A group of Finnish divers announced that they have discovered a wreck of Russian warship sunk in the Gulf of Finland 100 years ago, Finnish Daily Helsingin Sanomat reported on Thursday.
Badewanne, a Finnish diving research team, told Helsingin Sanomat that the wreck of the Russian destroyer Ispolnitelnyi was found in the western part of the Gulf of Finland.
The divers believed that the vessel belonged to the Russian Navy's Lieutenant Burakov class during World War I, on the basis of the structure and location of the shipwreck.
"Ispolnitelnyi", the name of the battleship, was identified by using digital image processing technology based on five Russian letters found on the wreckage.
In December 1914, Ispolnitelnyi traveled with seven other Russian warships from Helsinki to Estonian archipelago, where the squadron had to regroup and continued to sail to the German operated water in the northern Baltic Sea.
The ships encountered a heavy storm when they sailed in the Golf of Finland, Ispolnitelnyi was sunk by rogue waves together with Letuchiy, another vessel in the Russian Navy's Lieutenant Burakov class on Dec. 12, 1914.
Nearly 130 crew members on the two ships died in the accident.
"These vessels are long and narrow. They were built for speed, but they couldn't stand heavy sea waves," explained Jouni Polkko, member of the diving team.
Built in 1905 in France, Ispolnitelnyi was one of the destroyers in the Russian Navy's Lieutenant Burakov class, which participated in World War I in the Baltic Sea for patrol.