The boat's skipper, Robert Campbell, contacted the coastguard on Thursday morning to report that the mine had become tangled in the nets and had been brought on deck.

Mr Campbell said: "The mine opened up, it split in two halves, and then we could see the high explosives were inside it."

The Utility, a 70 foot trawler with four men on board from Kilkeel in County Down, then sailed into shallow waters off nearby Annalong.

A painstaking emergency operation involving the Ministry of Defence, a naval warship and local lifeboats, swung into action.

Naval bomb experts from Faslane in Scotland confirmed it was a WW2 bomb.