Historic champagne cargo retrieved from sea bed

By Franck Andrews - CBS News

A team of divers has discovered a massive haul of champagne and wine on a shipwreck on the floor of the Baltic Sea.

On a recent dive trip off the coast of Sweden, the Polish diving group BaltiTech spotted what looked like an old fishing boat on their sonar, 20 or so nautical miles south of the Aland islands, between Sweden and Finland.

"At first, there were doubts whether there would be anyone willing to go down," they said in a post on their website. But two of them decided to jump in and head down for a quick look.

When they didn't return for two hours, the rest of the team suspected "there was something very interesting on the bottom."

Their hunch was right. The divers swam down to discover a 19th century sailing ship "in very good condition, loaded to the sides with champagne, wine, mineral water and porcelain."

"I've been a diver for 40 years. From time to time, you see one or two bottles," Tomasz Stachura, who leads the team, told CBS News' partner network BBC News.

"But I've never seen crates with bottles of alcohol and baskets of water like this." "We certainly saw more than 100 bottles of champagne and baskets of mineral water in clay bottles," said the group.

The clay bottles helped the group establish the shipment was produced between 1850 and 1867.

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By Hannah Maltwood - Cornwall Live

An unusual underwater expedition is being planned off the Cornish coast, to send a submarine 100 metres below the ocean to retrieve rare bottles of 100-year-old wine and champagne sitting on the seabed for a century.

During the First World War a boat laden with alcohol, travelling between England and Bordeaux, was shot down on its journey, by a German U boat. Sinking to the bottom of the sea, the ship and its cargo have laid undisturbed since 1918.

Now experts want to salvage the historical artefacts in what they believe will be "one of the most significant historical discoveries of the century", and they're allowing a member of the public to go along on the voyage.

Through a partnership between Cookson Adventures, maritime experts 10994 and dive and survey expert Nigel Hodge, from Cornish Fishing, the wreck has now been located, sitting in the English Channel, just off the coast of Cornwall.

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From The Courier.co.uk
 

The wrecked vessel is believed to be the Queen of Sweden, a merchant ship of the Swedish East India Company.

It hit a rock off the headland of Knab while seeking shelter in Bressay Sound, Shetland, after running into stormy weather on  January 12, 1745.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES) said the wreck is of national importance as “arguably the best preserved remains of a Swedish East Indiaman located in waters around Scotland”.

It has recommended that the Scottish Government designate the area as a Historic Marine Protected Area (Historic MPA) and a consultation has been launched inviting people to give their views.

Historic MPAs aim to preserve marine historic assets of national importance, so they can be protected, valued and understood.

Philip Robertson, Deputy Head of Designations at HES, said: “The sinking of the Queen of Sweden was a significant event in the history of the Shetland Isles, and the wreckage that remains is a marine heritage site of national importance that can greatly enhance our knowledge and understanding of the Swedish East India Company and its trading activity around Scotland’s coasts during the 18th century.

“We believe that designating the site as a Historic MPA will promote its heritage value, and I’d like to encourage as many people as possible to take this opportunity to share their views about this important piece of our nation’s priceless marine heritage.”

It comes after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon last week announced a consultation on proposals to create a Historic MPA at Scapa Flow in Orkney, where vessels from the German High Seas fleet were scuttled in 1919.

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By Lucas Reilly - Mentafloss

Anders Franzén lived for shipwrecks. An engineer and expert on the naval warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries, he was especially obsessed with the old Swedish men-of-war that had once menaced the Baltic Sea.

When he wasn’t busy at his day job with the Swedish Naval Administration, he’d spend hours combing through archives in search of maps and documents, hoping they might reveal the location of Sweden’s great sunken warships.

And when he learned that one wreck might still be trapped, undiscovered, not far from his home in Stockholm, he was hungry to find it.

For five years, Franzén spent his spare time searching for the shipwreck. He had little luck. Trawling the waterways around Stockholm—what locals call the ström—with a grappling hook, Franzén's “booty consisted mainly of rusty iron cookers, ladies’ bicycles, Christmas trees, and dead cats,” he’d later recall.

But on August 25, 1956, Franzén's grappling iron hooked something 100 feet below. And whatever it was, it was big. Franzén gently lowered a core sampler—a tool used by oceanographers to get soil samples from the bottom of bodies of water—and retrieved a dark and soggy chunk of black oak.

The following month, Franzén's friend Per Edvin Fälting dived into the ström and see what was down there.

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From Yle.fi

About eight years ago, many bottles of what was purported to be the world’s oldest champagne were discovered in a shipwreck among the islands of Åland, the semi-autonomous maritime province off Finland's south-west coast.

There were hopes the champage, bottled around two centuries ago by famed champagne house Veuve Clicquot, could be auctioned off or mixed with a newer vintage.

However, an analysis of the shipwreck bubbly by the French vintner that made it found the beverage to be undrinkable, according to public broadcaster Åland Radio.

Åland's culture minister Tony Asumaa visited France last week, to hear about the champagne firm's analysis. A sample bottle of the shipwreck bubbly was sent to Veuve Clicquot last year.

At the time, the champagne treasure discovery made headlines around the world. It also caused local controversy when Finland's deputy chancellor of justice reprimanded the Åland regional government for recovering the shipwreck cargo before receiving permission from the National Board of Antiquities.

In 2011 and 2012 Åland's government had sold off some of the bottles for record prices at auction and pocketed the considerable proceeds.

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