Extraordinary artefacts recovered from Titanic’s sister ship the Britannic after 109 years

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.

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.

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. Once the largest hospital ship afloat, it vanished beneath the waves in less than an hour.

30 of the more than 1,060 people on board died when their lifeboats were struck by the ship’s still turning propellers.

The 11-member dive team used closed-circuit equipment in a recovery operation organised by British historian Simon Mills, founder of the Britannic Foundation, the Culture Ministry said. Conditions on the wreck were particularly tough due to currents and low visibility, the ministry said.

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.

Check out the video above for a look at the recovery dive itself.