In the late autumn of the distant 1771, a brigantine called "Frau Maria" left Amsterdam and headed for the shores of the Russian Empire. But the ship did not reach St. Petersburg, and did not return to Amsterdam …
Valuable cargo
The two-masted sailing ship slowly moved across the Baltic Sea, entering all the oncoming ports. Perhaps this slowness and ruined the Dutch captain - leaving in November from Kotka, which at that time belonged to Sweden, the sailboat got into a terrible storm and sank.
The death of "Frau Maria" was immediately reported to Catherine II, which led her to a terrible anger. The fact is that this ship, chartered by Russian merchants, transported works of art purchased at auctions in Holland: porcelain figurines, numerous bronze items, and most importantly, dozens of paintings by Dutch artists, many of which are signed by the greatest names. Only their cost is about one hundred million euros. The total cost of the cargo is estimated at one and a half to two billion euros.
Since the collections were intended for the Hermitage, there was no need to worry about the safety of the paintings: each canvas was placed in a special case made of moose leather, then into a lead tube, the neck of which was filled with wax and sealed with a lead lid.
The Russian government begins negotiations with the Swedish side on the recovery of the ship, but while the trial is on, the brigantine suddenly disappears from the crash site …
Since then, numerous attempts have been made to find the Frau Maria's treasures. But the only thing that was discovered was that the sailors, jumping from the side of the sinking ship, were able to take with them: that is, literally a few gold coins and other insignificant items.
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Find
Only more than two hundred years later, in 1999, a group of Finnish divers, studying the bottom of the Baltic, stumbled upon a vertically standing and perfectly preserved hull of the ship 11 kilometers from the Finnish island of Jurmo. Research has shown that the ship is the long-lost Frau Maria.
Initially, four states claimed the brigantine's treasures: Holland, since the ship was Dutch; Finland, since the ship is in its territorial waters; Sweden, because the waters belonged to the Swedish side at the time of the death of the Frau Maria; and, of course, Russia, since these treasures, in the end, were paid for by the Russian treasury, and the ship was chartered by Russian citizens.
Soon, all parties came to a unanimous conclusion: the ship must be raised before it was stolen by the "black divers". True, the Finns guarantee that the ship is under guard and constant supervision, but when it comes to such amounts, no one can give a 100% guarantee.
The lift was planned to be carried out in 2010, and if the parties did not come to an agreement on who the treasures belonged to, then there was a neutral option: to create an international, traveling museum-exhibition from the finds.
But things didn't go according to plan. Sweden and Holland dropped their claims, but Finland not only insisted on its rights to the Frau Maria and the contents of its holds, but with all its might prevented the lifting of the valuable cargo, initially proposing to postpone all work to 2018. Why 2018? It's very simple. The fact is that Finland has not signed the UNESCO International Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage, and therefore is guided in these matters by its own laws. And according to Finnish law, if the sunken ship and cargo stay in the territorial waters of the Republic of Finland for 100 years, then after that they will belong exclusively to the Finnish side. And the centenary of the existence of the Republic of Finland falls precisely in 2018, which has already ended. So, goodbye, Frau Maria and pictures,which were originally intended for the St. Petersburg Hermitage …
Konstantin Fedorov