AUG. 30 — Local and state police were called to the state pier in Gloucester, Mass., last week after a fishing boat hauled in an unusual object.
The crew of the scalloper Venture picked up a 20-pound World War II-era anti-ship mine from the ocean floor using a dragger net, the Associated Press reported. “I hauled back to dump out my dredge … out rolled the bomb,” a crewmember says in a news report. “It rolled right out onto the back deck and it was just kind of smiling at me.”
The crew brought the device to the state pier at about 4 p.m. and state police were contacted, according to the Associated Press report. A Navy bomb expert from Newport, R.I., was flown in and the bomb was safely detonated several hours later at a remote location.
As precaution the Coast Guard closed the state pier for several hours and kept boating traffic out of the area, the report says.
— Jason Fell
