Divers who salvaged a World War I-era shipload of alcohol from the bottom of the Baltic Sea were in for a few sad surprises when they completed their arduous mission Sunday.
What they thought was a barrel of cognac had apparently spoiled. And the ship itself was in such poor shape that it probably won't be restored."The cognac was a disappointment," said Markku Kankaristo, who spoke by telephone from the dive site near Rauma, about 155 miles northwest of Helsinki. "It was sharp on the palate and smelled bad."
A cache of champagne, wine and cognac has been lying on the seabed off the southwest coast of Finland since 1916, when a German U-boat torpedoed the schooner that was carrying an order for the Russian army.