Divers found a sunken ship filled with antique champagne and porcelain (3 photos)

Tomasz Stachura, the leader of the diving team, said that the sunken ship was filled to the brim with boxes of champagne, mineral water in clay bottles and porcelain.





On Wednesday, July 17, Polish divers said they had discovered a sunken 19th-century ship in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden, its holds filled with boxes of champagne and porcelain.

A team of divers said they were thrilled to find rare "treasures" on board after discovering the suspected merchant vessel last week.

“The entire wreck is filled to the brim with boxes of champagne, mineral water and porcelain,” said Tomas Stachura, head of the Baltictech diving team.



According to him, among the items found, the divers counted about 100 bottles of champagne.

“I’ve been diving for 40 years, and it often happens that one or two bottles end up at the bottom... Finding a sunken ship with so much cargo is a first for me,” Stachura said.

The discovery, about 20 nautical miles (37 km) south of the Swedish island of Oland, was largely an accident, according to other Polish divers who have been combing the seabed for years for shipwrecks.

"We were just checking out new places out of pure curiosity, and that's when we came across this wreck," Stachura said.



The team said the discovery of sealed clay water bottles helped them determine that the ship sank in the second half of the 19th century.

“We managed to photograph the brand name embossed on a clay bottle, and it turned out that this is the logo of the German company Selters - at that time it had exactly this shape,” Stachura added.

The divers said they had notified Swedish regional authorities about the discovery, but warned that retrieving the “treasure” would take a long time due to administrative restrictions.