Polish divers announced today that they discovered last week off the Swedish coast of the Baltic Sea a wreck of a 19th-century ship whose hold is filled with champagne cases and porcelain objects.

“The wreck is full of cases of champagne, mineral water and porcelain objects,” Thomas Stakura, head of the Baltictech diving team, told AFP.

According to him, among the items found were about a hundred bottles of champagne.

“I’ve been diving for the last 40 years, it often happens that there are one or two bottles … (but) to come across a wreck with such a load, that has never happened to me before,” Stakura stressed.

The discovery, made about 20 nautical miles south of the Swedish island of Eland, was largely the result of luck, according to divers who have been combing the bottom of the Baltic Sea for wrecks for years.

“We were exploring new locations on the seabed out of pure curiosity and that’s when we came across this wreck,” noted Stakura.

The discovery of mineral water in sealed clay bottles made it possible to establish that the vessel sank in the second half of the 19th century.

“We managed to take pictures of a stamp on a bottle, which turned out to be the German brand Selters – and these stamps had a certain shape at the time,” explained Stakura.

The divers informed the Swedish regional authorities of their discovery.

They also stressed that the champagne boxes will not be exported anytime soon due to administrative restrictions.

“It’s been there at the bottom for 170 years, so let’s let it … rest for another year, we’ll have more time to properly prepare for this operation,” concluded Stakura.