Polish divers in the Baltic Sea have discovered a 19th-century shipwreck loaded with unopened bottles of champagne and precious mineral water.
When divers from Baltitech first saw the wreck on sonar, they thought it was a fishing boat. But when they dived and explored the depths of the sea, they found a 19th-century sailing ship packed to the brim with champagne, wine, mineral water, and porcelain. They counted more than 100 bottles of champagne in the wreck, which lies at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden (about 37 kilometers south of the Swedish island of Öland).
Tomasz Stachura, owner of the company Santi and leader of the Baltitech diving team, believes the shipment they found was intended for the Russian Tsar. Baltitech specializes in exploring shipwrecks in the Baltic, but even for them, this discovery is incredible. Stachura stated that he has been diving in these waters for 40 years and that occasionally, you might find one or two bottles of champagne on a wreck, but he has never seen crates with unopened bottles of champagne, wine, and mineral water.
The clay bottles with water bearing the trademark of the German company Selters helped Baltitech divers date the wreck to between 1850 and 1867. Naturally, the champagne immediately sparked great public interest, but the mineral water from that period is the real rarity because it was an exclusive product “treated almost like medicine” that could only be found on royal tables. The value of mineral water in that period was so high that transports were escorted by police. Stachura believes that this shipment was intended for the Russian Tsar Nicholas I, who reportedly lost one of his ships in the area in 1852.
