Hunt for lost artwork from legendary Amber Room is set to begin as divers prepare to search sunken Nazi warship: Photos show vessel was carrying unidentified artwork and possible museum artefacts

Daily Mail UK ^ | 14 May 2021 | Ed Wight

[BenLurkin]

Divers hunting for lost artwork from the legendary Amber Room looted by the Nazis are to begin searching a WWII shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea after photos revealed unidentified paintings and possible artefacts.

The 12-man team from the Baltictech diving group will spend 10 days off the coast of Gdansk, Poland, at the end of May at the site where the German steamer Karlsruhe was sank by a Royal Navy submarine in 1945.

Tomasz Stachura from Baltictech told MailOnline that initial observations of the wreck had revealed several 'non-military crates' as well as what appears to be the remains of 'picture frames and rotting canvases'.

He added that the handles of several crates suggest they could be from museums.

The team hopes to uncover the contents of the lost Amber Room, an ornate chamber of panels made from six tonnes of amber built for Tsar Peter the Great in the 1700s and ransacked by Hitler's invaders in 1941.

According to the ship's official cargo documents, there was 360 tonnes of goods on board before it was hit by a torpedo from HMS Truant and scuttled in April 1945.

[BenLurkin]

ping

Looks like the buried train didn’t pan out.

[a fool in paradise]

A painting submerged in the Baltic sea for 75+ years probably would be beyond restoration...

[AZJeep]

Amber would survive, it was there for millions of years.

[kiryandil]

where the German steamer Karlsruhe was sank

That should be "was sankened"...     

[ClearCase_guy]

I imagine the oil paintings would be lost. And any watercolors would be especially difficult to restore.

[BenLurkin]

[Thrownatbirth]

The financial motherlode is the 6 tons of amber, which does just fine in seawater.

[_longranger81]

Was besinkified.

[a fool in paradise]

What about the plaster bowl some schoolboy made for his mum?

[kiryandil]

The Daily Fail, though I love it for its more detailed information [as opposed to FakeAmericanNews], fails again:

The "warship" is actually SS Karlsruhe (1905), a cargo steamer for Hamburg America Line.

Perhaps Ed Wight of The Fail thought that "SS" meant that the Karlsruhe was a Waffen SS vessel...   

[a fool in paradise]

It blowed up real good! - SCTV

[Don Corleone]

Hard to believe after 75 years anything would survive.

[kiryandil]

Was besinkified.

Drat! I was ALWAYS lousy at tenses.   

[CivilWarBrewing]

How about "sunk"? Sounds right to me.

Also, if the water is super cold as in frigid, I think there's a possibly some artwork could survive.

[BenLurkin]

The story confuses two different ships.

A German Light cruiser sunk in 1941, and an old steamer both named Karlsruhe sunk in 1945.

[BenLurkin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Karlsruhe_(1905)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cruiser_Karlsruhe

[nomorelurker]

Being as the Amber Room has been rebuilt I will take all this maybe surplus stuff off their hands for a discount price.

[kiryandil]

That's Kriegsmarine Leichte Kreuzer Karlsruhe of the Königsberg-Klasse.

Using the flux capacitor perfected by German scientists, it went back to 1940 and got sunk in a different place, meaning that there are TWO identical shipwrecked Karlsruhes in different places.

[kiryandil]

They’ll be in touch.