Cognac treasure ship found near Åland?

Divers say they have found the wreck of a ship carrying a valuable
load of cognac and liqueurs that sank during the First World War
between Finland and Sweden.

A team of divers from the west-coast town of Rauma announced on
Thursday that they had found the ship in the Gulf of Bothnia, north of
the Åland Islands and west of Rauma. The group, Raumanmeren
Hylky-Team, have not revealed a more exact location.

The hulk lies at a depth of around 80 metres.

The 220-tonne Swedish steamship Kyros was carrying hundreds of bottles
of cognac and liqueurs when it was torpedoed by a German u-boat on May
19, 1917 -- apparently one of nine Swedish vessels sunk that same day.

According to some reports, it was carrying a mixed cargo including
steel products and as many as 1000 bottles of cognac and 300 bottles
of liqueur.

Diving teams have been searching for the elusive vessel for years. In
the late 1990s a Swedish group of treasure-hunters believed they had
found it, but the object turned out to be a rock outcropping.

Finders, keepers?

The divers say the vessel has remain quite intact. They will decide
whether to try to raise the contents after closer examination.

"It's extremely difficult to operate down there," diver Pasi Rytkönen
told YLE. "The ship is intact, although it has begun to slowly fall
apart and there's lots of sediment. You can't just go down there and
just bring up whatever."

Rytkönen's team plans to continue diving with a larger robot, but what
will happen after that remains murky. No owner of the ship or its
cargo has been identified. According to Rytkönen, the situation is
therefore clear: "Finders, keepers!"

In 2010, Finnish divers made worldwide headlines when they raised a
valuable cargo of antique champagne bottles from a shipwreck near
Åland.