Extraordinary artifacts found on Titanic’s sister ship Britannic 109 years later

For the first time in more than a century, divers have brought to the surface relics from the Britannic – the Titanic’s sister ship – which sank in the Aegean Sea during the First World War, Euronews writes.

Greece’s Culture Ministry announced that an 11-member deep-sea diving team conducted a week-long operation in May to recover the artefacts, which include the ship’s bell and the port-side navigation light.

Among the items raised to the surface using lift bags were the lookout bell, the navigation lamp, silver-plated first-class trays, ceramic tiles from a Turkish bath, a pair of passenger binoculars and a porcelain sink from second-class cabins.

The artefacts are now undergoing conservation in Athens and will be included in the permanent collection of a new Museum of Underwater Antiquities under development at the port of Piraeus.

Launched in 1914 as a luxury liner, the Britannic was soon requisitioned as a hospital ship. But on 21 November 1916, while bound for the island of Lemnos, it struck a mine and went down off Kea, southeast of Athens.