other hand, it would be interesting to know how this torpedo ended up where it did seeing that it was confirmed as a British Mk 9 device which had a stamp stating it was last checked and tested in 1955.

Wow! Last tested? What happened to it in the meantime?

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