COPENHAGEN – No one will be allowed to fish out any of the nearly 100 bottles of 19th-century Champagne and mineral water nestled in a shipwreck off southern Sweden without proper authorization, officials said Wednesday.
Though the wreck's location has been known since 2016 and is registered in Sweden's National Antiquities Office’s cultural environment, it was only on July 11 that Polish scuba divers found the precious cargo.
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The wreck, which sits at about 58 meters (190 feet) deep off the coast of the southern Sweden county of Blekinge, was found by the divers while they were checking spots of interest about 37 kilometers (20 nautical miles) south of the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Oeland.
Wine and water experts have quickly contacted the divers and been vying to carry out laboratory tests on the contents of the bottles, according to the divers' leader, Tomasz Stachura. However, Swedish authorities have put their foot down and labeled the sunken ship “an ancient relic” which the county says requires “a clear and strong protection” to remain intact.
“You must not damage the ancient remains, which also includes taking items from the wreck, e.g. champagne bottles, without permission from the county,” Magnus Johansson, a county official told The Associated Press. “The champagne bottles are a fantastically well-preserved find that gives us a snapshot of shipping and life on board at the end of the 19th century,” he added.
Had the wreck been from before 1850, it would automatically have been listed as an ancient relic, local authorities said.
“But we have established that the cultural and historical values of the wreck were so high that it should be declared as an ancient relic,” Daniel Tedenlind, a county official in neighboring Kalmar.
Stachura, the diver, earlier said it was believed that the cargo could have been on the way to the royal table in Stockholm or the Russian tsar’s residence in St. Petersburg when the ship sank sometime in the second half of the 19th century.