Polish divers have discovered a sunken ship from the 19th century in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish coast, its hold filled with crates of champagne and china.
The group said it was thrilled to find a rare treasure on board when it came across the suspected merchant vessel last week.
"The entire sunken machine is loaded to the top with crates of champagne, mineral water and porcelain," Tomasz Stachura, head of the Baltictech diver group, told AFP.
He said divers counted about 100 bottles of champagne among the recovered items.
"I've been diving for 40 years and it often happens that there are one or two bottles ... to find a sunken ship with so much cargo, it's the first time for me," Stachura added.
According to Polish divers who have been scouring the seabed for years for sunken ships, the discovery, made about 20 nautical miles (37 km) south of the Swedish island of Åland, was largely accidental.
"We were just checking out new places out of pure curiosity, and then we came across this sunken ship," says Stachura.
The group said the discovery of sealed clay water bottles helped them determine that the ship capsized in the second half of the 19th century.
"We were able to capture the brand printed on a clay bottle, which turned out to be from the German company Selters - and the logo had this exact shape during this period," Stachura added.
The divers said they had notified Swedish regional authorities of the find, but warned that extracting the champagne treasure would take some time due to administrative restrictions.
"It has been lying there for 170 years, so let it lie there for another year and we will have time to prepare better for the operation," he said. | BGNES
