LOST artefacts from Titanic’s wrecked sister ship have been recovered for the first time more than a century after a mine explosion sank it.
HMHS Britannic was built by the same company and is the third in its Olympic-class ocean liners, along with the RMS Titanic and RMS Olympic.
A pair of binoculars was among the haul retrieved from the wreckage[/caption]
The ship’s bell was also found[/caption]
Experts weren’t able to get all the items they intended due to tough conditions[/caption]
The ship sank in the Aegean Sea, near the Greek island of Kea, in 1916 after hitting a mine.
It was intended to serve as a transatlantic passenger liner but was converted into a hospital ship during World War I – making it the biggest in the world at the time.
The ill-fated ship sank in less than an hour.
Although all 1,060 people managed to get off, 30 sadly died when the lifeboats they fled in were struck by the ship’s still turning propellers.
Explorers have divided down to the deep wreckage multiple times since 1975 but this is the first time they’ve brought back some of its lost treasures.
Among the haul is a look-out bell, signal lamp, a pair of binoculars and silver-plated first-class trays.
They also retrieved ceramic tiles from a Turkish bath and a porcelain sink from second-class cabins.
They’re set to appear in a special collection at a new Museum of Underwater Antiquities opening at the Piraeus Port of Athens, the busiest passenger port in Europe.
The operation was carried out by an 11-member team of experts in May but the Culture Ministry in Greece has only just released details of their findings this week.
Laying at a depth of almost 400 feet, the wreck is only accessible to skilled technical divers.
The ministry said conditions on the wreck were pretty tough due to currents and low visibility.
This made it difficult to get hold of some other objects identified in their original plan.
A signal lamp was also found[/caption]
The operation is the first time any artefacts have been taken from the wreckage[/caption]
HMHS Britannic served as a hospital ship during World War I[/caption]
What happened to the Titanic?
THE sinking of the Titanic was one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history with more than 1,500 lives lost.
The RMS Titanic was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and was the largest passenger ship the world had ever seen.
It set off on its maiden voyage from Southampton on April 10, 1912, due to arrive in New York City on April 17.
But five days into the journey, it collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic with around 2,224 passengers and crew on board.
At 11.40pm, a lookout had sounded the alarm and telephoned the bridge warning: “Iceberg, right ahead”.
But tragically the warning came too late and 37 seconds later, Titanic struck the iceberg – tearing a series of holes along the side of the hull.
The iceberg was around 100 feet tall and came from a glacier in Greenland.
Titanic’s chief naval architect Thomas Andrews said to Captain Edward John Smith the ship would certainly sink.
Six of the watertight compartments at the front of the ship’s hull were breached – five of them flooding within the hour.
Musicians played for two hours and five minutes as the ship sank.
At 2.20am, the Titanic broke in two sending all remaining passengers plunging into the below-freezing waters of the Atlantic.
The Titanic has been sitting 3,800 meters below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean since it sank in 1912.
This equates to a depth of around 12500 feet.
It has been reported that the wreckage could disappear completely by 2030, all because of “hungry” bacteria in the ocean.
The wreck initially stayed well preserved because of how deep in the ocean it is, but scientists don’t think the remains of the ship have much time left.
Efforts to locate the Titanic wreckage happened almost immediately but because of technical limitations and the sheer vastness of the North Atlantic, it took 73 years to find.
American oceanographer and marine geologist Robert Ballard and French oceanographer and engineer Jean-Louis Michel discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985.
The ship was found lying in two main pieces about 2,000 feet apart.
In 2012, the Titanic wreckage was named a UNESCO World Heritage site.
What’s left of the iconic ship remains on the ocean floor about 350 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
On June 18, 2023, 11 decades after the sinking of the Titanic, a research submersible visiting the wreckage went missing.
The US Coast Guard sent out a search for survivors after the vessel vanished with five people on board.
OceanGate Expeditions launched the submersible – a private company that charters trips to explore the Titanic wreckage.
The vessel reportedly had a four-day supply of oxygen, as per BBC.
It set out to explore the iconic Titanic wreckage, located 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts but never returned.
