As of: April 5, 2024, 10:34 p.m
By: Julia Stanton
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Researchers make a spectacular discovery at the bottom of Lake Maggiore. © IMAGO/Puricelli
Finding a needle in a haystack is not always impossible: divers in Switzerland recently made a spectacular discovery.
Brisaggo TI — Wreck hunters on Lake Maggiore in Switzerland made an incredible discovery by chance at the beginning of March. A team from the Swiss organization “Nautic Discovery” was looking for another ship in the same area and found a passenger ship that sunk almost a hundred years ago at a depth of 270 meters. The group achieved this by using high-resolution sonar technology. The organization reports this on its website.
Lake Maggiore is 372 meters deep at its deepest point and covers 212.5 square kilometers. According to the founder of “Nautic Discovery”, Jörg Mathieu, such a find is a pretty big surprise. Normally, such discoveries would not be made at such depths, as the expert explained to the Keystone-SDA news agency.
Incredible find on Lake Maggiore: Old passenger ship wreck in good condition
The “Nautic Discovery” team had not expected the discovery at the diving site, as the wreck of the “Mercedes” was about 1 km from the site of the accident. The divers therefore assume that the passenger ship drifted just below the surface for a while before sinking. Although the ship sank almost a hundred years ago, Mathieu says the wreck is in very good condition. However, it is still unlikely that the remains will be recovered because the wood has lost its strength, the expert continued.
To reach this conclusion, the wreck of the “Mercedes” was examined at a depth of 270 meters with the Swiss submarine P-63. That also makes this find special: “I don’t think anyone has ever dived so deep into Lake Maggiore with a submarine,” said Mathieu in an interview with the Swiss television station
SRF
.
The search for old shipwrecks does not always end positively: passengers on the submarine “Titan” had an accident in June 2023 on the way to the “Titanic” wreck.
Hundred-year-old wreck: passenger ship “Mercedes” crashed in 1928
The discovery was the passenger ship “Mercedes,” which crashed on July 8, 1928. The cause of the accident was the collision with an Italian passenger ship shortly before Brissago. The Nautic Discovery website states that the then 22-year-old engineer Ferdinando Vigini died in the accident. Since then the ship has been considered missing. Salvage work was unsuccessful.
“Nautic Discovery” is dedicated to the search for undiscovered ships at home and abroad. The divers are currently searching for the wreck of the Torpediniera T19. But the searches are often lengthy: a promising target often turns out to be rock, wood or unusable building rubble.
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(jus)