More than a century after it sunk off the Greek coast, divers have recovered artefacts from the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic. The Britannic was built as a luxury liner in 1914, before being requisitioned as a hospital ship with the outbreak of World War One. Just two years after it was built, however, it struck a mine and went down off the coast of Kea, southeast of Athens, while en-route to the Greek island of Lemnos.
The ship, once the largest hospital liner afloat, disappeared beneath the waves in under an hour. 30 of the 1,060 passengers onboard died after escaping the vessel, when their lifeboats were struck by the Britannic’s still-turning propellers. Greece’s Culture Ministry said an 11-member deep-sea diving team carried out a week-long operation to recover artefacts from the wreckage in May.
Among the items retrieved from the liner, which was the third of the White Star Line company’s Olympic steamships, alongside the Titanic and the Olympic, included its bell, navigation light and extravagant fittings.
The divers used closed-circuit equipment and battled strong currents and low visibility during the expedition, the ministry said.
They raised artefacts including the ship’s lookout bell, silver-plated serving trays, ceramic tiles from a Turkish bath and a porcelain sink, believed to be from the second-class cabins, EuroNews reports.
A navigation lamp and a pair of passenger binoculars were also brought to the surface as part of the discovery effort.
The Britannic wreck lay undisturbed at the bottom of the Aegean Sea until December 1975, when it was discovered by deep-sea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, lying at a depth of 120 metres, nearly 400 feet – making it inaccessible to all but technical divers.
The operation was jointly organised by British historian Simon Mills, founder of the Britannic Foundation. The artefacts, which shed new light on life aboard the sunken ship, have been dispatched to Athens for conservation.
They will then be included in a permanent collection of the new Museum of Underwater Antiquities, under development at the Greek port of Piraeus.